Between Rhetoric and Translation: the Use of the <em>senhal</em> in the Translations into Iberian Languages of Petrarch’s <em>Canzoniere</em> (<em>Rvf</em> 194, 196-198)

Abstract

The so-called senhal or poetic mask behind which the name of the beloved lady is hidden implies important problems for translation, since both meaning and phonic form are relevant, so that the translator must strive to preserve both elements in his target text (TT) and to insert them in a context in which the effect could be as similar as possible to the source text (ST). Considering this problem, this study proposes the analysis of the translations into Spanish, Portuguese, Galician and Catalan of sonnets 194, 196, 197 and 198 of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. In the four target texts, starting with the senhal “l’aura”, the different strategies used for translating this kind of lexical-semantic element as well as the contexts of its appearance will be analysed.