Les comédies de Térence dans la traduction de Guillaume Rippe. La prose et le vers, le latin et le vernaculaire dans le Therence en françois d’Antoine Vérard

Abstract

The volume of Terence published by A. Vérard at the turn of 16th century casts light on the social and literary functions of contemporaneous translations in verse and prose, as well as on the functions of the Latin and vernacular languages. The difference between the two translations present in the volume – at the first one in prose and the second in verse – is striking. The former is rich in learned vocabulary, borrowed from Latin. The style of the latter is, on the contrary, neutral. This neutrality determines the reception of the text by the future generations of French readers and the place of the word- by-word translation printed side by side with the original Latin text given to it by the creators of the book. Apart from the full original text of the comedies, the Therence en françois comprises Latin-language arguments and preface, printed alongside the corresponding French language translations. The verse translation mentioned above also contains fragments of the Latin original. The present study shows that the Latin texts that refer either to the volume as a whole or to the prose translation differ substantially from the corresponding French texts. In this case, the Latin language was perceived as a hallmark of humanist erudition, and in this case its only function was to emphasize the ‘learned’ nature of the edition. On the contrary, the extracts of the original Latin text placed alongside the French verse translation correspond to it in content. The choice of these fragments, as well as their layout on the pages, draws the attention of the reader to the high fidelity of the translation. Besides, looking at these extracts, we can see that the art of translation was perceived at the same time as the art of paraphrasing.