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Figure(s) du traducteur
Rédacteur du volume – Elżbieta Skibińska
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
Wrocław 2012
(Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis Nr 3389)

Table des matières

I. TRADUCTEUR (AU) FIGURÉ 

Yves Gambier, « Le traducteur défiguré? », 13

Representations of translators and interpreters in fiction often copy clichés on both professions.

Quite a number of novels and films today are referring to them by using stereotypes or negative opinions. In a way, they continue the long list of metaphors which have been created in the past to talk about translation and translators. However, the information and communication technology is changing the practices and therefore images of the work of mediation.

Michaël Mariaule, « La traduction en images et l’image du traducteur à travers les âges », 25

This article analyses the past figure of the translator through metaphorical representations of

translation. Indeed, from Ciceron onwards, translation, but also its various manifestations, has beenmore metaphorised than defined or explained. The first part of the analysis deals with positive as well as negative metaphors on translation and the translator, while the second part is more concerned with the metaphors that have been used to characterise, advocate or reject different types of translation.

Joanna Jakubowska-Cichoń, « Configuration traducteur – auteur : jeu sur deux lignes. Sur la Vengeance du traducteur de Brice Matthieussent », 41

The main subject of Brice Matthieussent’s novel Vengeance du traducteur [The Translator’s

Revenge] is the relations between the translator and the author of the original. These relations are hierarchical and are illustrated with valuating elements depending on the place within a vertical structure, where the bottom — symbolic translator’s area — is perceived negatively, while the top, “belonging” to the author, is perceived positively. The present article contains an analysis of those aspects of the novel (typographic, stylistic and plot-related) that are involved in the construction of the picture of “spatial,” axiologically-marked relations between the translator and the author. Through this we want to demonstrate that the stereotypical approach to the translator as a figure subordinated to the author is just a starting point for showing a dynamic figure, full of contradictions, under constant tension between depression and elation, re-creator and at the same time creator (of the translation).

Monika Grabowska,  « Le traducteur vu par son auteur », 51

The article is an attempt to answer the question of how the writer sees the work and role of the translator. The research tool was a survey comprising eight open questions which the present author presented to five Polish literary writers: Marek Krajewski, Olga Tokarczuk, Przemysław Wojcieszek, Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk and Zyta Rudzka. The article contains a synthesis of their replies to questions concerning the emotions generated by the fact they are translated, their vision of the translator’s work, its creative/reproductive nature, copyright on the translated text, responsibility for the success/failure of the translated work, the role of the author and the translator as intercultural mediator.

Jadwiga Cook,  « Figure de rêve ou comment les étudiants se figurent le traducteur », 65

In this article we try to answer the question how students of Romance languages and literature

see the translator’s profession. To this end, we have analysed 117 questionnaires in three groups: undergraduate students, MA students specialising in translation and students of a post-graduate course for translators of Romance languages. The analysis has enabled us to show the image of the translator among students at various stages of their education, the motivation behind their choice of such a career and whether this image changes as the respondents’ knowledge and professional experience expand.

Agata Rębkowska, « Traducteur polonais de dessins animés: une figure importante? », 77

Since the spectacular success of Shrek, full-length animated films have become increasingly popular in Poland. The success of these films depends to a large extent on the translators, who contribute to the rise or drop in the audience ratings of a given language version of a film. Unfortunately, the translators of animated films seem to go virtually unnoticed, a fact that can be seen in, for instance, a lack of articles in specialist periodicals. Therefore, it seems interesting to examine how the adult audiences of animated films shown in Polish cinemas see the translators of these films. A question arises whether adult viewers of animated films pay attention to the authors of their translations, and if so, how their work is perceived and what their position in the social hierarchy is. In order to answer these questions, the author will use the results of a survey carried out among the audiences of one of Wrocław cinemas as well as press articles and internet fora devoted to translations.

II. FIGURES (RE)CONSTRUITES

Magda Heydel, « La figure du traducteur dans les recherches traductologiques. Exploration », 91

In the analytical models proposed by the Translation Studies after the Cultural Turn of the 1990s, the figure of a translator as a key actor in the process of intercultural communication and a subject of culture creation, while becoming a central category, has undergone various re-definitions and re-conceptualizations. Placing the translator in the very centre of the analysis of translation and acknowledging his visibility both in the history of translations and the structure of texts, calls for rethinking of other categories in the discourse and for a new delimitation of the field of research for Translation Studies. In the present paper I compare two models of understanding of the figure and position of a translator as emerging from the works of Polish and English-language researchers, published in the 1990s and later, during the period of Cultural Turn in Translation Studies. One of these models, clearly visible in Polish research, is based on the binary opposition between the original and the translation, where the position of the translator is perceived as inferior to the one of the author. This results in an axiological and critical character of the description of the role he plays. What gains prominence are the differences between the two texts. They are inevitably treated as mistakes or imperfections the translator is blamed for. The other model I infer mainly from the work of Anglophone scholars leaves the area of purely textual analysis and looks at the figure of a translator in historical and biographical contexts, against the backdrop of his times and circumstances. Within this model translation is perceived descriptively as a creative process and not as a product to be assessed for some kind of idealized quality, so the translator is not charged with “infidelity” but seen as a decision making subject. The differences between the two models shed light on the paradigms they stem from as well as on the characteristics of the language of Translations Studies. But most of all they point to the opening or closing of further perspectives for research in translation. The aim of the present paper is to describe how the discourse of Translation Studies reveals its underlying assumptions and how the description of the figure and role of a translator informs the general analysis of translation as a cultural phenomenon.

Małgorzata Gaszyńska-Magiera, « De la (non)visibilité des traducteurs polonais de la littérature latino-américaine à l’époque du boom polonais », 107

Looking back, the Ibero-American literature boom is regarded as one of the most important literary phenomena towards the end of the communist period in Poland. The presence of Latin American prose modified considerably Polish literary culture: it changed readers’ expectations with regard to literary texts in general, influenced the sensibility of writers making their debuts at the turn of the 1980s and led to revisions of opinions in literary criticism. The number of translations presented to the readers at the time testifies to a huge translation effort without which these phenomena would not have occurred. That is why it seems justified to ask to what extent this effort was noticed. Using L. Venuti’s expression, we could wonder whether Polish translators of Ibero-American literature remained invisible.

The present attempt to answer this question is based on an analysis of strategies used by the most important publishers of Ibero-American prose in the boom period — i.e. Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy and Czytelnik as well as Wydawnictwo Literackie from Kraków — and of reviews published in the Polish press. The attitude of publishers and critics towards translators has influenced the way the translators are perceived by the readers — whether they become visible as intermediaries in intercultural exchange or whether they remain craftsmen hidden in the shadow. Few translators of Ibero-American literature have become public figures in Poland; the names of most of them have not been remembered

by the readers. What factors, therefore, played a decisive role in some of them remaining in the collective memory while others disappeared from it?

Maria Papadima, « Le retraducteur : un traducteur pas comme les autres », 121

The aim of this paper is to specify the characteristics of the retranslator as opposed to those of the translator. The term retranslation is used in the sense of a “new translation of a text in one or more than one languages”. The phenomenon of retranslation accompanies translation from its first steps; consequently translators and retranslators share the same long history. The patron saint of translators St Jeronimo, the first of retranslators himself with his work on the Bible, defined retranslator’s characteristics. A retranslator who takes over the translation of an already translated text will definitely question, criticize or praise the work of translators that preceded his/her own, asserting a place in the translators’ family. Selectively talkative he/she frequently furnishes his/her work with a peritext that allows us to get a glimpse of this peculiar writer with his/her complicated personality, who is the translator.

Marzena Chrobak, « Truchements de Normandie – essai de la reconstruction d’une figure », 131

For a historian of translation who cannot cross-examine a living translator, the basic method is a critical comparison of surviving sources. I use this method when trying to reconstruct a portrait of the so-called truchements de Normandie, French interpreters in the Brazilian Littoral in the 16th-century, who acted as linguistic and cultural intermediaries in trade with the Tupi Indians and in French settlement ventures. Although in the period in question the interpreter was an obligatory link in French-Brazilian contacts, 16th-century sources do not pay much attention to him. The little information that has survived comes mainly from accounts by people associated with an attempt, made in 1555, to start a French colony on an island in the Guanabara Bay, near today’s Rio de Janeiro: the head of the colony, Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, his lieutenant Nicolas Barré, the royal cosmographer André Thevet and a Protestant settler, Jean de Léry. This modest corpus is complemented by non-French accounts: by a Portugese Jesuit, José de Anchieta, who was engaged in missionary and political activity in the Guanabara Bay region in the 1560s, and a German cannoneer in Portuguese service, Hans Staden, who spent nine months as a captive of the Tupinamba Indians in 1554. The diversity of characters, interests and points of view of these authors makes it possible to paint a stereoscopic portrait of the eponymous truchements — competent, effective, acculturated, entangled in the defence of interests of various parties.

Małgorzata Tryuk, « Figure(s) de l’interprète/rôle(s) de l’interprète », 143

The aim of the article is to present selected aspects of the work of court interpreters appointed by the National Supreme Tribunal, which between 1946 and 1948 tried Nazi criminals in Poland. The interpreters’ role and tasks are examined in the light of the main concepts of the sociological theory developed by Pierre Bourdieu: concept of field, habitus and interpreting practice.

Natalia Paprocka, « Traducteurs polonais de la littérature de jeunesse française : pour un portrait collectif », 155

The aim of the article is to examine the figures of Polish translators of French literature for children and young people between 1900 and 2010, and to create their group portrait. To this end, the author has used a bibliometric method to analyse a bibliography of Polish translations of French books for children and young people, a bibliography selected by the author and encompassing ca 1500 titles. The author answers the following six questions: Who translates French literature for children and young people into Polish? In which periods did the most active translators in this field translate and how long did their translations “live”? What did they translate? For which publishers did they work? Translations of which translators are most often published? What is the profile of the most active translators of this literary domain?

Agnès Whitfield, « Méthode et pratique du portrait : sur les traces des traducteurs », 175

This article describes the method and practice of the portrait as a means of acquiring a more profound appreciation for the complex values, goals and work process of literary translators. Based on empirical research, the portrait method brings together biographical material on the translator, bibliographical data on his/her translations, writings, and other texts or interviews on translation, information on his/her professional implication and activities, and details concerning his/her work process and relations with writers and publishers. However, the over-arching goal of the portrait is not simply to provide a compilation of the translator’s achievements, but to make inferences, through a holistic approach to the data, about his/her underlying motivations and aspirations, and by so doing, to better understand the meaning he/she attributes to his/her work. Portraits of Émilie du Châtelet, Hannah Josephson and Patricia Claxton illustrate how the open-ended portrait methodology can enlarge our understanding of the translation process.

Elżbieta Skibińska, « Missionnaire, consacrant, passeur, héraut…? Figures du traducteur de littérature polonaise en France », 185

The article draws on bibliographical data concerning translation of Polish literature in France after 1945 and the results of a survey carried out among translators of Polish literature into French. The autor presents the changes in the number of translators between 1945-2009 as well as their « collective portrait. » The data concerning, among others, the age, sex, place of birth, education, mother tongues, situation of the translators of Polish literature in the French publishing world, illustrate the internal diversity of the community of translators, and their attitude to the task and work of the translators of Polish literature, as well as their various roles changing over time.

Justyna Łukaszewicz, « Traducteurs de théâtre – portrait de groupe », 203

The article presents the results of a questionnaire in which I asked theatrical translators about e.g. their education, number of plays translated, opinion about the specific nature of translating for theatre, attitude to adaptations, the biggest satisfactions and disappointments related to working on translations of theatre plays. The comparison and interpretation of answers sent by 25 translators, mostly living in France and translating into French, are complemented by the points of view of two Polish respondents as well as by information about the profile of theatrical translators in the United Kingdom and Italy, information from the latest scholarly publications devoted to this field of translation.

Regina Solová, « Les traducteurs assermentés polonais vus par eux-mêmes », 215

The article presents the results of a survey conducted among sworn translators of French concerning the education of translators and their attitude to their profession. A vast majority of the respondents did not have an opportunity to take part in special courses for (future) translators, which were rare in Poland before the 1990s, and they developed their professional competence themselves. Significantly, some self-taught translators are reluctant to share their knowledge with colleagues and students. They believe that their knowledge and skills are something they have worked to achieve on their own for many years. Many responses can be summed up by a description of the translator’s profession as craft (an expression used by one of the translators), in which experience is gained thanks to hard work on one’s own, work that is not well paid. The opinions presented in the survey may evolve with time, e.g. thanks to the adoption of the Act on the profession of sworn translators, which is speeding up the professionalisation of this occupation. 

III. TRADUCTEURS : FIGURES PARTICULIÈRES

Peter Schnyder, « André Gide, traducteur paradoxal », 229

The Nobel-prize laureate André Gide (1869–1951) was a somewhat “ paradoxical ” translator: he used translation in order to make a fresh start as a writer (narcissistic side), but also to make a book, an author, and a culture better known (altruistic side). He was capable of the greatest patience when interested in a text: in the same way, he was capable of abandoning it as soon as he lost interest in it. Translation was appealing to him in itself, as a challenge to the craft of writing. The attention he devoted to the translation of his own texts, especially into English and German, is a sign of his professional approach to the issue. Following up on some previous research, this paper analyses a peculiar “block”: while Gide allowed going as far as possible in the adequacy of the target-language to the source-language, the praxis shows that an invisible barrier of “proper usage” stopped him from allowing disturbing structures in the target-language. His second-thoughts as a translator are apparent in the translations he recovered after a period of oblivion: it sometimes occurs to him to encumber his first drafts, which were sometimes better. This paper tries to show how Hamlet turned the translator into a glosser: it is only twenty years later that he managed to complete a translation judged “impossible” in the 1920s. It was Maurice-Edgar Coindreau who stated that translators are “men with no rights, only obligations.” Gide was ready to take on this submission, as long as he could fix its conditions. A paradoxical translator…

Daniel Gagnon, Union des écrivaines et écrivains québécois, « Figures de l’auto-traducteur dans le contexte canadien-québécois », 237

This article examines briefly the representation of translation and translators in Canadian and Quebec literature generally from the mid-1940s to the works of such authors as Nicole Brossard, Jacques Poulin, Gail Scott and Francine Noël in the 1980s, before examining more particularly the case of authors including Nancy Huston, Robert Dickson and Agnès Whitfield who translate their own works between English and French. Detailed analysis of the writer’s own novels, The Marriageable Daughter and My Husband the Doctor, confirms the hypothesis that, in Canadian and Québécois contexts of self-translation, figures of the translator or translation process tend to emphasize writerly and creative dimensions.

Joanna Górnikiewicz, « Figures des premiers traducteurs polonais de Proust », 247

Translating Proust’s works is not easy… Undoubtedly anyone who has dared to tackle the original will confirm this opinion. In the article, the author presents some portraits of those who were the first people in Poland to have taken on the challenge and answers the question when and in what circumstances the most famous of Proust’s works, In Search of Lost Time, was translated for the first time.

Tania Collani, « Tous les masques du traducteur : l’exemple d’Aldo Camerino » 259

Beginning from the 1940s, Aldo Camerino (1901–1966), a Venetian writer and literary critic, translated into Italian many literary works from French, English and Spanish. In a strongly liberticidal period (due to Mussolini’s regime, racial laws and WWII), the emerging “industry of translation” had to struggle to publish certain literary works, and authors/translators were often disguised under aliases in order to escape the censorship’s watchful eye. Although at the time often invisible behind his different masks, Aldo Camerino comes across today as a figure of a courageous and discreet translator and scholar.

Alfred Strasser, « Karl Dedecius – traducteur et médiateur entre la Pologne et l’Allemagne », 269

Karl Dedecius is the most important translator of Polish poetry into German of our time. He was born in 1921 in Łódź to German parents. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he was incorporated in the German Wehrmacht and eventually became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union. During this time, he taught himself Russian and also translated poems by Lermontov and other Russian poets. In 1949 he came back to Germany, first to Weimar in GDR and two years later to Frankfurt in GFR. In his free time, Dedecius translated Polish poetry into German. In 1959 the first anthology Lesson of Silence was published. After this, many other translations of Polish literature into German followed. As Dedecius was making a name for himself as a translator, he was commissioned to found a Polish-German research institute. By making Polish culture known in Germany Dedecius certainly contributed to better relations between Poland and Germany. His essay On Translating: Theory and Practice can be considered as a handbook for translation. In this book he relates the history of translation theory from antiquity until today and other theoretical questions, but first of all, he gives advice on how to make a good translation.

Enrico Monti, « Hofstadter et les paradoxes de la traduction », 279

Douglas Hofstadter (born in 1945) is a peculiar scholar: a Pulitzer-prize winner and a specialist in cognitive science, he is nevertheless quite fond of translation, to the point of practicing (and studying) it in several publications since 1997. Our essay focuses on his latest work in this field, That Mad Ache / Translator, Trader (2009). It is a double book, with two covers and two reading directions: on the one hand, readers will find Hofstadter’s retranslation of Françoise Sagan’s 1965 novel La Chamade (1965); on the other hand, turning their book, they will be faced with a long essay on the translation of that book into English. It is truly a double book, with theory and practice of translation going one towards the other, highlighting all along the role of the translator, too often underestimated in the Anglo-American publishing scene. Analyzing such a peculiar book, we should try to sketch an unconventional figure of a (re)translator and translation scholar: he is fascinated by the paradoxes and possibilities of translation, and his fame, together with his excellent vulgarization skills, manage to renew the charms of translation and share them with a larger audience.

Tatiana Musinova, « Voyage au bout de la nuit : le parcours du traducteur dans l’adaptation de l’œuvre célinienne en russe. Sur l’exemple de la traduction réalisée par Yuriy Korneev, 1994 », 291

Translation into a foreign language of the work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the author known as really difficult to translate, is always considered as a milestone in the evolution of contemporary translation. In our article, the question we ask is how foreign translators achieve to render in other languages this Celinian French so vivid, violent, and horrifying by its rudeness and vulgarity. Searching an answer to this question, we have tried, using the example of the Russian translation of Céline’s first novel Journey to the End of the Night performed by Yuriy Korneev, to describe the obstacle course that a translator carries out in order to make an adaptation of the original text. Working over Céline’s masterpiece, a translator begins his work by studying the original style of the author in order to understand the nature of work on the language and catch on the effect muchsought by Céline. The restitution of the orality effect is a fundamental part of the stylistic work gone by the translator. Thus, in our article we draw on the major difficulties of translation that are: the “little music” of Céline formed on the basis of the choice of words to play on phonemes, the sounds and the rhythm of the sentence and onomatopoeia; the semantic matching between the two languages, using the same images and ideas association; transposition of regional and popular accents; translation of slang, scatological and offensive terms; spatial and temporal dissimilarities with the culture of today; plays on words and allusions, etc… Thus the translator working on a Céline’s novel is constantly coping with many difficulties that are sometimes really impossible to overcome, so that the translation is “swaying,” becoming sometimes too soft and neutral, sometimes too brutal and repugnant.

IV. TRADUCTEURS AU THÉÂTRE

Beata Baczyńska, « Traducteur au théâtre: Juliusz Słowacki et son Książę Niezłomny (Z Calderona de la Barca) », 305

The article presents the history of the reception of El príncipe constante by Pedro Calderón de la Barca as translated by Juliusz Słowacki in Poland in connection with the form which both names — of the author and the translator — took on the poster, beginning with the premiere at Teatr Krakowski in 1874 and ending with the production of The Constant Prince directed by Jerzy Grotowski. The author draws on the opinion of Polish theatre scholars, who — on the basis of recent works devoted to the analysis of the play’s translation — are inclined to treat Słowacki’s Constant Prince as a “performative experience of […] acting” turned into a “theatrical scenario.”

Constantin Bobas, « Mises en traduction théâtrale : Valère Novarina – Dimitris Dimitriadis, contextualisations multiples d’un événement scénique », 319

In terms of theatre, translation involves not only linguistic transfers on the level of discourse signification, but also a transfer of functions in relation to other signs of theatre action. Theatre translation as a component of a whole dramatic process has to consider among other criteria the author’s (playwright) basic position which leads the speech action to the stage. In this context, the V. Novarina and D. Dimitriadis’ approaches present opposite points of view, with different cultural references, corresponding to a contemporary theatrical discourse which could contribute to an important extent, to the translator’s work.

Aleksandra Chrupała, Joanna Warmuzińska-Rogóż, « Femmes, joual et figure du traducteur : version polonaise d’Albertine, en cinq temps de Michel Tremblay », 331

The aim of the present article is to present the problem of translating into Polish the joual, which is one of the important elements of the oeuvre of the Quebecois playwright Michel Tremblay. Using the play Albertine, in five times and its Polish translation by Jacek Mulczyk-Skarżyński, the present authors demonstrate both the specific nature of the original text and the characteristic features of the joual as well as the strategies applied by the translator. Albertine, in five times is a unique combination of the world of female characters and joual, inextricably connected with them, which means that such an important element of the text should be rendered in a translation with particular care. In the analysed corpus, the translator acquits himself well on the whole, although the technique he chose (compensation, mainly on the lexical level) brutalises the target language text. Of significance is the translator’s young age, which is also revealed in the lexical items he chose. Thus the translation itself shows the translator’s influence on the final text.

V. FIGURES INATTENDUES

Maryla Laurent, « Le mystère irréductible de l’œuvre. Quand la figure du traducteur se démultiplie », 347

At the age of computers and the development of communication science, the practice of literary translation benefits from significant support (facilitated consulting of specialists and reference books, correcting assistance, division of labor, simultaneous editing within a short time in multiple languages, etc.). Nevertheless, progress carries perils: the speed and ease of communication makes us sometimes forget that beyond the information strictly speaking, a literary work finds its quality in specific depths. These require time to be seen and rendered: the time to identify metainformative pointers putting statements in perspective, and by the way assigning to pieces of information different functions; time to restore in the target text underlying signifying networks, and so on. Polycephalic translations as increasingly practiced in the “Blockbusters” publications are a worrying editorial practice. If they were to be used for great literature translation, it is feared that the result would be similar to the French version of the work of Bruno Schulz. The Cinnamon Shops, whose French version is a collection of the work by three translators, is in French very far from being the literary marvel that Polish readers can enjoy.

Kaja Gostkowska, « Figure invisible ou le traducteur sans le savoir. Sur un aspect du discours rapporté dans les textes biomédicaux français et polonais », 361

In biomedical engineering, both in the Polish- and French-speaking world, numerous scientific papers are published every year: articles in specialist periodicals, doctoral theses, monographs, academic textbooks, etc. Even a perfunctory analysis of titles and names of authors indicates that these are not translations. At the same time, specialists constantly draw on works written in English. They also refer to them in their publications, thus doing the work of translators (usually unconsciously). The aim of the article is to show how specialists refer to foreign-language works and what linguistic means they use when quoting research results described in a foreign language.

Witold Ucherek, « Le traducteur dans le dictionnaire bilingue », 373

The author analyses fragments of entries devoted to the preposition za in its spatial use found in fourteen contemporary Polish-French general dictionaries of different sizes. A general conclusion from the analysis is that, due to significant gaps in the inventory of equivalents and in exemplification, none of the fragments dealing with za makes it possible for native speakers of Polish to select the correct French equivalent of the preposition za in its spatial meaning. That is why the author presents his own proposal of a relevant entry dealing with za prepared with Polish language users in mind.

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