Reassessing Berman’s Great Translations in an Age of Rapid Change

Описание: Piet Van Poucke (Ghent University)

Since Antoine Berman published his seminal introductory article to the volume of Palimpsestes 4 (1990) on (literary) retranslation, most of his ideas found their ways into theoretical articles and case studies. Both the so-called ‘Retranslation Hypothesis’ (claiming that retranslations are closer to the source text than first translations) and the idea of ‘ageing’ translations (while originals remain permanently ‘young’) have been extensively operationalized in the last decades, but this is not the case for his concept of ‘Great Translations’ (Fr. Grandes traductions), which refers to literary translations which resist the process of ageing and constitute a real ‘translational event’ in the target culture (Berman 1990, 2).
In this paper I would like to investigate whether the growing (technological) possibilities of literary translators might lead to a reassessment of the alleged Great Translations that remained unchallenged in the past for many years, but perhaps appear to contain more ‘mistakes’ then was ever acknowledged before. Do the possibilities of the Internet and automated translation allow literary translators to challenge Great Translations quicker than was the case before? Or is the ‘rule’ still valid that real Great Translations last for at least a generation?
By researching recent Dutch retranslations of Russian classical literary works I want to reveal whether alleged Great Translations, which apparently remained unchallenged for decades, are more easily and quickly retranslated now and if that is the case, which motives for retranslation are mentioned in the paratexts to the retranslations. Furthermore, I would like to compare the processes of retranslation in the Dutch literary market with those in more central cultural systems as English, French and German, to determine which of these processes are to be considered more or less universal and which local.