Simplification et poétique de la retraduction : Laclos, Joyce

Abstract

In translation studies, the notion of “simplification” is as capricious as it is frequent. This article explores its different meanings, in subfields ranging from conversation analysis, adaptation and corpus studies to literary translation. In particular, it seeks ways to conceptualise what can be simplified and how this can be done specifically in literary translation. The descriptive model thus obtained consists of a limited set of S-variables (concerning what can be simplified) and T-variables (how translations can simplify what is simplified), as well as their counterparts by which literary translators can also not simplify complexities contained in the source text. The second part of the article explores the hypothesis that retranslations (i.e., new translations of a work that had been previously translated into the target context) bring precisely that counterpart to simplification occurring in existing translations. Our analyses from the Dutch translations of Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses and the Dutch and French translations of Joyce’s Dubliners indeed show how the retranslations examined re-complexify what had been simplified in earlier translations. In that respect, the proposed descriptive model may serve as a hypothetical way out of the quandary of the retranslation hypothesis and its emphasis on the purported yet indeterminate “closeness” of retranslations to the source text.