Lacaussade's translation of Macpherson—a literalist perspective in 1842

Christine Raguet (1)

1 PRISMES - PRISMES - Langues, Textes, Arts et Cultures du Monde Anglophone - EA 4398

Before modern research on literalness opposing target-oriented and source-oriented translations, Lacaussade's work manages to maintain the balance between original and translation with the help of a metaphorical discourse, which aims at transporting initial images into another tongue. If we consider that all literary texts are polysemous and thus carry in themselves all the potentialities each translation would reveal, it would not be excessive to assert that Lacaussade's translation discloses in words the complexity of trans-secular thought. The force of revelation of this translation owes much to the power of words far beyond the question of punctual linguistic equivalence; what matters is its expressing and circulating the culture of the “Other” with the help of linguistic devices. The translator thus operates as a creative mediator between two cultures and is no longer concerned with languages as autonomous and homogeneous systems, but as a whole, which circulates on a temporal and geographic scale.

Mots clés: translation; Ossian; Lacaussade; metaphorical discourse; polysemy; linguistic equivalence; creativity; otherness; culture

Domaines: Littératures

Christine Raguet. Lacaussade's translation of Macpherson—a literalist perspective in 1842. Richard Trim & Sophie Alatorre. Through Other Eyes: The Translation of Anglophone Literature in Europe, Cambridge Scholars Press, pp.99-112, 2007. ⟨halshs-00550295⟩