Literary translation in the era of digital humanities and the questioning of the primacy of the source text: for a memography of Molière's translations

Abstract

Abstract The article focuses on the role of Digital Humanities in the creation of a new cyberinfrastructure that relies on the concept of Translation Memory (TM) to create advanced tools in Computer Assisted Translation (CAT). In this new cyberinfrastructure, the source text is broken down into segments and cannot exist in isolation at the same time as older translations act as new source material. The article explores the possibility of establishing a transmedial cartography of the transfer of meaning in literary translations using the notion of a “memographie” prevalent in Digital Humanities. Modelled on hybrid databases, facilitating the creation of tropes in literary language not only from the source text but also from past translations, memographies can facilitate the enhancement of the creative power of the translator in future literary translations. The article uses short extracts from Anglo-American translations of Molière in its case studies, starting from The Playhouse to be Let by Sir William D'Avenant, staged in 1663, up to more recent translations by Richard Wilbur. This is done to illustrate the functioning of the source text and target text coupling in a memorographic plexus that could serve as a new starting point in literary information retrieval systems.