ABSTRACT
155Any good translation is founded on a very close reading of the text, in which every word is scrutinized, every sentence weighed. When I was invited to write a detailed commentary on a passage in Portuguese for this volume, it immediately occurred to me that my contribution could be a kind of running commentary on the translation process, on the decisions and indecisions that flash on and off like light bulbs in the translator’s brain. Since I am just about to translate a collection of Eça’s short stories, I chose, at random, this opening passage from ‘Um poeta lírico’.
