Mediating Medieval Mystical Literature in Interwar Belgium: The Histoire Croisée of Hadewijch’s ‘First Vision’ in the Periodical Hermès (1933–39)

In a context in which various artistic groups resorted to periodicals to stage their public appearance, the editors of the Brussels-based magazine Hermès: Revue trimestrielle d'études mystiques et poétiques (1933–39) mobilized Middle Dutch mystical literature to carve out a space for themselves in the cultural scene of interwar Belgium. Drawing on methods and concepts of transfer studies and research into ethos construction, this article analyses the transfer strategies underpinning the publication of the French translation of the ‘First Vision’ of the Middle Dutch mystic Hadewijch (c. 1240), with which Hermès programmatically opened its inaugural volume. The analysis uncovers a complex histoire croisée which involved confrontations, both collaborative and conflictual, between Hermès and two very different groups of cultural actors: the circle of Brussels Surrealists, with whom the editors of Hermès shared a history, and the Catholic philologists of the Ruusbroecgenootschap [Ruusbroec Society], who equally sought to disseminate Middle Dutch mystical texts to a wider public, albeit with very different goals.

Specters of Translation: Jacques Derrida, Safaa Fathy, and Nom à la mer

This essay explores the film collaborations of Franco-Egyptian filmmaker Safaa Fathy and Franco-Maghrebian philosopher Jacques Derrida, offering an extended reading of their court-métrage, Nom à la mer (2004)—a film about language, exile, and loss, made by a pair of wanderers both keenly interested in the spectral effects of translation as they haunt the filmic medium. Nom à la mer is a cinematic rendering of the French translation of Fathy's original, Arabic-language poem, recited by Derrida in voice-off as Fathy's camera focuses on a single, highly overdetermined site in a small Andalusian town. This essay reads the film as both an artefact of the pathos of translation and as a scene of valediction, played out by both collaborators on grounds simultaneously intimate and historical.

TRADUCTION FRANÇAISE DE L’ECHELLE THINKING ABOUT LIFE EXPERIENCE (TALE) - Mesure des fonctions de la mémoire autobiographique

Résumé :Le présent article propose la traduction en langue française d’une échelle d’investigation des fonctions de la mémoire autobiographique, disponible en langue anglaise, et que ses concepteurs ont intitulé TALE – Thinking About Life Experience. Ne disposant pas de version française de ce questionnaire, nous avons donc procédé à une traduction selon une méthode de rétro-traduction (back-translation).Nous proposons la divulgation de cette traduction française ainsi que la présentation de résultats issus de l’analyse statistique sur un échantillon de participants français (N=126).Mots-clés : Mémoire autobiographique, Fonction, Échelle, FrançaisFRENCH TRANSLATION OF THE THINKING ABOUT LIFE EXPERIENCE SCALE (TALE)Autobiographical memory functions assessmentAbstract :This article proposes a French translation of an investigation scale of the autobiographical memory functions, available in English, entitled TALE - Thinking About Life Experience. Since we did not have a French version of this questionnaire, we therefore carried out a translation using a back-translation method.We propose the disclosure of this French translation as well as the presentation of results from the statistical analysis on a sample of French participants (N = 126).Keywords : Autobiographical memory, Function, Scale, French

Strategien zur Vermeidung von V-S im Französischen

French is a heavily postdetermining iambic language. This also implies that, in contrast to German, the subject-predicate sequence is dominant even though this is not a relationship of determination in the strict sense of the term. Despite the predominant iambic intonation pattern, postposition of rhematic subjects is only possible under certain conditions in modern French. This contrasts with Italian or Spanish in cases like Domani viene Maria/Mañana llega María. A French equivalent Demain vient Marie instead of Marie vient demain or also Demain Marie vient is no longer common today for reasons to be discussed. The central question to be answered is “By which means does French resolve the conflict of linearisation arising from the tension between the dominant rising intonation pattern and the ‘phobia’ of subject inversion even when the subject is rhematic?” A comparative analysis of translations is a viable method for discovering how French marks rhematic subjects when simple postposition is not a possible strategy. This approach shows how constructions with the subject in postposition, for instance in Italian, are rendered in their French translation.

Specific features of Russian language varieties in “Zuleikha opens her eyes” by G. Yakhina and their translation into French and Dutch

This research deals with the specific features of socially based varieties of the Russian language, namely prostorechie and prison jargon, used in Zuleikha Opens her Eyes by G. Yakhina and their translation into French and Dutch. The identified translation techniques included sociolinguistic equivalence, partial equivalence, standardization, calque and adaptation. The analysis revealed that the dominant strategy used to convey the elements of sub-standard Russian varieties into English is standardization. However, its use varies subject to the combination between the source language variety and the target language. In the Dutch translation, this technique is employed to translate 52% of argotic lexical units and 44% of prostorechie elements, i.e. about half of all the cases. This dominance is not so strong in the French translation — 11% of argotic lexical units and 42% of prostorechie elements, i.e. about more than a quarter of all the cases. As for argotic lexical units, translators recur to different techniques. In 41% of cases, both of them opt for partial equivalence, but argotic equivalents abound in French (47%), contrary to Dutch (6%). Standardization is used for 11% of cases in French, and for 53% of cases in Dutch. The translator into Dutch recurs to argotic lexical units in order to render 10% of prostorechie elements. Calques are used to render language errors, and rimes are conveyed through adaptation.

Interpretation of the Road and Associated Realities in the First French Translation of Mikhail Lermontov’s Novel “A Hero of Our Time”

The anthropological turn in humanitarian thought stimulated the interest in studying the linguistic personality and individual translator's style. The paper analyses that of A. A. Stolypin (Mongo), a well-known person to the specialists of Russian literature due to his relationships with Mikhail Lermontov, a famous Russian poet. The publication of Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” became at the time a significant event in the emerging literary life of Russia marked by Western aesthetic influences. The first French translation of this emblematic novel appeared in 1843 in the Parisian newspaper “La Démocratie pacifique: journal des intérêts des gouvernements et des peuples”. It was made by mentioned above A. A. Stolypin (Mongo), the poet’s close relative and comrade-in-arms who had reasons to leave Russia for some time. The philologists have long known about this translation, but it never became the subject of a close analysis. Filling the existing gap, we aim to introduce this notable translation into scientific circulation. The present paper is part of our research project which is based on Bakhtin’s theory of the literary chronotope, since the road chronotope is a crucial component of Lermontov’s novel. Coupled with the concept of “thematic grid” by I. V. Arnold, it forms the theoretical framework for the current study. To enhance its statistical validity, we trans-formed the Russian edition of the novel and Stolypin’s French translation into digital research corpus. Through the lens of the above theoretical tools, we view the most frequent lexical units denominating the specific road realities, including those of the North Caucasus, as they are key thematic characteristics of time and place. Therefore, their interpretation may serve to evaluate the reproducibility of the “thematic grid” and reveal the nature of the most consistently repeated trаnslator’s solutions. An additional contextual analysis using the reverse translation completes the data and serves for a more detailed and contrasted illustration of the translator’s style. Our analysis reveals the existence of a certain “blurring” of the “thematic grid” in the target text generally due to the use of specification of meaning, hyponyms instead of terms with a broader meaning. But this feature of Stolypin’s translator style does not hinder the adequate recreation of the source text and allows the reader to feel the originality of the time and space in which the events, closely related to the Caucasus Mountain region, developed.

Interactivité, co-construction, quand l’outil numérique dé-hiérarchise le rapport entre enseignant-e-s et étudiant-e-s en langue

As a teacher-researcher at ISIT, I had to maintain pedagogical continuity with my colleagues from the very first day of the lockdown, and to ensure all my lectures and online workshops, with some time adjustments and extra breaks for long courses. I teach undergraduate Chinese to French translation to French and Chinese students, in mixed groups of speakers of both languages. I also teach general and comparative terminology at graduate level. In this article, I only deal with the devices implemented in my undergraduate general Chinese to French translation courses. This new teaching format has given me the opportunity to test tools in both synchronous and asynchronous formats. I would like to present two of these tools and the features that interested me most for synchronous use in Chinese to French translation classes.