Narrative of the translation

The study of a few cases in the history of translation from Arabic into Spanish provides us with evidences to argue that narratology plays a relevant role in translation studies. We take a look at the work done by important agents in the field of translation from Arabic: 1) the medieval Castillian king Alphonse the Tenth, the Morisco official translators Miguel de Luna and Alonso del Castillo, the Franciscan missionary Francisco de San Juan del Puerto (eighteenth century) and the orientalist Emilio Lafuente Alcantara (ninteeth century). After that, we propose a distinction between the the two narrative discourses on translation. On the first hand, there is a bographical approach, leading to the study of individual cases as stories of social conflicts. On the other, there is a 'grand' narrative discourse of history, as reflection of the dialectics between the tradicional and the new.