TRADUCTION ET DIGRESSION: "L’HOMME QUI RIT" DE VICTOR HUGO EN VERSION ROUMAINE
TRANSLATION AND DIGRESSION: "THE MAN WHO LAUGHS", BY VICTOR HUGO, THE ROMANIAN VERSION

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the translation made by the writer Gellu Naum to the only Romanian version – an abridged one - of the novel “The Man Who Laughs” by Victor Hugo, enhancing the fact that the eliminations in the source text are not evenly distributed on the global text, but they concern only some of its elements, that is the digressions. Gellu Naum chooses to give up not only the large digressions, which cover a whole chapter, but especially those that are not larger than a paragraph or even a sentence and that subtly infiltrate into the action, in an interferential system characteristic of the novel “The Man Who Laughs”. This type of translation that makes possible fluent reading, following the plot, enhances the approachability of the text especially for the young people and it implicitly increases the number of readers. Nevertheless, the non-reading of the digression infringes on the distinctiveness of Hugo’s text and therefore the article highlights the necessity of an integral translation, all the more so that the modern criticism considers that Hugo’s digressions are essential elements, more important than the action itself. On the other hand, given the fact that the translation is caducous, it must be renewed after a while.

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