Abstracts
Abstract
This is a participant-interpreter study of how issues of loyalty, ethics and ideology condition the action of a literary translator. A case-study is presented of the author’s socio-ethical dilemmas and decisions while translating Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian literature into English during the 1990s. This aims both to contribute to the socio-cultural historiography of that period and to illustrate how a literary translator might perform in settings of acute socio-cultural conflict. The case-study observations are then used to explore the nature of the literary translator as a textual and social actor. The “constrained autonomy” of the literary translator is seen as having several key implications. Among these are: that all translating acts have ethical and socio-political repercussions; that partiality informed by awareness of the demands of the wider social web may often be a more appropriate stance than neutrality; that the power structures within which the literary translator acts are more important than target language or translating strategy per se in determining source-culture representation, and that time/workload/chance factors may also play a role here; and that confronting Derrida’s indécidable is a defining feature of translator autonomy.
Keywords/Mots-clés:
- literature,
- ideology,
- ethics,
- deconstruction,
- conflict
Résumé
Cet article examine, du point de vue participant-interprète, comment les questions de loyauté, d’éthique et d’idéologie conditionnent l’action d’un traducteur littéraire. On y présente une étude de cas des dilemmes et décisions socio-éthiques de l’auteur lorsqu’il traduisait la littérature bosnienne, croate et serbe en anglais pendant les années 1990. Celle-ci vise à contribuer à l’historiographie socioculturelle de la période autant qu’à illustrer comment un traducteur littéraire pourrait agir dans un milieu de conflit socioculturel aigu. Ensuite les observations fournies par l’étude de cas sont utilisées pour explorer les caractéristiques du traducteur littéraire comme acteur textuel et social. On y voit plusieurs implications clés qui résultent de « l’autonomie contrainte » du traducteur littéraire. Celles-ci comprennent les considérations suivantes : chaque acte de traduction a des répercussions éthiques et sociopolitiques ; une partialité basée sur la conscience des exigences de la toile sociale élargie est souvent plus convenable que la neutralité ; les structures de pouvoir dans lesquelles le traducteur littéraire agit valent souvent plus que la langue cible ou la stratégie de traduction en soi pour déterminer les représentations de la culture source ; les facteurs de temps, de charge de travail et de hasard pourraient aussi y jouer un rôle ; et le besoin de faire face à l’indécidabilité de Derrida est une caractéristique qui définit l’autonomie du traducteur.
Appendices
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