Translation and terminology. Apropos of two Spanish versions of Dumarsais’ Logique (Madrid, 1800)

2013

Framed in the field of philosophical translation (lato sensu), this article deals with two different versions of Dumarsais’ Logique ([1769] 1797, Paris), both published in Madrid in 1800. We argue that these two Lógicas, which were translated by two different persons, had distinct purposes. This is evidenced by their respective bibliographical contexts and metatexts and by their translators’ use of different sets of Spanish terminological equivalents for the concepts that, as set out in the first few pages of his Logique, are key in Dumarsais’ theory of knowledge. In the first of these translations, which envisions logic as having an introductory role in the acquisition of scientific knowle…