Just published : RELIEF vol. 15 n°1 - (Re)translating the French classics

Editors: Maaike Koffeman and Marc Smeets 

This issue of Relief is dedicated to (re)translations of French literary classics. Special issue on retranslating the classics of French literature. Possessing a high amount of cultural and symbolic value, the literary classic seems to be a solid editorial and commercial asset. As a result, it often gives rise to multiple reissues and retranslations, which present themselves as being "better" than their predecessors. But to consider retranslation as a response to textual aging would be far too simplistic a perspective. This thematic dossier brings together a number of case studies that highlight the diversity of potential motifs for retranslation.

Table of contents:

Articles

Maaike Koffeman et Marc Smeets, "Stay away from my memories". Why retranslate the classics?

Kris Peeters, Retranslation, accentuation, redialogisation: editorial strategies and strategies of translation in Dutch translations of the "Liaisons dangereuses"

Jade Bogaart, David J.E. Bremmers, Haidee Kotze, Rozanne Versendaal, Translating and retranslating Sans famille, or how to make the Dutch love Hector Malot

Paul J. Smith, Translating Rabelais and Montaigne in the Netherlands

Pauline Martos, (Re)translation and ideology: the case of La Femme Adultère and La Pierre qui pousse by Albert Camus

Beatriz Onandia Ruiz, Translating the women writers of the Enlightenment into Spanish : challenge or viability ?

Letizia Carbutto, French classics (re)translated in the "Biblioteca Romantica": the emblematic case of “Madame Bovary”

Solange Arber et Victor Collard, Elmar Tophoven or the translator as mediator-creator : sociology of a polymorphic profession

Mannaig Thomas et Philippe Lagadec, (Re)translating French classics in Breton

Interviews

Olivier Sécardin, "A translator is a particular type of researcher"

Mingus Niesten et Marc Smeets, "One should translate the style, not the words"

Annelies Schulte Nordholt, "Translations of complex literary works are increasingly the domain of independent publishers"

Manet van Montfrans, Éditions Verdier: a place, a project, a collective trajectory

Varia

Odile Hamot, The Tale and the Mask: autobiographical ambivalence in Maryse Condé's "Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer"

Amirpasha Tavakkoli, Jacques Rancière, "Les mots et les torts. Dialogue avec Javier Bassas", Paris, La Fabrique, 2021.

Lucile Dartois, Béatrice Fleury et Jacques Walter (dir.), "Violences et radicalités militantes dans l’espace public en France, des années 1980 à nos jours", Paris, Riveneuve, 2020.