Producing a "Relevant" Translation: A Derridean Approach to Annie Ernaux's L'Evénement

Abstract

This article proposes an examination of the English rendering of Annie Ernaux's text L'Evénement, translated by Tanya Leslie as Happening. I seek not to criticize Leslie's translation, but instead endeavor to offer an alternate, hermeneutic model of translation—that is, one that models itself on the notion of translations as variable according to a translator's interpretant. To be sure, the emphasis in the re-translated pages I proffer throughout my article is not on the notion of a single, indeed impossible, perfect translation, nor on the dissolution of the standard dialectic pitting the translation against the source. Rather, the suggested translations of words in what I translate as The Events stress the notion of the translator-scholar whose move to translate stems from a desire for the target-language version of a source text to achieve literary relevance in the Derridean sense of elevating the signifier to its meaning or value while guarding the signified of the source. While working locally on L'Evénement, my ultimate goal is to offer relevant translations—in the Derridean sense—of portions of Ernaux's text in an effort to suggest a way forward for literary translation more generally.