L ’adaptation et la traduction des termes culturels: étude de cas sur Baltagul

Abstract

L’adaptation et la traduction des termes culturels: étude de cas sur Baltagul aims at highlighting
the factors that render the concept of translational adaptation full of controversies, given that translating
through adapting has always been more than an innocent translation strategy, it has also been considered an
unethical translators’ move. The theoretical perspective on the issue of adaptation will be analyzed against a
French version and an English version of Mihail Sadoveanu’s novel Baltagul. I will focus on presenting a
series of criteria that the theoretical discourse brought forth in order to define adaptation as a translation
strategy. Adaptation will be dealt with from two perspectives: a psycho-analytical perspective, in the light of
which ethnocentrism and decentring are investigated as two self-neutralizing translation policies, and an
interlocutive perspective, which juxtaposes ethnocentrism and interference (understood as the intrusion of a
sociolinguistic ‘other’ in an interlocution). Alternatives to the translational adaptation will also be
considered, given that a translational phenomenon supposes, first and foremost, a dialogue, an openness
between two linguacultures. Culturemes are transposed from one language into another via cultural
borrowings, calques, glossing and translator’s footnotes.