Abstract
The article aims to present the contemporary reception of the ideas of the Czech translation scholar Jiří Levý in Spain and Latin America. His ideas, formulated in the 1950s, remain perfectly valid till the present day; nevertheless, the fact that Levý wrote in a minor language meant that the international academic community had limited access to his innovative thinking on translation as a decision process, translation as a communication process and the historical perspective of translation.
The Czech scholar's concepts did not receive international recognition until 2011 when his principal work, The Art of Translation (1963), was translated into English. Even before, however, the translation studies community in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries did read about Levý's thinking, using the German translation (1969).
Surprisingly, the reception of his works in that part of the world has not been as limited as one would think and Levý has his admirers who have been disseminating his ideas in their respective areas (Vega in Spanish and Neckel in Portuguese). Besides, translation studies journals in Latin America have published monothematic issues appreciating the works of the Czech translation scholar (Brazil, Scientia Traductionis, 2012; Colombia, Mutatis Mutandis, 2016).
Of equal importance are the Spanish anthology Jiří Levý: una concepción (re)descubierta (2013), comprising his most representative texts collected and translated by Jana Králová and Miguel Cuenca, as well as a commented Portuguese translation of the first part of his principal work done by Filipe Neckel which forms part of his doctoral thesis (2011). To sum up, the recent (re)discovery of Levý's thinking on translation has contributed to the methodological innovation of translation research.