I call it "source text" rather than "original."

When I’m translating a text, I prefer to talk about it as the source text (ST) rather than the original.

Although an original text can be understood, as the Merriam Webster Dictionary does in the second meaning of the term, as “that from which a copy, reproduction, or translation is made,” or in the fourth meaning according to the Metzler Lexicon Literatur: “authentic version of a text in the source language as a template of a translation,” when reviewing other dictionaries and delving deeper into the field of literary theory and translatology, the term “original” can present several complexities. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory defines originality as follows: “Originality. A work may be said to possess this quality if, as a result of the author’s invention, he innovates a new form or mode; or, perhaps, uses hitherto undiscovered or unexploited themes and subjects.”

From this perspective originality would be circumscribed, in the best of cases, to a few works only and would be, consequently, a term of little use for studies in literary translation. Another problem with the use of the term “original” text is that it refers to a single text from which all translations or variants emanate, and this, in all periods, is very difficult to establish. In the Middle Ages, for example, translators referred to the works they translated by the name of the authors (e.g. Averroes, Aristotle) without any concept similar to that of “original text”. Moreover, the very process of translation was closely linked to that of the commentary or gloss (it was not considered a separate text). Another example can be found in the French court of the 17th century, where it was customary to translate Spanish plays and modify the texts considerably (plot, characters and entire passages of text).

What is the original text of Shakespeare’s plays, of the Bible, or even of a more contemporary work such as Pedro Páramo?[1] Is there a single edition from which all other editions are derived? Certainly not. Hence, speaking of a source text seemed to me to be clearer and more useful. On the other hand, the way in which we read a text that we call original has more to do with our prejudices than with its authenticity, as Kate Briggs rightly states in an exercise that a colleague of hers carried out in a class and that I have carried out in my translation workshops with the same result:

She gave the group an original piece of writing and its translation, but had privately made them swap places. So what we read was an excerpt from a novel originally published in English but presented to us as if it were a translation from the French. Everyone was predictably critical of the English (in other words the original), finding it to be in different ways poorly written, misjudged, mistaken with regards to the rightness of the French (which was actually the translation) […] which suggests that rather than testifying to any identifiable quality of the prose itself, the categories of ‘original’ and ‘translation’ act more like placeholders: ‘original’ and ‘translation’ are the names for the positions we put writing in, and for the histories of writing labour we then assign to them (first-time writing, second-time writing) (Briggs, 2018: loc. 416).

To these positions from which an “original” text is named, it is necessary to underline the creative character of the literary translator, whose linguistic findings are not subject to those of the author of the source text.

[1] To delve into the various ambiguities and pitfalls of using the concept of “originality” versus “source text” see Martin J. Burke & Melvin Richter (eds.) (2012). Why Concepts Matter. Translating Social and Political Thought. Brill, Boston.