Toward a Translation Criticism

by Berman, Antoine

• ISBN13: 9781606350096
• ISBN10: 1606350099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-15
• Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr

Summary

Franoise Massardier-Kenney's translation of Antoine Bermans Toward a Translation Criticism makes available for the first time in the English-speaking world one of the twentieth century's foundational texts in translation studies. Berman's book, published posthumously in France, develops an original concept of "criticism of translation" and a methodology to anchor the practice of this criticism. He demonstrates how the work of translation is a critical process as well as a creative one. Moving away from nonsystematic evaluative approaches that study the cultural and literary systems into which the translations are inserted, Berman applies the notion of ethics he developed in his earlier works, calling for a translation that is nonethnocentric and stipulating that the creativity required by translation be focused on the re-creation of the original in the other language without being overdetermined by the personal poetics of the writer-translator. Berman achieves a rare combination of hermeneutic and stylistic analysis, of commentary on the original and analysis of its translations, giving the reader access both "to the language of the original-to the way in which poetry and thought are deployed-and to the actual work of translation."

Author Biography

Antoine Berman (1942-1991) was the author of well-known works on translation (La Traduction et la lettre ou l'auberge du lointain, L'Epreuve de I'tranger [The Experience of the Foreign], Culture et traduction dans I'Allemagne romantique, Pour une critique des traductions, L'ge de la traduction). He was the coeditor of Les tours de Babel with poet and translator Henri Meschonnic and the first director of the Collge International de Philosophic founded by Jacques Derrida and others. Franoise Massardier-Kenney is professor of French and Director of the Institute for Applied Linguistics at Kent State University.

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction	p. vii
French Editor's Note	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
The Project of a "Productive" Criticism	p. 23
The Concept of Translation Criticism
The Different Kinds of Translation Analysis
Henri Meschonnic's Engagé Analyses
Descriptive Socio-critical Analyses (Toury, Brisset)
Toward a Method
Translation Reading and Rereading
The Readings of the Original
In Search of the Translator
The Translating Position
The Translation Project
The Horizon of the Translator
The Analysis of the Translation
Forms of the Analysis
The Confrontation
The Style of the Confrontation
The Foundation of the Evaluation
The Reception of the Translation
Productive Criticism
John Donne, Translations, and Retranslations	p. 81
The Translators
The Book and Its Translation Horizon
The Translation Project
A Very Selective Anthology
A Poetic Anthology
A "French Donne"
An Archaizing Version
Critical Examination of the Project
The Poetic Version
The "French Donne"
Donne and the English Poetic Domain
"Sapho to Philaenis"
"Going to Bed"
Octavio Paz: "Antes de acostarse"
August Morel: "De sa maistresse allant au lict"
A New Translation of Donne in French
Toward Retranslations of Donne
Prose Is the Other of Poetry
About the Reception of the Denis and Fuzier Translation of 1962	p. 201
A Globally Positive Reception with "Some Reservations"
Jean Grosjean's Approval
The Illusion of Ignorance
The Illusion of Archaism
The Illusion of Pure Poetry
The Absence of Criticism of the Project
The Translation Horizon of the 1960s
Mallarmé, Valéry, and the Poetic Horizon of the 1960s
Works Cited	p. 227
Index	p. 239
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