Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology

208 Pages·2012·7.963 MB·English

by  Clive Scott

Translating the Perception of Text
Literary Translation and Phenomenology
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edITORIaL BOaRd
Chairman
Professor Colin davis, Royal Holloway, University of London
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of exeter (French)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor anne Fuchs, University of St andrews (german)
Professor Paul garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex (english)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, new College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford (Italian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Suzanne Raitt, William and Mary College, Virginia (english)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, The Queen’s College, Oxford (german)
Professor david Shepherd, Keele University (Russian)
Professor Michael Sheringham, all Souls College, Oxford (French)
Professor alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor david Treece, King’s College London (Portuguese)
Managing Editor
dr graham nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK

[email protected]
www.legenda.mhra.org.uk

Translating the Perception of Text
Literary Translation and Phenomenology
❖
Clive Scott
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2012
First published 2012
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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© Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2012
ISBN 9-781-907975-35-6(hbk)
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Contents
❖
Acknowledgements viii
A Note on the Text ix
List of Illustrations x
Preface: A Brief Declaration xi
Introduction 1
Part I: Merleau-Ponty’s PhenoMenology of language
1 Merleau-Ponty: language, Painting and translation 26
Part II: lIterary translatIon as PhenoMenology
2 overwriting and the overwritten text 62
3 listening and speaking: sounds 90
4 listening and speaking: rhythm 111
5 Writing and speaking 133
6 translating the time and space of languages 154
Conclusion 178
Bibliography 185
Index 193
ACKnoWLeDGeMents
❖
I would like to express my gratitude to Éditions gallimard for permission to
reproduce Jean-luc Moreau’s translation (1993) of rilke ‘Der Panther’ and Paul
Éluard’s ‘georges Braque’ (Capitale de la douleur, 1926), and to Éditions Denoël for
Blaise Cendrars’s ‘Journal’ (Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, 1919).
I would also like to thank most warmly graham nelson, Managing editor at
legenda, for his unstinting help, and for making the publication of this book such
a pleasurable and edifying experience; and susan Wharton for her wonderfully
vigilant and sympathetic editing.
c. s., norwich, December 2011
A note on tHe teXt
❖
the use of the acronyms st, tt, sl, tl, for ‘source text’, ‘target text’, ‘source
language’, ‘target language’ respectively, may strike some readers, to begin with, as
rebarbative. I would defend the terms themselves (‘source text’, ‘target text’, etc.) on
the grounds that they are standard currency in the literature of translation studies,
and that they avoid the ambiguities and unwanted implications of alternatives such
as ‘original’, ‘translation’, ‘translated text’, ‘language of the original’. I would defend
the use of acronyms both because, again, they are standard practice in the field,
and because, once accustomed to them, the eye instantly identifies them, without
their repetition becoming cumbersome. from time to time in the text, readers are
reminded of the keys to the acronyms.
It has not always been possible, in the printing of the translations, exactly to
reproduce the typefaces used in the typescript. however, the identifications of
typefaces in accompanying textual argument have been left in their original form.