Traducerea în limba franceză a poeziei eminesciene: câteva considerații despre paratext
The French Translation of Mihai Eminescu’s Poems: some Considerations about Paratext

Summary/Abstract: This paper proposes a selective analysis of the prefaces accompanying the published French translations of Mihai Eminescu’s poetry. Our research is founded on the database of the Central University Library in Iași (BCU Iași) and takes into account the poetry volumes published between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st century, with a particular emphasis on the translations that appeared in 1989 and 2000, years that constitute important celebratory dates. Our aim was to ascertain the parameters involved in rendering Mihai Eminescu’s lyrical work abroad, in terms of types of translators, publishing houses, translation experience, publication visibility and aim, etc. Because of the extensive nature of the aformentioned topic, our present study choses to focus on the translators’ impressions rendered in the paratext as illustrative for their personal struggle as well as for the particular difficulties posed by Eminescu’s poetry at different levels of language. Besides the ”technical” aspects of the translation process, these prefaces are relevant to the manner in which Eminescu is “projected” abroad and presented to a foreign audience. The information rendered in the prefaces as translator’s notes covers a wide array of subjective interpretations as well as the decision-making process underlying the technicalities of translating. Our analysis identified several key-points and tendencies that reveal both a high degree of difficulty that Eminescu’s poetry poses to the translation as well as the translators’ struggle with sacrificing some parts of the original in favor of a coherent result versus maintaining all the original text’s attributes and running the risk of making the translation appear “foreign”. We noticed, in both the Romanian and the French translators’ testimonies, an overtly apologetic tone and a deep concern for the outcome of their endeavor.

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