Review article
Milan Kundera and the Poetics of Translation
Vanda Mikšić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Zadar
Abstract
Kundera had a specific relationship with the translations of his works, which has also reflected as a rather difficult and ambivalent relationship with the translators. In addition to the fact that he took part in the process of revising existing translations and even translating his own works, the relation between his original works and translations was further complicated by the fact that he used to introduce variations not only into translations but also into re-editions of the texts originally written in Czech. Moreover, in the mid-eighties he authenticated the French translations and declared them as the only originals. On different occasions Kundera spoke out and wrote about translators and translation, primarily of his own works, but also works of other authors. In this paper, I will examine whether Milan Kundera's reflections on the translation process and its outcomes can be understood as a kind of author's translation poetics in which his writing poetics is incorporated, and how these reflections correspond with those of the French translation theorists, Kundera's contemporaries, Antoine Berman and Henri Meschonnic. For this purpose, I will also use the annotations Kundera accompanied the text of the novel L'Ignorance (2000), which he sent me in 2001, the year when I translated it into Croatian.
Keywords
Milan Kundera; translation; poetics,; original
Hrčak ID:
324700
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2024.
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