“Shagi / Steps” the Journal of the SASH

SHAGI/STEPS 5(3)

Keywords: translation, intertext, paratext, shared cultural space, iambic hexameter, Proust, Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

Abstract: This paper is based on the opinions of two literary translators, a Russian (Natalia Mavlevich) and a French one one (Sophie Benech), as well as on the personal experience of the author who retranslated from the French into Russian Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac and the first two books of Marcel Proust’s novel A la Recherche du temps perdu.
Why do translators choose to retranslate literary works familiar to readers in previous translations? First, due to different reasons, translations become outdated sooner than original works. Because of this, each new translation of a work aims to make up skipped words, to correct mistakes and all kinds of flaws found in older versions. Then, the development of literature in the target language sometimes makes it possible to express more precisely in a new translation things that previously were hard to formulate. Next, results obtained by literary scholars, especially through new studies of manuscripts and new commentaries on the texts, are very helpful for making a translation more precise and more adequate. It is important to research in greater depth the historical and literary context of a book to be translated; this kind of study helps impart to translations a greater degree of “literariness”. Finally, and most important, the translator chooses to retranslate a text he/she really loves, notwithstanding the fact that his or her predecessors have already made several versions of the same book.

To cite this article: Baevskaya, E. V. (2019). A new Cyrano and a new Proust: How to dare, how to perform. Shagi/Steps, 5(3), 171–180. (In Russian). DOI: 10.22394/2412-9410-2019-5-3-171-179.