Re-Reading Jacques Derrida’s ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction “relevante”?’

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British Centre for Literary Translation

Re-Reading Jacques Derrida’s ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction “relevante”?’ (What is a “relevant” translation?) - Kathryn Batchelor

BCLT Research Seminar – Kathryn BatchelorRe-Reading Jacques Derrida’s ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction “relevante”?’ (What is a “relevant” translation?)Wednesday 24 November 2021, 5.30–7pm (GMT), Arts 2.07 and OnlineWithin translation studies, Jacques Derrida’s (1999a/2012) lecture ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction “relevante”?’ (What is a “relevant” translation?) has been read as being a lecture that is about translation. However, the recently published Le Parjure et le Pardon [Perjury and Pardon] (Derrida 2019, 2020) shows that Derrida recycled a large portion of the material from his two-year seminar on forgiveness. In this paper, I explore the possibility that Derrida’s lecture is not really about translation in any theoretical or general sense at all. Instead, I suggest that the primary interest of the lecture for today’s translation studies scholars lies in Derrida’s act of prowling around the French word ‘relever’. This word – which Derrida terms a ‘translative body’ – is crucial to his exploration of the system of exchange and redemption within which mercy itself is inscribed. A close reading of the section of the lecture in which this translative body is put to work underscores the ability of translation to serve as catalyst for philosophical enquiry.Kathryn Batchelor is Professor of Translation Studies at University College London (UCL). She holds a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and German) from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia, and a PhD in French and Francophone Studies from the University of Nottingham. Before joining UCL in 2019 she was Lecturer and subsequently Associate Professor in Translation and Francophone Studies at Nottingham from 2005-2018. Her research interests encompass translation theory, literary translation, translation history, translation and philosophy, and translation in or about Africa. She is the author of Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation (St. Jerome, 2009) and Translation and Paratexts (Routledge, 2018). She has also co-edited four volumes of essays: Translating Thought/Traduire la pensée (special issue of Nottingham French Studies 49.2, 2010), Intimate Enemies: ‘Translation in Francophone Contexts (Liverpool University Press, 2013), Translating Frantz Fanon across Continents and Languages (Routledge, 2017), and China-Africa Relations: Building Images through Cultural Cooperation. Media Representation and Communication (Routledge, 2017).

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