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A pesar de que la alusión es ampliamente usada por poetas, escritores y filósofos así como en el lenguaje cotidiano, sus características y alcance como instrumento cognitivo se han estudiado escasamente. Esto es cierto hasta el extremo de que el sustantivo alusión no es merecedor de una humilde entrada en diccionarios y enciclopedias especializados, no solamente de filosofía, sino tampoco de lingüística. Teniendo en cuenta este status quaestionis, este trabajo intenta conseguir los siguientes objetivos, a saber: 1) mostrar que la alusión es un instrumento cognitivo; 2) delimitar la alusión con respecto a la cita, el plagio y el eco; 3) considerar la alusión como un caso de implicatura; y 4) analizar las principales características de la alusión. Todos estos puntos se estudian mediante el recurso a textos poéticos y filosóficos serios, así como a textos y proferencias humorísticos y del lenguaje cotidiano.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse and discuss some translation difficulties that emerge when one signifier develops different meanings in two particular languages. When it is the case that, as a result of some semantic change, two languages share one signifier and that this signifier shares, at least, one of its meanings in both languages while it differs with regard to the rest, problems for translating from one to the other language emerge. Such problems become more significant when, in addition, each language’s signifier belongs to different sociolects and/or two alternative interpretations of a given text are reasonably possible. All these points are analysed in published translations of philosophical texts. Although I study other cases, the core of this chapter is devoted to the problems that emerge when the English noun actuality and its cognates in Romance languages appear in philosophical texts.

Probably, by alluding to his own experience, L. Wittgenstein says that (1) Germanisms are almost unavoidable when a German speaker speaks English – even if s/he speaks English well – ; and, as a result of the previous remark, that (2) “This will make him speak English as if he were translating ‘unconsciously’ from German” (Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Revised fourth edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Original italics, 2009: 597). Wittgenstein’s remarks can be used as a starting point in order to analyse some translations in which the text in the target language (TL, hereinafter) seems to be incongruous or, at least, strange, because it recalls the source language (SL, hereinafter). As a result of this, “we shouldn’t be surprised that a translated author always seems somewhat foolish to us” (Ortega y Gasset, The misery and the splendor of translation. In: Lawrence Venuti (ed) The translation studies reader, (trans: Elisabeth Gamble Miller). Routledge, London/New York, pp 49–63, 2003: 51). I will argue that, if a translated author seems somewhat foolish to the reader, it is due to the fact that the translator works as the Wittgenstein’s German speaker worked, i.e. s/he is unconsciously reproducing in the TL pragmemes which only make sense in the SL. This is particularly relevant when the translator has to deal with idioms, collocations, and/or plays on words, but it is also applicable to texts in which terms are used according to their literal meaning(s). My purpose here is to suggest some pragmatic strategies in order to re-build the original thought of a given author when his/her translation seems to be a foolish thing. And so by assuming that what the author wrote in its original guise was not foolishness at all.