Primera proposta de traducció al català de l’òpera Les Troyens à Carthage

Abstract

Opera has always had a linguistic barrier due to the language in which the libretto is written and the one that speaks or knows the audience. Thus, translation has become crucial in order to break the above-mentioned barrier. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a Catalan translation of the French opera libretto Les Troyens à Carthage, the second part of the grand opéra Les Troyens, composed and written by Hector Berlioz in the nineteenth century. It should be noted that this is the first Catalan translation of this work. Translating opera libretti means that the translator has to face not only issues related to the translation itself (for instance, if its purpose is to provide a readable or singable translation), but also the fact that most operas are largely inspired by previous works, as this one, since it is mainly based on the second and fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid. Therefore, the best Catalan translations of this classical book have been taken into account, as well as monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, specialised books on music, and translations of other Classics. This study includes three different parts: the first one mainly talks about the preliminary considerations concerning the author, the genre and the opera that is going to be translated; the second one presents the source text and the Catalan translation; the latter one gives some evaluation criteria related to the purpose of the translation that suits the most this paper, some difficulties that have arisen while translating this opera and how they have been solved. This paper concludes saying that the translator indeed has to do significant work related to a comprehensive documentation in order to provide an accurate translation.