MA in Translation, Writing and Cultural Difference
Intertemporal translation
• How should older texts be translated? Should we pursue strictly contemporaneous lexical equivalents? To what extent are later lexical developments allowable? To what extent should a translator adopt modern idioms?
• When does the modernization of an older text become a form of adaptation or réécriture
(‘rewriting’) rather than ‘translation’? When does a translation become anachronistic, and should anachronism be avoided at all cost?
• To what extent should the translation of an older text be accompanied by annotations or a commentary? When is a parallel translation advisable?
These are the issues to be pursued in this session on ‘intertemporal translation’.
You will develop your understanding of the notion of intertemporal translation and the complex questions its raises for translators, who may themselves be working in very different cultural systems and for different target audiences. During the class, you will discuss these questions, in both general terms and with reference to two or three specific examples (which may be of your own choice or as suggested by the tutor [see below]). In the second part of the class, you will consider historical dictionaries and their use as practical instruments of translation.
1.
Investigate the concept of intertemporal (or cross-temporal) translation in handbooks of translation studies (e.g. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies , edited by Mona
Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 2 nd edn. 2009). What are the main concerns and points of debate identified by your critical sources?
2.
Make some notes on the concepts of:
-­‐ revision/editing
-­‐ réécriture
-­‐ adaptation
-­‐ appropriation
-­‐ updating, modernisation, archaisation
How do they differ from, or relate to, the notion of ‘intertemporal translation’? Are our views of, say, adaptation the same today as they were in (for instance) the Renaissance or the Eighteenth Century? How large must the chronological gap between the source text and the translation be for us to speak of ‘intertemporal translation’? Illustrate your answer with some concrete examples.
3.
What, in your view, is a translator’s optimal strategy, when the target audience belongs to a very different cultural system from that envisaged by the source text?
When that difference is not just cross-temporal, but also cross-spatial, and/or interlingual?
When an original context seems to have lost its pertinence?
When a particular genre or form (e.g. metre) has become defunct?
Must anachronisms be avoided at all cost? What room (or need) is there for the adaptation of historic realities (semiotic modification)?

Illustrate your answer with one or more specific examples, taken from your own reading or from the list below.
4.
Are the issues of intertemporal translation the same for interlinguistic as for intralinguistic translations? I.e., when the translation moves between different languages
(e.g. Classical Latin or Renaissance English, and modern French) OR between different forms of the same language (e.g. Middle French and modern French)?
5.
How does a translation that is printed alongside the older historical source text, differ from one that is destined to ‘stand alone’? Should a commentary or apparatus of explanatory notes necessarily accompany the translation of an historical text?
6.
‘Rabelais traduit en français moderne? C’est un sacrilège, c’est une profanation, c’est un enlaidissement, et c’est une impossibilité — peut-être tout cela; mais aussi, c’est une nécessité absolue’ (Émile Faguet, c. 1900). Discuss.
7.
To what extent, and in what way, do you agree with André Markowicz’s comment on his poetic French translation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (2008): la complexité shakespearienne ne doit jamais être réduite, et l’étrangeté (pour nous) du pentamètre ne doit pas être sacrifiée à notre habitude de tout ramener à nousmêmes, de tout traduire en nous-mêmes, c’est-à-dire soit en alexandrin soit en vers libre (le plus souvent en une simple prose qui va à la ligne). Non, il s’agit bien de rendre compte de la distance – en sachant que notre élévation (osons ce mot) viendra de notre travail à nous: c’est à nous de faire le chemin vers les grands textes, – les textes, en eux-mêmes, ne bougent pas.
[‘Interventions d’André Markowicz et de Margaret Jones-Davies à propos de leur édition de Mesure pour Mesure’, Sillages critiques [Online], 15
(2013), online since 10 January 2013. URL : http://sillagescritiques.revues.org/2732]
8.
What use can, and should, a modern-day translator make of historical dictionaries? Please prepare a list of the historical dictionaries (monolingual or multilingual) you know (with links if available on-line), with a brief descriptor and comments on when you would envisage using them. Bring copies of your list to share with the tutor and other students.
Examples to consider:
-­‐ Translations through the ages of the Bible and liturgical texts
-­‐ Translations through the ages of a Classical author such as Horace, Vergil, Juvenal…
-­‐ French translations from the nineteenth century to the Modern day of Shakespeare plays
-­‐ Marie-Madeleine Fragonard’s modern French ‘translation’ of Rabelais;
-­‐ Guy de Pernon’s ‘traduction en français moderne’ of Montaigne’s Essais ;
-­‐ … ( Feel free to choose your own!
)
Ingrid De Smet
Nov. 2014