Més enllà de Riba: una panoràmica general a les primeres traduccions en vers del teatre grec antic

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the considerable disparity between the number of verse translations of ancient Greek drama in the current Catalan market as opposed to prose versions, especially when compared with the first turn-ofthe- century Catalan renditions of Greek tragedy, which were almost all in verse. We try to identify a cause for this by looking beyond the traditional dichotomy of ‘faithful’ prose translations versus ‘free’ verse translations. We assess the current situation of verse translations of ancient Greek drama (both tragedy and comedy) into Catalan, and we carry out a metrical analysis of all the versions by poet-translators before Carles Riba in an attempt to discover therein an explanation for the preference for verse over prose of the first Catalan translators to tackle the works of ancient Greek playwrights.