Translating Grotius's De jure belli ac pacis: Courtin vs Barbeyrac

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of translation norms with a descriptive case study of two early French translations of Hugo Grotius's legal treatise De jure belli ac pacis: Antoine de Courtin's (1687), and Jean Barbeyrac's (1724). Historically, academic translations at least in Europe have tended to follow two traditions that emerge from different views of translation and represent two extremes of the spectrum of discursive choices. I call the first straight translation, which sees translation as simple transmission of knowledge to new languages, and the second commentary translation, which explicitly engages translators in the academic discussion itself, creating new knowledge. As the article shows, the eighteenth-century French discussion of academic translation was rich in theoretical formulations that articulate the era's translation norms. Consequently, the analysis of Courtin's and Barbeyrac's paratexts contributes to the modern critical debate about norms and agency in translation.