Silencios significativos en las comedias de Publio Terencio Afer y su tratamiento en la traducción: una aproximación desde la retórica y la pragmática

Resumen

Significant silences in the comedies of Publius Terentius Afer and their treatmentin translation: an approach from rhetoric and pragmatics. In his comic dialogues,Publius Terentius Afer (2nd century BC) reflects many of the situations that occur in real-life,informal conversations: the interruption of discourse due to external causes; the listener’s attempt to take the floor (with greater or lesser success); the overlapping of discourses or parallel conversations; the influence of emotions in the linguistic formulation; and the use of silence andellipsis with a communicative purpose. Linguistic context and pragmatic circumstances allow the use of these strategies without compromising communication. In this paper I will reviewTerence’s application of these resources and I will compare how they are reproduced, eliminated, or transformed in two Late Renaissance translations into Spanish, those published in 1577 and1583 by Pedro Simón Abril (ca. 1530-1600), a professor of Latin and acclaimed pedagogue. In his grammars, he also reflects about the motivations that underlie the use of figures of speech such as ellipsis and aposiopesis.