Las ‘creaciones’ de un traductor científico de H. L. Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782): Las notas añadidas a pie de página, mediación cultural y científica entre TO y TM y explicitación de conocimientos colectivos divergentes

Abstract

The present article analyzes the more than 500 footnotes included in the TT of the translator C. Gómez Ortega and composed (created) by him in his translation of the treatises on silviculture by L. Duhamel du Morceau (1700-1782). According to the methodology applied, these footnotes are part of the metatext, explored both from the lexical and the encyclopaedic point of view. Out of the footnote corpus we have selected the notes that mention the names of relevant natural scientists and which constitute precise bibliographical citations. The authors referred to have been listed and thematically classified. The reference to another/other work(s) within these bibliographical notes reveal an intertextuality that fills the TT and offers information about the reception of the said text, about the translator himself and the addressees with their respective knowledge –the additional data supplied by the translator are directed especially to a Spanish scientific and technical readership. At the same time, the roll of past or present scientists that C. Gómez Ortega draws upon in his footnote comments is of special interest for the science historian, because it allows an exact delimitation of the degree of knowledge of the translator as regards the author of the ST and the degree of knowledge that –at least according to the translator– the Spanish addressees have. The notes as a whole thus underline the role of cultural and scientific mediator that the translator holds for science and culture, in this case French culture, and the Spanish addressees that will obtain access to it, in a sort of appended, annotated bibliography.