The Misery and Splendor of Translation

The essay “La miseria y el esplendor de la traducción”, written in 1936, is to this day one of the most widely quoted essays on translation ever written in the Spanish language. In the essay, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) sets out his highly insightful perspective on the significance of translation for revealing the semiotic gaps that exist between different languages. Many of the ideas expounded in this essay have become key issues in the field of translation studies, particular since the “cultural turn” of the 1980s.