Presented by Georges L. Bastin (Université de Montréal)

CBConference2-Jan.22.2021

Shifts in translation have been extensively visited and revisited. Many different taxonomies exist that intend to list most decisions taken or choices made by translators, be these decisions called shifts, techniques, procedures or strategies. The problem is that there’s no explicit distinction between compulsory and deliberate interventions. We believe that a clear distinction must be made between these two categories. Compulsory shifts belong to the usual practice of any translator. Compulsory shifts are usually “unconscious” because of the very nature of translation arising from its linguistic and cultural material. Nevertheless translators often consciously decide to intervene in texts for syntactic, semantic and mainly pragmatic reasons (Chesterman). Those deliberate decisions might be dictated by a third “party” such as the client or the commissioner, or by the translator himself for many personal, cultural or ideological reasons. Those decisions are not uncommon and are sometimes dramatically “unfaithful”. Do they imply treason, logics, relevance or simply a translator’s whim? Do paratexts explain such deliberate interventions? Is the concept of “assumed translation” sufficient to justify such distance? What about “telos”? By means of examples taken from Latin American history and contemporary pragmatic texts, we will tackle these issues.