Mardi 8 octobre 2024 18h salle 126 Site Saint-Charles
Douglas Robinson (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen) : Heteronymous Narratoriality: The Translator (as Narrator) as Somebody Else
The interesting begged question in discussions of the translator as narrator is whose narrative is it? The obvious assumption, of course, once we’ve questioned the conventional assumption that it is the source author’s, is that it’s the translator’s: the translator renarrativizes the source text mentally by way of beginning to imagine it as the target text, and then renarrates it in translating it for the target reader. But who is “the translator”? Is s/he, are they, one person or many? This paper will explore translatorial narratoriality in terms of heteronyms, Fernando Pessoa’s term for fully characterized “pseudonyms,” first for traditional translation: (a) the source author as the translator’s heteronym, (b) the translator as the source author’s heteronym, (c) the translating self as the translator’s narratorial heteronym, and (d) the target reader and (e) the source reader as the translator’s lectorial heteronyms. But second, in experimental translations, there are (f … n) any number of other heteronyms, such as the editor, the critic, and the publisher as the translator’s heteronyms.
Keywords: translator narratoriality, heteronym, source author, target and source readers, editor, critic