The Translator in his Labyrinth: Analysis of the Translation of the First Book of L'Amadis de Gaule by Herberay des Essarts

Abstract

The title of this article, which is the title of my doctoral dissertation, is like many titles, incomplete. To present our research, the article is divided in three parts: the novel and the translator, analysis of ancient translations and the translator’s labyrinth. The most ancient version of El Amadís de Gaula (1508), a well-known novel of chivalry, by Garcí Rodríguez de Montalvo, and the French version (1540), by the hand of Herberay des Essarts are the object of our analysis. During the development of our work we have encountered various difficulties, of an epistemological order, particularly (the status of the analysis of ancient translations within the research “system” in History of translation) and of a theoretical order (the methodological frame for this kind of analysis). For the latter, we have reconciled divergent theories, Antoine Berman’s and Gideon Toury’s.  In short, we don’t intend in our research to condemn the distance between the original text and the translated text, nor do we flatter the faithfulness of the translator or denounce his unfaithfulness; our purpose is to recognise and describe, within that distance, the translator’s subjectivity (le sujet traduisant) , and retrace his lonely voyage through the labyrinth that leads from the original text to its translation.