The Five and the case of the Unknown Woman

The retranslation of classics after a certain period of time between versions is a frequent topic of research that allows us to observe both the change in translation criteria and the differences in sensibility of each period. Even without great temporal distances, in principle any work could be translated an infinite number of times and the result would always offer different solutions not incompatible with each other.  Some works of particular popularity among readers seem to invite retranslations, especially when the author's rights pass into the public domain, and so, for example, six new translations of Stefan Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922) were published in Spain in the same year of 2023. In order to show these variations in the reproduction of the text and their effect, paying special attention to the highly dramatic tone that characterizes this story, we will examine a selection of fragments from five of these new versions in comparison with the original and with the first publication in Spanish (1981).