[translator's note]
The most serious problem of Honig's translation is to render the central concept of ficçǒes sociaes as 'social myths'. For Pessoa, myths were more real than surface 'realities'. But a ficcǎo social for the Banker was merely a fiction, a lie, a false tradition, designed to perpetuate injustice. It possesses none of the veiled redeeming features of a myth. The Portugueses term for myth, mito, was quite familiar to Pessoa, but he chose not to use it in this context. The English cognate fiction is the proper translation.
readers of translations, not excepting this one, should keep in their mind the Italian proverb tradutorre, traditore – 'translator, betrayer'.
