Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1994

Publication Title

Meta

Volume

39

Issue

3

First Page

453

Last Page

459

Abstract

Partant de la premisse selon laquelle toute traduction est necessairement une inter­ pretation, on examine la traduction de Wale Soyinka d'un texte yoruba de D. 0. Fagunwa et on discute du probleme de la liberte en traduction en commenr;ant par bien situer l' auteur et le texte dans leur contexte culture! et politique.

The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. (John Dryden, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1680)

Le traducteur n' est maftre de rien; ii est oblige de suivre partout son auteur, de se plier a toutes ces variations avec une souplesse infinie. (Batteux, De La Construction Oratoire, n.d.)

...the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring from its seed, or it will bear no flower - and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. (P. B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821)

The very essence of the art (of translation): The resurrection of an alien thing in a native body; not the dressing of it up in native clothes but the giving to it of native flesh and blood. (H. Belloc, "On Translation", The Taylorian Lecture, 1931)2

Comments

Tous droits réservés © Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1994

The original article can be found here:

URIhttp://id.erudit.org/iderudit/004194ar DOI 10.7202/004194ar

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