André Markowicz says it himself: “When we read a translation, we do not read the foreign author, we read the foreign author seen by the translator. We must be aware that a translation is relative, because it is just an opinion.” An opinion and a task to always start again according to the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), for whom “the destiny of the greatest translation is to be integrated into the development of [la langue maternelle du traducteur] and to perish when this language is renewed.” In short, let us not be surprised if, sporadically, new translations of classics appear. Gallmeister is a past master in the matter, who has already carried out 80 retranslations (including those of Henry David Thoreau , Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Francis Scott Fitzgerald…) and who today (in his Litera collection) propose to revisit The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. It was Emma Lavigne who took on the task, after Mongault’s translation in 1923, accused of giving a “smooth and academic” French version, and cutting off nearly 15% (or 200 pages) of the masterpiece. Russian work, then that of Markowicz, in 2002, considered “very personal”.
History of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe, never retranslated since the Baudelaire version of 1858 _ Baudelaire having taken “some liberties with the original text by inserting in particular scholarly terms which complicated a story which did not need to be”. For Plon editions, the great Josée Kamoun tackled the dystopia of Aldous Huxley, The best of worlds, translated in 1933 by the poet Jules Castier. She explains this in the afterword: “Nothing ages faster than the future”, hence translations that have become incomprehensible over time and neologisms that need to be reinvented. Likewise, Benoît Tadié devoted himself to Big Sleep (Série noire) by Raymond Chandler, whose version by Boris Vian, dating from 1948, is not, according to him, “free from inaccuracies and does not always respect Chandler’s style and syntax” _ likewise, Nicolas Did RICchard just retranslate The Lady in the Lake of this meme Chandler. Finally, Lattès offers a new translation of Shining by Stephen King under the pen of Jean Esch, after that of Joan Bernard in 1979.
As for Tristram Editions, they offer a new edition of Mark Twain’s novel, Adventures of Hucklebbey Finnretranslated by Bernard Hœpffner and prefaced for the occasion by one of his admirers: François Busnel. Huckleberry Finn thus joins in the Souple Deluxe collection the reissue published in March of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer — also translated by Bernard Hœpffner and prefaced, this time, by Hervé Le Tellier.
So many retranslations which, if we are to believe their own authors, are in no way definitive…