http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.

2019v39n1p10

RETRANSLATION IN CONTEXT

Piet Van Poucke1

1
Ghent University, Ghent, Bélgica

Guillermo Sanz Gallego2

2
Ghent University, Ghent/Vrije Universiteit, Brussel, Bélgica

One could have thought that Isabelle Collombat was rather

provocative and courageous when in 2004, at the turn of the new
century, she already proclaimed the 21st century as the “Age of
Retranslation”. Her judgement was based on the finding that a
“wave” of (literary) retranslations was occurring at the beginning
of the new century, and that that wave was motivated by a number
of “translatorly concerns” (1) among which could be discerned: the
ageing of previously translated texts, ideological considerations in
connection with changing cultural norms, and the ever continuing
search for the perfect translation, which Berman (2-3) called the
“great translation” (“grande traduction”) in his seminal article
on retranslation in 1990. The three aforementioned motives for
retranslation share at least one overarching consideration – the
translator’s desire to leave a trace in cultural history by creating
a personal, contemporary, fully acceptable and at the same time
artistically innovative interpretation of the big works of ‘World
Literature’. With the number of canonized literary works growing,
the number of retranslations should, indeed, increase as well.
However, the activity of retranslating texts is obviously not
a new phenomenon. Retranslations have always constituted a
considerable share of the global translation market ever since
the Middle Ages. Not only canonical literary works, but also

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

religious, political, historical and philosophical texts have always

been translated and retranslated into several languages, and this
process has only increased with time. A decade and a half after
Collombat’s daring claim, it is difficult to determine whether the
21st century will actually produce considerably more retranslations
than the ages that have passed, but we do know that retranslation,
indeed, has become a very common practice and, recently, a
serious topic of inquiry in the context of Translation Studies, as
well as within Literature Studies.
When Palimpsestes devoted its entire 4th volume (1990) to the
theme of “retranslation” (“Retraduire”), it was up to the editors
of the volume, Antoine Berman and Paul Bensimon, to outline the
possibly problematic nature of the concept, often overlooked as an
object for thorough scholarly investigation. At that point Berman
suggested a few lines of analysis that have become major sources
of inspiration in the course of time: the so-called ‘Retranslation
Hypothesis’, the concept of “great translation”, and the related issue
of ageing of translations, to name only a few well investigated lines.
In the wake of this initial impetus there followed a long
‘comet’s tail’ of studies on retranslation, mainly focused
on literary retranslation, that first took the form of separate
theoretical articles and case studies, and later on merged into
a number of special volumes on retranslation – Palimpsestes 4
(1990), Cadernos de Tradução (2003), Palimpsestes 15 (2004),
Target (2015) and now this latest issue of Cadernos de Tradução.
“Retranslation” has by now also been included as an entry in the
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (Tahir Gürçağlar
2009) and the Handbook of Translation Studies (Koskinen &
Paloposki 2010). Finally, retranslation is also the central topic
of a growing number of monographs and collections of articles,
as for instance Banoun & Weber Henking (2007), Kahn & Seth
(2010), Monti & Schnyder (2011), O’Driscoll (2011), Pokorn
(2012), Béghain (2013), Courtois (2014), Deane-Cox (2014),
Douglas & Cabaret (2014), Cadera & Walsh (2017) and Berk
Albachten & Tahir Gürcaglar (2018).

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Retranslation in Context

A detailed overview of research lines developed so far within

the study of retranslations is given by Alvstad & Rosa in their
introduction to the special issue of Target on Voice in Retranslation
in 2015. Themes related to retranslation, but still insufficiently
explored at this moment include the history of literary retranslation
and its relationship to the history of literary translation, the specific
role of the different agents involved in the process (translators,
publishers, editors, censors, reviewers, and readers) and the
importance of retranslation in the canonization process of literary
works that belong to the category of ‘World Literature’. A number
of different motives for retranslation have been defined, but some of
them (e.g. ageing, adaptation to changing cultural and ethical norms,
the role of ideology) still lack thorough empirical underpinning. In
the same vein, economic considerations for retranslation must also
be examined (e.g. the cost-effectiveness of publishers’ investments
in retranslations instead of revising or simply reediting an existing
translation), together with the reviewers’ and readers’ appreciation
of the (expected) improvement.
Specific research into the different aspects of retranslation, from
the decision to retranslate to the reception of a retranslated work, can
still shed additional light on a broad range of related questions. In
a number of cases translators decide to self-retranslate a text: How
is this reflected in the paratext and to what extent is the translator
willing to ‘correct’ his/her own translation? Is ‘indirect translation’
a form of retranslation? And what is the impact of an intermediate
translation on the final product? Are ‘cold retranslations’ (made
well after the publication of the source text) fundamentally different
from ‘hot translations’ (made immediately after its publication)?
Indeed, a number of macro-level issues invite further reflection
as well: Do central and peripheral literary systems adopt different
policies towards retranslation? Are retranslations fundamentally
different from earlier translations, or would it be more accurate to
regard them as ‘revisions’, and how is this related to questions of
authorship and plagiarism?

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

In the majority of the cases up to now the analysis of

retranslation(s) concerns literary translation. However, for a
few years now the attention of scholars has shifted towards
retranslation in a much broader range of domains and fields and
the initial focus on texts and translational shifts gave way to a
more contextual approach of all kinds of genres and narratives.
This change in approach is reflected in the papers from the series
of “Retranslation in Context” conferences, initiated in Istanbul in
2013, and successfully continued in 2015 (Istanbul), 2017 (Ghent),
and 2019 (Madrid). By abandoning the traditional method of
comparing different translations of one and the same text on micro-
textual level and including other considerations on macro-textual
and contextual levels in the analysis, a range of new ‘highways’ of
investigation are discovered, proof of which can be found in the
papers in this volume.
The selected papers in this special volume discuss the concept
of retranslation in its broadest meaning and focus specifically
on the contextual circumstances in which the retranslations
in question came into being (or not) as a result of the specific
background of that particular period. All these papers constitute a
representative echo of the changing flows in ‘Retranslation Studies’
– if we are allowed to use this terminology without claiming to
divide Translation Studies up into a scattered field of subdomains
and small niches – as they overarch a broad spectrum of (often
mutually complementary) research methodologies and angle to
look at retranslation in a number of alternative contexts. The
viability of the concept of retranslation as an object of investigation
is perfectly shown by the fact that ‘Retranslation Theory’ – a term
coined by Siobhan Brownlie in 2006 – is constantly expanding, and
new methodologies are suggested on a regular basis. The scope
of the articles in this volume includes calls for more macro level
research, an analysis of the role of ‘non-retranslation’ and a new
interpretation of the concept of retranslation, but also a range of
case studies on retranslations of philosophical texts, literary prose,
poetry and lyrics. Moreover, the strictly contextual approach to

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Retranslation in Context

retranslation is witnessed in two articles of the volume, which

focus on the process of retranslation (through eye-tracking) and
the economics of retranslation (the interaction between marketing
techniques and reception).

The curious concept of ‘non-retranslation’ is the direct and

indirect object of investigation in the two first papers of the volume.
The opening article by Kaisa Koskinen and Outi Paloposki departs
from the research data on retranslation in the Finnish literary
system, collected in the course of time by the authors. They plead
for a more comprehensive, macro-level approach to the analysis of
retranslation, as retranslation has been a topic for analysis in many
articles so far, but often the analysis does not go beyond the scope
of a single case study, based on a limited set of data and covering
only one cultural system, period or genre. Koskinen and Paloposki
call upon scholars to break through the walls of the individual case
studies and look for the “bigger picture”. As individual case studies
“do not easily add up” because of dissimilarities in methodology,
scholars should start comparing empirical evidence from larger data
sets. Accordingly, instead of coordinating material from different
historical periods, they should also take into consideration different
cultures and literary contexts, in order to ask – and answer – new
research questions that open the path for macro-level empirical
evidence and a better understanding of the concept as a whole. Their
quest for new approaches to retranslation leads them in particular
to the discovery that apart from retranslation, ‘non-retranslation’
is an equally significant aspect of retranslation, that has attracted
relatively little scholarly interest so far.
This particular issue – the importance of ‘non-retranslation’ for
translation analysis, and translation history in particular –, is picked
up by Charlotte Bollaert in her paper on translations of Jean-Paul
Sartre in Russia. She investigates the controversies of selection,

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

translation, retranslation, non-translation, non-retranslation and

reprinting of Sartre’s theatre plays, both in the Soviet Union and
in contemporary Russia. The contextual analysis of the translation
policy towards Sartre reveals the presence of a contradictory and
at the same time hardly surprising double normativity. On the
one hand, the reprinting – which is the reverse of the non-(re)
translation medal – of Sartre’s work in Russia today is driven by
economic considerations, as reprinting is obviously cheaper than
the assignment of a retranslation. At the same time one gets the
impression that the ideological (communist) considerations that
made Sartre persona non grata for a certain period in the Soviet
period continue to be active, hindering the further dissemination of
Sartre in Russian, even three decades after the ideological landslides
that officially abolished the censorship of literary works in Russia.
Admittedly, the concept of retranslation is closely related to
another concept – that of canonization. The more historical a text
becomes, the more motives for retranslation are activated, going
from refreshing the ageing language of an older translation to
radically censoring and adapting an older translation to bring it in
accordance with changing cultural or political norms. Against this
background Sonja Lavaert investigates the publication history of
the 17th century clandestine treatise Traité des trois imposteurs,
that in itself could be considered as a retranslation effort. The
text consists of a compilation of paraphrases and quotations of
several heterodox texts, combined together into one whole. The
paper discusses in particular how apparently different translation
strategies and decisions may lead to significant shifts in meaning
and interpretation. A work on “Renaissance panteism” suddenly
seems to discuss “atheism and materialism” without apparent traces
of mutilation or censorship. Lavaert demonstrates, by comparing
two excerpts of the treatise in detail, how different interpretations
of the work in French and Italian relate to the respective contextual
factors of their times, as the first ‘translation’ dates back to 1719,
whereas the ‘retranslation’ was made in 1768.

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Retranslation in Context

Guy Rooryck and Lieve Jooken compare (re)translation

strategies and norms from two very distant historical periods as
they confront a ‘hot’, 18th century English version of Voltaire’s
Lettres philosophiques – Letters concerning the English Nation
from 1733, attributed to John Lockman – with three ‘cold’
retranslations from 1961, 1980 and 2007. On the basis of a micro-
analysis of translations of two ‘letters’ the authors demonstrate how
the more incisive approach adopted by the 18th century translator
leads to a much clearer and more direct narrative than the modern
versions, which – according to modern translation norms –
reproduce Voltaire’s evasive voice in a more faithful way, but
at the same time fail to “transmit the marks of subversion” that
Voltaire clearly intended to pass on, but had to hide for censorial
reasons. Because of the loss of “historical simultaneity” between
the source text and the readers of the most recent translations,
the contextual aspect is obviously lost in the modern translations.
The contradictory conclusion of the analysis suggests that modern,
(allegedly) ‘faithful’ translation strategies may sometimes blur the
message of an 18th century narrative.
(Re)translation of 19th century Russian literature is the topic of
Pieter Boulogne’s paper on Dutch (re)translations of Dostoevsky.
He “tries to explain the phenomena of retranslation in general”
by comparing not only textual, but also contextual features of
retranslation. Boulogne confronts two central concepts of Translation
Studies – the Retranslation Hypothesis on the one hand, claiming
that successive retranslations tend to be more faithful to the source
text than the first translation, and the concept of ‘translation norms’
on the other hand. The author concludes that the latter appear to
be “a better tool” to “explain the phenomenon of the Dostoevsky
retranslations into Dutch”. However, at the same time the concept
of norms is to be seen as no more than a limited reflection of certain
prescriptive rules, rather than a universal phenomenon. In the
specific case of Dutch translations of Dostoevsky the individuality
of the translators who continue to follow their own idiosyncratic

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

rules and consistently “go against the norms” is no less important

than the prevailing ‘rules’ of literary (re)translation.
The next two papers in the volume discuss the retranslation of
20 and 21st century poetry into French. Francis Mus investigates
th

how various translations of Leonard Cohen’s poetry collection Book

of Longing were published, once in Québec and twice in France,
between 2001 and 2008. The author first compares the translations at
a textual level in order to find out how translators interpreted Cohen’s
poetry, and to determine whether the different versions of the English
source text can be considered as retranslations at all. Subsequently,
he investigates whether the differences in the translations can be
explained by contextual factors of space and genre. In particular,
Mus analyses the two main “power mechanisms” that could have
“influenced the production of these translations”: on the one hand,
the three translations belong to two different cultural systems – one
that is considered as ‘central’ (Paris), and one ‘peripheral’ (Québec);
and on the other hand the translations serve divergent purposes, as
we are dealing with the contrast between highbrow- (belles lettres)
and lowbrow- (lyrics) literature.
Cristina Vignali discusses different translations of a literary
work “whose nature lies mid-way between the illustrated poems
and comic strips genres” and, hence, poses particular challenges
for the translators. Because of the specific interaction between
text and image, the translators have to make sure the link between
the textual and the visual is not cut through. At the same time
translators have to interpret the multitude of contextual features
that accompany the story. Dino Buzzati wrote his Poema a fumetti
in a period of “contestation, disobedience”, and “the start of
sexual liberation, and secularization” of society. In her analysis
Vignali confronts the ‘hot’ French translation from 1970 with the
‘cold’ retranslation from 2007 and concludes that the most recent
interpretation differs significantly from the source text. Apparently,
the retranslator felt compelled to interpret the original publication
for the new generation of readers, by elucidating the connotative
information included in the source text, which was part of the

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Retranslation in Context

common knowledge for the reader of the source text (and the first
translation) at the time, but evokes significantly different reactions
half a century later.
The final section of this volume is dedicated to new and
alternative approaches to retranslation. The papers in this section
go beyond the more ‘classical’ textual and paratextual analysis
of literary texts, but suggest new lines of investigation. Gleiton
Malta, Cristiane Silva Fontes and Igor Lourenço da Silva focus
not on the product of retranslating, but on the process itself, and
more specifically on the cognitive processes that are at stake when
translators are asked to retranslate a text. The authors depart from
an experimental research setting and report on the decisions made
by retranslators who have at their immediate disposal not only
the source text, but also two other translations. Their pioneering
research builds on eye-tracking tools to investigate the visual
attention of the retranslators. The analysis reveals the incidental
attention devoted to previous translations, as “the most frequent
flow of visual attention” during the experiment goes from target
text to source text and vice-versa, and only occasionally from target
text to the previous translations. Despite the limited character of
the experiment, the article opens up several possibilities for further
investigation, in particular to be “applied in the classroom as a way
to raise students’ awareness of what retranslation is”.
Mary Wardle goes beyond the lines of (more traditional) process-
and product-oriented research, in order to explore the sometimes
contradictory tools of marketing and reception of retranslations
in a digital environment. The author focuses on the competition
between bigger international and smaller independent publishing
houses and their different approaches towards retranslations. As
independent publishers are expected to be more risk averse and
therefore to be “keen to commission retranslations as safe bets”,
this is expected to have an influence on sales and reception as
well. As books are sold more and more often online, different
sellers might even offer the same literary works in different (re)
translations at the same time, a situation that is relatively typical

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

for our digital age, which also increases the importance of the
available (online and offline) reviews. Wardle investigates how the
attention of potential customers tends to shift from professional
reviews to online customer appraisals and star-ratings, apart
from other “paratextual elements such as book covers”. Her
research reveals how readers’ choices are not purely based on the
(alleged) quality of the translation alone, but also on “availability,
marketing strategies, price, prominence and distribution network
of the publishing companies, star-ratings and levels of appreciation
registered by fellow consumers”.
The final paper in this volume, by Vitor Alevato do Amaral,
problematizes the concept of ‘retranslation’ and pleads for the
reconsideration of the existing definition of the phenomenon,
by abandoning “the limitation to the same target language into
which a given source text has already been translated”. The
author regrets “the lack of theoretical discussion” on this issue
and instead builds on the ideas of Antoine Berman to suggest a
new multilingual approach which should open up a multitude of
new research opportunities. By considering earlier translations in
other languages as possible links in the translation history of a
particular literary work, and by including them into the corpus for
retranslation research, a whole network of new interconnections
is revealed, and the existing research can be refined. Hence, the
closing article of the volume should be considered not as a ending,
but as a potentially new beginning for research on retranslation.
Additionally to these contributions, this volume contains an
interview and two book reviews. Retranslators should also have a
voice in a special issue on retranslation. Therefore, Guillermo Sanz
Gallego conducted an interview with the two authors of the third
Spanish translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Francisco García
Tortosa and María Luisa Venegas Lagüéns. Among other details,
the two translators provide their view as regards the reasons for
retranslating Ulysses, their approach, their methodology, and their
target reader. Also, the translators reveal how their translation had
to face an embargo due to Joyce’s grandson, who was the copyright

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Retranslation in Context

holder at the time, and threatened with legal action. Finally the
translation was published and it has managed to stand the test of time.
In fact, according to Venegas, it ages quite well, like good wine. Her
view is confirmed by Tortosa, who refers to good sales figures. The
introduction to this interview highlights the quality of this translation
as well: a recent research on translations and retranslations of
Joyce’s Ulysses conducted by Kris Peeters (University of Antwerp)
and Guillermo Sanz Gallego (Ghent University/Vrije Universiteit
Brussel, VUB) shows that both this Spanish retranslation and the
third Dutch retranslation are at the same time more source oriented
and target oriented. This research is under peer review for publication
at the time of publication of this special issue.
The reader of this special issue will also find two book reviews.
One of them, by Guillermo Sanz Gallego, is devoted to the
publication of the Spanish translation of two comedies by Frances
Burney. Carmen María Fernández Rodríguez is the author of the
translations, and María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia is the author of the
Introduction. The translation of Frances Burney’s work plays
an important role in the cultural transfer of literature written by
female authors in the 18th century. Additionally, the presence and
visibility of such works is essential in order to provide a thorough
overview of the production of those authors who challenged the
androcentric canon established at the time. The other review, by
Piet Van Poucke, discusses the 21st volume of the series New
Trends in Translation Studies, devoted to Literary Retranslation
in Context and published by Peter Lang. In this collective work
the editors, Susanne M. Cadera and Andrew Samuel Walsh,
present nine articles (and an Introduction) on the historical,
social and cultural contexts of retranslation. The articles in the
volume share a series of common features, as they all elaborate
on the research results of the RETRADES (Studies on Cultural
and Textual Interaction: Retranslation) project. The research
papers are gathered around the specific interaction between
“Retranslation and Ideology”, “Retranslation and Censorship”,
and “Retranslation and Reception”.

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Piet Van Poucke & Guillermo Sanz Gallego

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and some trends.” Target, vol. 27, no. 1, 2015, pp. 3-24.

Banoun, Bernard, and Irene Weber Henking (Eds.). Traduire - Retraduire.

Lausanne: Centre de Traduction Littéraire, 2007.

Béghain, Véronique. Quand L’Europe retraduit “The Great Gatsby” : Le corps

transfrontalier du texte. Pessac: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013.

Bensimon, Paul. “Présentation.” Palimpsestes, vol. 4, 1990, pp. ix–xiii.

Berk Albachten, Özlem, and Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar (Eds.). Perspectives on

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vol. 4, 1990, pp. 1–7.

Brownlie, Siobhan. “Narrative theory and retranslation theory.” Across Languages

and Cultures, vol. 7, no. 2, 2006, pp. 145-170.

Cadera, Susanne M., and Andrew Samuel Walsh (Eds.). Literary Retranslation In
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volée, 2014.

Deane-Cox, Sharon. Retranslation : Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation.

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Létot-Douglas, Virginie, and Florence Cabaret (Eds.). La retraduction en

littérature de jeunesse. Bruxelles [etc.]: Peter Lang, 2014.

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Koskinen, Kaisa, and Outi Paloposki. “Retranslation.” Handbook of Translation

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Monti, Enrico, and Peter Schnyder (Eds.). Autour de la retraduction : Perspectives

littéraires européennes. Paris : Orizons, 2011.

O’Driscoll, Kieran. Retranslation Through the Centuries: Jules Verne In English.

Oxford [etc.]: Peter Lang, 2011.

Pokorn, Nike K. Post-socialist Translation Practices : Ideological Struggle In

Children’s Literature. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2012.

Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. “Retranslation.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation

Studies. Second edition, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, London/
New York: Routledge, 2009, pp. 233-236.

Piet Van Poucke. E-mail: Piet.VanPoucke@ugent.be

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1725-6558
Guillermo Sanz Gallego E-mail: Guillermo.SanzGallego@UGent.be
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2945-4615

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