Is simpatico possible in translation?: The 1620 translation of the Decameron and the case for similarity

This paper redefnes the concept of simpatico, introduced and almost immediately undermined by Lawrence Venuti in the sixth chapter of the translator's Invisibility. An analysis of Venuti's use of the concept shows that his dismissal of it is largely based on the assumption that it must be defned through sameness and identity. His defnition of the term is frst examined in order to point inexorably at this impossibility, and the concept is then widened by redefning it in terms of similarity rather than sameness. This broadening allows not only a subjective fexibility to enter into the description of translator-author relationships but also a historicization that in Venuti had to be specifcally prohibited in the name of identity. The newly historicized and expanded concept of simpatico is then applied to the 1620 translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron into English. Through an analysis of the translator's implied perceptions of similarity between himself and Boccaccio, the new concept of simpatico becomes a lens through which translational choices and the translation process may be viewed and begins to provide insight into the construction of the author as an international fgure. © St Jerome Publishing Manchester.