Traduire et retraduire l’autobiographie

Abstract

Our paper is a contribution to the analysis of the translation and retranslation of autobiographies from French into Romanian (Simone de Beauvoir, Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, Marguerite Yourcenar, Souvenirs pieux). We will focus on the implications that the act of translating has on the autobiographical pact. Translation strategies, especially those that affect subjective units (Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni’s subjectivèmes) wil be thoroughly analysed, with a view to see at what point the translator’s voice and subjectivity recreate rather than render a style. Retranslation, understood as the new translation of a text already translated into a language, seems to be a practice which leads to the emergency of the translator’s subjectivity, thus overlapping with that of the author’s or the narrator’s, with interesting consequences on the notion of identity. If an autobiography is a reconstruction of a past and of an identity, to what extent do translation and retranslation ensure its transfer into a different cultural context, addressing a different audience?