Reformist 19th-century Pedagogy in Translation: 'De la educación intelectual, moral y física' (1880) by Francisco de Asís Pacheco from Herbert Spencer's 'Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical' (1861)

Abstract

This case study analyses Francisco de Asís Pacheco’s Spanish edition of De la educación intelectual, moral y física (1880) from the original Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861) by the English polemist and thinker Herbert Spencer. Adopting both Lépinette’s model on the history of translation and Toury’s norm-based approach within Descriptive Translation Studies, this article initially tackles the description of both texts, including a biographical sketch of the translator, before giving a detailed description of paratexts (prologue, footnotes...) so as to accurately determine both the initial and the preliminary norms to which this version originally adhered. In parallel, close attention is paid to the analysis of the operational norms, both matricial and textual-linguistic. Whereas the former covers the analysis of segmentation, additions and omissions in Pacheco’s version, the latter addresses the translation of cultural and literary references as well as units of measurement, weight and mass.