“Las múltiples caras de la fidelidad traductora entre vestigios decimonónicos y teorías contemporáneas”

The concept of fidelity and the more or less dependent relationship between translations and originals represent the most fervently debated questions in the 19th century, leaving useful vestiges to rethink the contemporary discourse about Translation Studies. Through the analysis of prefaces or commentaries (in which authors and translators aim to raise and resolve methodological questions) the purpose of this work is to analyse the ideas and theoretical approaches about the notion of fidelity, that spread at the time. The article tries to underline how those theories fed the unfinished (but fruitful) debate on what is (if it exists) the iusta via media (Steiner) between translation fidelity and freedom. In particular, the (sometimes contradictory) ideas expressed by Ochoa and Menéndez Pelayo go beyond the notion of fidelity and lead to harmonic points of convergence between opposite dichotomies.