IAA D08
VERSION
JANVIER - AVRIL 2013
Equipe pédagogique :
Wilfrid Andrieu
Pascal Gautherot
Christine Zaratsian
1
LA TRADUCTION
Il s’agira d’effectuer un travail de traduction sur des extraits de romans, de nouvelles ou
d’autres types d’écrits d’auteurs des XXe et XXIe siècles.
Ces cours de version littéraire insisteront sur la nécessité, pour le traducteur, de connaître à la
fois le texte et le contexte, et de maîtriser le vocabulaire, afin de pouvoir rendre toutes les
nuances et toutes les couleurs de l’extrait choisi. L’un des objectifs sera donc la lecture des
œuvres intégrales.
On travaillera sur l’acquisition des réflexes de traduction, par exemple pour les verbes (une
attention particulière doit être portée aux temps et aspects). Une bonne connaissance des
procédés de traduction (cf.Chuquet/Paillard) doit vous aider dans cet exercice. On fera
également attention à la ponctuation, dont l’usage varie d’une langue à l’autre.
Pour l’approfondissement et l’acquisition du vocabulaire, il vous faudra non seulement de
bons manuels, mais également fournir un travail personnel : inscription du vocabulaire pris en
cours, constitution d’un cahier ou répertoire, révision régulière et systématique (cf. Le mot et
l’idée 2), révision des verbes irréguliers et à particules.
Le programme lexical prolonge celui de 1ère année. Outre le corps – portrait physique,
vêtements, activité corporelle ; la vie physiologique – santé, maladie –, l’environnement
immédiat, et les 5 sens (vue, ouïe, odorat, goût, toucher), les semestres 3 et 4 seront plutôt
réservés :



Aux champs lexicaux des bruits, des sons, et de la lumière
A l’être humain et son environnement naturel (montagne, mer, campagne ;
animaux et leurs cris)
A la ville
LA METHODOLOGIE
Le travail sur les procédés de traduction sera également poursuivi :
- la transposition
* le chassé-croisé
* l’étoffement
- les modulations
* métaphoriques (passage du concret à l’abstrait, décalage métaphorique…)
* métonymiques (changement de point de vue spatio-temporel, type cause/conséquence,
moyen/résultat, partie pour le tout…)
* grammaticales (négation du contraire, changement de statut modal…)
2
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Les deux ouvrages nécessaires sont :
1. Hélène CHUQUET, Michel PAILLARD, Approche linguistique des problèmes de la
traduction, Ophrys.
Nous nous servirons essentiellement des 2 premiers chapitres.
2. Le mot et l’idée 2, Ophrys 1991.
Autres manuels de vocabulaire :
- Word Routes. Lexique thématique de l’anglais courant. Cambridge. – Disponible en
bibliothèque :
BU Aix : 428.1 CAM (salle langues étrangères) ; BU St Charles : 428.1 CAM (salle de
lecture).
- Vocabulaire anglais et américain, Robert et Collins.
- P. LARREYA, et al., Mémento grammatical anglais (Nathan).
- Florent GUSDORF, Words Universités, Ellipses.
- M. SKOPAN, Word Watch, Lexique anglo-américain, Ophrys 2000.
Pour compléter ces manuels :
- DUMONG, KNOTT, Le Vocabulaire anglais du supérieur (Ellipses) – expressions
idiomatiques et formules.
- P. RAFROIDI, M. PLAISANT, D. SHOTT, Le nouveau manuel de l’angliciste : vocabulaire
du thème, de la version et de la rédaction, Ophrys, 1986 – une partie sur les procédés de
traduction, vocabulaire mis en contexte dans de courtes phrases et paragraphes.
- C. BOUSCAREN, C. RIVIERE, L’anglais après le bac : mise à niveau, Ophrys, 1994 – bon
ouvrage.
- Florent GUSDORF, A. PAQUETTE, More Words, Ellipses – exercices.
Problèmes, exercices de traduction :
- Françoise GRELLET, In So Many Words, Hachette Supérieur – exercices pour maîtriser le
vocabulaire et les structures lexicales.
Grammaire :
- Robert L. WAGNER, Jacqueline PINCHON, Grammaire du Français, Hachette Supérieur.
- L’art de conjuguer, Hatier, le nouveau Bescherelle.
3
IAA D08 – version n°1
The cottage was a block from the bus stop, near the river but not directly on the shore; from
the living-room window you could look across the street and opposite yard and see the
Hudson. The cottage was modern, almost too white and new on the narrow plot of yard. In
summer the grass was soft and bright and Martin carefully tended a flower border and a rose
trellis. But during the cold, fallow months the yard was bleak and the cottage seemed naked.
Lights were on that evening in all the rooms in the little house and Martin hurried up the front
walk. Before the steps he stopped to move a wagon out of the way.
The children were in the living-room, so intent on play that the opening of the front
door was at first unnoticed. Martin stood looking at his safe, lovely children. They had opened
the bottom drawer of the secretary and taken out the Christmas decorations. Andy had
managed to plug in the Christmas tree lights and the green and red bulbs glowed with out-ofseason festivity on the rug of the living-room. At the moment he was trying to trail the bright
cord over Marianne’s rocking horse. Marianne sat on the floor pulling off an angel’s wings.
The children wailed a startling welcome. Martin swung the fat little baby girl up to his
shoulder and Andy threw himself against his father’s legs.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
Martin set down the little girl carefully and swung Andy a few times like a pendulum.
Then he picked up the Christmas-tree cord.
“What’s all this stuff doing out? Help me put it back in the drawer. You’re not to fool
with the light socket. Remember I told you that before. I mean it, Andy.”
The six-year-old child nodded and shut the secretary drawer. Martin stroked his fair
soft hair and his hand lingered tenderly on the nape of the child’s frail neck.
“Had supper yet, Bumpkin?”
“It hurt. The toast was hot.”
The baby girl stumbled on the rug and, after the first surprise of the fall, began to cry;
Martin picked her up and carried her in his arms back to the kitchen.
“See, Daddy,” said Andy. “The toast – ”
Emily had laid the children’s supper on the uncovered porcelain table. There were two
plates with the remains of cream-of-wheat and eggs and silver mugs that had held milk. There
was also a platter of cinnamon toast, untouched except for one toothmarked bite. Martin
sniffed the bitten piece and nibbled gingerly. The he put the toast into the garbage pail.
“Hoo – phui – What on earth!”
Emily had mistaken the tin of cayenne for the cinnamon.
448 mots
Carson McCULLERS, "A Domestic Dilemma" in The Ballad of the Sad Café, (1943 ).
IAA D08 – version n°2
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not
infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon
the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.
It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang
lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James
Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date
"1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry dignified, solid, and reassuring.
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"Well, Watson, what do you make of it?"
Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.
"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head."
"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell
me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to
miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance.
Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it."
"I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that Dr. Mortimer
is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this
mark of their appreciation."
"Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!"
"I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a
great deal of his visiting on foot."
"Why so?"
"Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I
can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it
is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it."
"Perfectly sound!" said Holmes.
341 mots
Arthur CONAN DOYLE, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902).
IAA D08 – version n°3
I wilted. I begged them not to hit me. I knew what they wanted. They wanted me to leave
the job.
“I’ll leave,” I promised. “I’ll leave right now!”
They gave me a minute to get out of the factory, and warned me not to show up again or
tell the boss. Reynolds loosened his hand on my collar and I ducked out of the room. I did not
see Mr. Crane or the stenographer in the office. Pease and Reynolds had so timed it that Mr.
Crane and the stenographer would be out when they turned on the terror. I went to the street
and waited for the boss to return. I saw Griggs wiping glass shelves in the jewelry store and I
beckoned to him. He came out and I told him what had happened.
“Then what are you standing there like a fool for?” he demanded. “Won’t you ever learn?
Get home! They might come down!”
I walked down Capitol Street feeling that the sidewalk was unreal, that I was unreal, that
the people were unreal, yet expecting somebody to demand to know what right I had to be on
the streets. My wound went deep; I felt that I had been slapped out of the human race. When I
reached home, I didn’t tell the family what had happened; I merely told them that I had quit,
that I was not making enough money, that I was seeking another job.
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That night Griggs came to my house; we went for a walk.
“You got a goddamn tough break,” he said.
“Can you say it was my fault?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Well, what about your goddamn philosophy of meekness?” I asked him bitterly.
“These things just happen,” he said, shrugging.
“They owe me money,” I said.
“That’s what I came about,” he said. “Mr. Crane wants you to come in at ten in the
morning. Ten sharp, now, mind you, because he’ll be there and those guys won’t gang up on
you again.”
339 mots
Richard WRIGHT, Black Boy (1937).
IAA D08 – version n°4
A rumble coursed through me as I approached, and it scared the hell out of me because it was
on a register lower than noise. The ground was vibrating.
I staggered inside and met a wall of yak―a great expanse of curly-haired chest and churning
hooves, of flared red nostrils and spinning eyes. It galloped past so close I leapt backward on
tiptoe, flush with the canvas to avoid being impaled on one of its crooked horns. A terrified
hyena clung to its shoulders.
The concession stand in the center of the tent had been flattened, and in its place was a roiling
mass of spots and stripes―of haunches, heels, tails, and claws, all of it roaring, screeching,
bellowing, or whinnying. A polar bear towered above it all, slashing blindly with skillet-sized
paws. It made contact with a llama and knocked it flat―BOOM. The llama hit the ground, its
neck and legs splayed like the five points of a star. Chimps screamed and chattered, swinging
on ropes to stay above the cats. A wild-eyed zebra zigzagged too close to a crouching lion,
who swiped, missed, and darted away, his belly close to the ground.
My eyes swept the tent, desperate to find Marlena. Instead I saw a cat slide through the
connection leading to the big top―it was a panther.
227 mots
Sara GRUEN, Water for Elephants (2006).
IAA D08 – version n°5
Then her eyes caught a movement. A mole was moving silently over the warm, red soil,
nosing, shuffling hither and thither, flat, and dark as a shadow, shifting about, and as suddenly
brisk, and as silent, like a very ghost of joie de vivre. Frances started, from habit was about to
call on Anne to kill the little pest. But, today her lethargy of unhappiness was too much for
her. She watched the little brute paddling, snuffing, touching things to discover them, running
in blindness, delighted to ecstasy by the sunlight and the hot, strange things that caressed its
belly and its nose. She felt a keen pity for the little creature.
“Eh. our Fran, look there! It’s a mole.”
Anne was on her feet, standing watching the dark, unconscious beast. Frances frowned with
anxiety.
“It doesn’t run off, does it ?‘ said the young girl softly. Then she stealthily approached the
creature. The mole paddled fumblingly away. In an instant Anne put her foot upon it, not too
heavily. Frances could see the struggling, swimming movement of the little pink hands of the
brute, the twisting and twitching of its pointed nose, as it wrestled under the sole of the boot.
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‘It does wriggle !” said the bonny girl, knitting her brows in a frown at the eerie sensation.
Then she bent down to look at her trap. Frances could now see, beyond the edge of the bootsole, the heaving of the velvet shoulders, the pitiful turning of the sightless face, the frantic
rowing of the flat, pink hands.
“Kill the thing,” she said, turning away her face.
“Oh—I’m not,” laughed Anne, shrinking. “You can, if you like.”
“I don’t like,” said Frances, with quiet intensity.
After several dabbing attempts, Anne succeeded in picking up the little animal by the scruff
of its neck. It threw back its head, flung its long blind snout from side to side, the mouth open
in a peculiar oblong, with tiny pinkish teeth at the edge. The blind, frantic mouth gaped and
writhed. The body, heavy and clumsy, hung scarcely moving.
“Isn’t it a snappy little thing,” observed Anne, twisting to avoid the teeth.
‘What are you going to do with it?” asked Frances sharply. “It’s got to be killed - look at
the damage they do. I s’ll take it home and let dadda or somebody kill it. I’m not going to let
it go.”
403 mots
D.H. LAWRENCE, ‘Second Best’ in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914).
IAA D08 – version n°6
He was surrounded on all sides by chasms of empty air. There was nowhere to hide, even if
one did not have to go on. He paused on the narrow neck and looked down. Soon, in a matter
of centuries, the sea would make an island of the castle. On the right hand was a lagoon,
troubled by the open sea; and on the left Ralph shuddered. The lagoon had protected them from the Pacific. And for some reason only
Jack had gone right down to the water on the other side. Now he saw the landsman’s view of
the swell and it seemed like the breathing of some stupendous creature. Slowly the waters
sank among the rocks, revealing pink tables of granite, strange growth of coral, polyp, and
weed. Down, down, the waters went, whispering like the wind among the heads of the forest.
There was one flat rock there, spread like a table, and the waters sucking down on the four
weedy sides made them seem like cliffs. Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out - the waters
rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar. There was no
sense of the passage of waves; only this minute-long fall and rise and fall.
Ralph turned away to the red cliff. They were waiting behind him in the long grass, waiting to
see what he would do. He noticed that the sweat in his palm was cool now; realized with
surprise that he did not really expect to meet any beast and didn’t know what he would do
about if he did.
He saw that he could climb the cliff but this was not necessary. The squareness of the rock
allowed a sort of plinth round it, so that to the right, over the lagoon, one could inch along a
ledge and turn the corner out of sight. It was easy going, and soon he was peering round the
rock.
Nothing but what you might expect: pink, tumbled boulders with guano layered on them like
icing; and a steep slope up to the shattered rocks that crowned the bastion.
A sound behind him made him turn. Jack was edging along the ledge.
369 mots
William GOLDING , Lord of the Flies (1954).
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IAA D08 – version n°7
“It is the first day of the summer holidays”, said Susan. “But the day is still rolled up. I will
not examine it until I step out on to the platform in the evening. I will not let myself even
smell it until I smell the cold green air off the fields. But already these are not school fields;
these are not school hedges; the men in these fields are doing real things; they fill carts with
real hay; and those are real cows, not school cows. But the carbolic smell of corridors and the
chalky smell of schoolrooms is still in my nostrils. The glazed, shiny look of matchboard is
still in my eyes. I must wait for fields and hedges, and woods and fields, and steep railway
cuttings, sprinkled with gorse bushes, and trucks in sidings, and tunnels and suburban gardens
with women hanging out washing, and then fields again and children swinging on gates, to
cover it over, to bury it deep, this school that I have hated.
I will not send my children to school nor spend a night all my life in London. Here in
this vast station everything echoes and booms hollowly. The light is like the yellow light
under an awning. Jinny lives here. Jinny takes her dog for walks on these pavements. People
here shoot through the streets silently. They look at nothing but shop-windows. Their heads
bob up and down all at about the same height. The streets are laced together with telegraph
wires. The houses are all glass, all festoons and glitter; now all front doors and lace curtains,
all pillars and white steps. But now I pass on, out of London again; the fields begin again; and
the houses, and women hanging washing, and trees and fields. London is now veiled, now
vanished, now crumbled, now fallen. The carbolic and the pitch-pine begin to lose their
savour. I smell corn and turnips. I undo a paper packet tied with a piece of white cotton. The
egg-shells slide into the cleft between my knees. Now we stop at station after station, rolling
out milk cans. Now women kiss each other and help with baskets. Now I will let myself lean
out of the window. The air rushes down my nose and throat – the cold air, the salt air with the
smell of turnip fields in it. And there is my father, with his back turned, talking to a farmer. I
tremble. I cry. There is my father in gaiters. There is my father.”
433 mots
Virginia WOOLF, The Waves (1931)
IAA D08 – version n°8
Donovan strolled beside her to the car, and said, ‘Well, it’s quite early, what shall we do? Of
course, we’ll follow the custom. You haven’t been up the kopje, have you? That’s where all
we boys and girls go, to look at the lights and hold hands.’ He was now light and careless
again; and they found the shabby but correct little car and drove away downtown, through the
slums and kaffir stores, until a low hill rose before them. They spiralled slowly up it; and near
the top there was a flat space, filled with parked cars, lightless and apparently deserted.
Donovan at once got out and led her to the edge of the flat space. For a moment Martha felt
herself carried away, for it was with a violent mingling of fear and delight that she struggled
with the sensation that she was back home, looking away over the darkened veld, under the
stars. But now the great hollow before her was scattered with light – it seemed as if a large
hand had flung down stars caught from the sweep of the Milky Way over her head, to mark
the streets and houses of the little town. At her feet rustled the veld grass, and the scent of the
violet tree swept across her face. But Donovan said, ‘and so here we are, we must admire the
lights and feel romantic.’
At once she sobered, and listened as he pointed out the compact blur of light which was
McGrath’s Hotel; an irregular dark space, surrounded by light, which was the park; and away
over the blank darkness that seemed to suffuse with an internal blue glow, to the sparkle
8
which was his own house, where the smart new suburb would soon rise from the veld grasses.
What a small town it was, seen thus from above! And its smallness defined in Martha’s mind
what had till then mazed and confused in streets, parks, suburbs, without limit or direction.
They were all here, her experiences of the last few days, shrunk to a neat pattern of light.
They were dismayingly shrunk and at once her mind tugged to soar away from Donovan and
from the town itself; but he kept pulling her down, pointing out this building and that, once
even gaining her willing attention by directing her gaze to a building that stood by itself, so
brightly lit that even from here she could make out the tiny black strokes which were the
pillars of the veranda.
Doris LESSING,
420 mots
Martha Quest (1964).
IAA D08 – version n°9
A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the
book for the driver. That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled
himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.
“You ain’t going to take him out now?” the driver asked.
“Sure,” the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.
There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and from safe
perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it.
Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as
furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him
out.
“Now, you red-eyed devil,” he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage
of Buck’s body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right
hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together, for the spring, hair
bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched
his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and
nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that
checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over,
fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and
did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet
and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the
ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A
dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply
about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked
with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the
nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this.
429 mots
Jack LONDON, The Call of the Wild (1903)
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