Problèmes d’indéterminations sémantiques dans la traduction de textes philosophiques

Abstract

The thickness of the semantic field that garbs every word with a signifying halo around its proper meaning makes the exercise of translation fascinating and difficult at the same time. Difficult, but not impossible, if one does not render word for word but tries to restitute the multiple relations to the reality that they establish. This paper discusses the difficulty of this attempt by addressing the problem of polysemy and ellipsis in chapter XV of the Huainanzi.Semantic plasticity plays a crucial role in the articulation of philosophical thought in ancient China. Ancient works project the contents of the discourse in literary form, thus reproducing, through shifts or fusions of the semantic fields, the organicist theory of correspondences on the level of discourse. Translations into a radically different linguistic System can only evacuate the raison d’être of the original and hence risk losing the greater part of the essential message. In order to elaborate compensatory means making it possible to preserve at least some of the primitive meaning, every attempt at translation has to pass through a preliminary analysis of the polysemic devices used in the text.The Huainanzi procedes by fusing the different levels of the real in order to elaborate a synthetic ensemble. The reductions, amalgamations and projections that are necessary to achieve this synthesis are only possible because they are authorized by lexical and syntactical plasticity. On the other hand, the constant use of various forms of ellipses allows the integration of the different parts of the real into an organic totality. In order to render the true meaning of the treatise, every translation into a European language would have to capture not only the superposition of the various interpretive levels but also the signification that is created through their tension within the text. This is, of course, practically impossible. However, the experience is less desperate than it may seem if one holds that a translation is not intended to replace the original but rather to give a certain feel for the relation of the work to language and thought.