Retranslation as Re-accentuation
On the Epistemology and Poetics of Retranslation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70596/cts182Keywords:
epistemology, poetics, retranslation theory, dialogismAbstract
In this paper, we try to answer the often repeated call for more theory-building on retranslation, by discussing the shortcomings of the still dominant ‘retranslation hypothesis’, and some of the problematic received ideas associated with it, regarding retranslations’ novelty, their difference as compared to first or earlier translations, and the ageing of translations as opposed to originals (Section 1). Bringing together the topical issues of difference and historical time, we then discuss an epistemology of change in retranslation, based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of reaccentuation, in which text and context come together (Section 2). The final part of this paper (Section 3) proposes three possible avenues toward a poetics of retranslation, which address each of the three misleading ideas examined in Section 1, revisiting these in the light of the epistemology of change discussed in Section 2. From the examples given, of Dutch and French translations of Laclos, Joyce and O’Brien, emerges a poetics of retranslation that we shall describe as a re-dialogising, re-complexifying, palimpsestic re-accentuation, that brings change regarding how works of literature are known in the target context.References
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