Translation and the transparency of French
2012; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14781700.2012.663604
ISSN1751-2921
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoAbstract The history of translation is inextricably linked to the history of reflection on language, both language in the abstract and languages in their local particularity. An influential account of French, current since the seventeenth century, claims that it is a "transparent" translating machine, superior to other languages in its ability to render all meanings in a noiseless transaction. This essay examines the responses of three postmodern/postcolonial writers in French, Édouard Glissant, Abdelkebir Khatibi and Jacques Derrida. All three critique the neoclassical account of French not by denying the centrality of translation to French, but by offering a new understanding of translation as an inherent component of language. For each, translation is key to a utopic, emancipatory project. Ultimately, their revisionary approach to the French language enables us to return to the texts of the past and read them anew in an ongoing dialogue. Keywords: Édouard GlissantAbdelkebir KhatibiJacques Derridaneoclassicist language ideologypostcolonialism and translationhistory of the French language Notes 1. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2. For a recent critique of Rivarol, see Meschonnic (1997 Meschonnic, Henri. 1997. De la langue française: Essai sur une clarté obscure, Paris: Hachette. [Google Scholar]). 3. Derrida's discussion of the linguistic homelessness of Algerian Jews in Le Monolinguisme de l'autre is accompanied by an extended footnote sketching out a potential future study of twentieth-century Jews, "La langue maternelle et la langue de l'autre" (Derrida 1996 Derrida , Jacques . 1996 . Le monolinguisme de l'autre, ou, La prothèse d'origine . Paris : Galilée . [Google Scholar], 91n–114n). The three exemplary figures examined, Franz Rosenzweig, Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Lévinas, represent different modes of linguistic belonging, different relationships to the language of the "host" country. As Derrida notes, following Rosenzweig's analysis of potential linguistic Jewish homelands, the Algerian Jewish community was "expropriated" from all three (99n–100n). 4. For writers' perspectives, see Huston (1999 Huston, Nancy. 1999. Nord perdu, suivi de douze France, Arles: Actes Sud. [Google Scholar]) and a number of the figures surveyed in de Courtivron (2003); for a psycholinguistic approach to the difference between bilingual fluency and interpreting ability, see Hamers and Blanc (1989 Hamers , Josiane F ., and Michel H.A. Blanc . 1989 . Bilinguality and bilingualism . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [Google Scholar], especially 244–54). 5. Benjamin's comment is similar in certain ways to Glissant's: "Translation attains its full meaning in the realization that every evolved language (with the exception of the word of God) can be considered as a translation of all the others" (Benjamin 1978 Benjamin , Walter . 1978 . On language as such and on the language of man . In Reflections: Essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings . Trans. Edmund Jephcott , 314 – 32 . New York : Schocken Books . [Google Scholar], 325). Glissant's insistence on the plural, however, reflects a conscious avoidance of formulations that attenuate the emphasis on heterogeneity, diversity, and relationality (Glissant 1996 Glissant Édouard. . 1996 . Introduction à une poétique du divers . Paris : Gallimard . [Google Scholar] , 20, 42). Thus for Glissant there is no "language as such" but rather "all the languages in the world". 6. I have argued elsewhere (Hayes 2007 Hayes, Julie Candler. 2007. Unconditional translation: Derrida's enlightenment-to-come. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40(3): 443–55. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that translation takes on much of the work of Derrida's political preoccupations of the 1990s and beyond, up to his final work, Voyous. 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