Practical translation manual

Presentation

"Pratique du traduire" is the title of a seminar that follows on from the "Théorie" and "Critique du Traduire" seminars. The radical distinction between the three is obviously partly factitious, but it was necessary both to name each of these seminars and to underline a kind of (desired and desirable) progression in the learning of the translator-translator's craft, once it had been admitted that this craft required training: first, to familiarize oneself with the problematic (we don't translate a language, but literature into language; translated literature must retain its characteristics in French, we're not here to produce good, fluid French), then to learn to read translated texts as translated texts (something critics almost never do), finally, on the basis of existing translations, to write.

In all cases, and this is the most confusing aspect of the method practiced at Inalco and the CNL's School of Literary Translation, we'll be working on various languages, regardless of the learners' knowledge. You don't need to know every language to be able to read and correct (modestly) a translated text. It is necessary and sufficient to treat it as a translated text, whatever the translator's choices may have been, even if his aim - alas all too often still - was to erase or erase the act of translating.

This book, or manual, is the result of a translators' posture, i.e. the outcome of cross-reflections by teaching translators on the one hand, and on the other, the desire to make seminar participants, in turn, translators.

These reflections on practices (which the literary fields embraced can make very heterogeneous) have not led us to propose a catalog of answers, tips and tricks or a toolbox. It's a series of questions raised by the practice of texts (the translator is, along with the author, the only one who knows the book word for word), designed to sharpen an eye, an attitude. The future translator will therefore be called upon to develop a similar approach based on collective inquiry. Nothing would be further from our thinking than to imagine arriving at a one-size-fits-all solution. But we also refuse to infer that everything is relative, that everything is equivalent, that all solutions are equal. Acceptable solutions are those dictated by the text to be translated.

Author and writer

Pauline Fournier is a lecturer in Slovenian at Inalco, where she has been teaching since 2011, having defended her PhD in Slovenian language and literature in 2009 under the supervision of Antonia Bernard. A member of CREE and associate member of Cerlom, her research focuses on literature and translation.

Patrick Maurus, agrégé de Lettres modernes, PhD in French literature (popular novel) and Korean literature (modern poetry and nationalism), is currently professor at Inalco, translator, and director of the Center for Independent Research on the Koreas and the journal Tangun.

191 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 27/09/2019
ISBN: 9782858313297