« Aucune chose ne soit, là où le mot faillit »: Reflections on literary translation

Bénédicte Coste

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Title

« Aucune chose ne soit, là où le mot faillit »: Reflections on literary translation

Abstract

This article first proposes to discuss translation both from a Freudian and Lacanian perspective. One of psychoanalysis’s main tenets is that perfect and total translation is impossible because of what Freud called as early as 1896 Versagung der Übersetzung, a refusal of translation. Commenting later on the impossibility of establishing an adequate relationship between the sexes, Lacan famously coined the expression of the non-sexual relationship that, I suggest, should be extended and redefined as a non-textual relationship between the texts. The article also discusses the experience of translation in the light of what Heidegger termed an experience with language, and more especially with speech to explore the relationship of the translator with the foreign tongue and to situate it as welcoming and letting the other tongue resonate from the translator’s relationship to language.

Keywords

literary translation, Freudian psychoanalysis, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Heidegger

DOI 10.17462/para.2016.02.02