Qu’est-ce que la traductologie? (review)

This volume contains 23 papers from a conference of the same name organized in 2003 by the Centre de Recherches en Traductologie de l’Université d’Artois (CERTA). While the editor points out in his ‘Présentation’ that the guiding question was ‘très générale, faussement naïve’ (p.7), it becomes clear that the definition, content and disciplinary–institutional status of traductologie (a term coined in 1972 by Canadian Brian Harris but still rejected by Microsoft’s spell-checker) are considerably more problematic than those of its Anglo-Saxon or German equivalents—hence perhaps the choice of Gustave Moreau’s Œdipe et le Sphinx as cover illustration. Many of the contributions start from the somewhat defensive standpoint that a specific theoretical foundation and disciplinary boundaries (notably with Linguistics) still need to be defined for this ‘mal-aimée au sein de l’Université française’ (p.11). A small group of papers examine the origins and history of the subject, perhaps the most informative being Marianne Lederer’s account of her work at ESIT with Danica Seleskovitch to develop their influential Théorie interprétative and extend it to written translation. A wider geographical perspective, though still with a Francophone focus, is provided by papers on traductologie in the Middle East (Henri Awaïss), Algeria (Hassen Boussaha), Vietnam (Vu Van Dai) and Roumania (Maria Tenchea and Georgina Lungu-Badea). Contributions by Lieven d’Hulst, Christine Durieux, Marie-France Delport and Jean-Cluade Chevalier, André Dussart and Daniel Gile then explore interdisciplinary connections, Gile in particular critiquing the quality of current research and the gulf he sees between academics and practitioners. Useful summaries of specific categories of translation theory are provided by John D. Gallagher (functionalism), Jean-Marc Gouanvic (sociological theories) and, most originally, Andrew Chesterman who calls for a pragmatic, Popperian traductologie based on the generation and testing of hypotheses. Michel Ballard’s claim for traductologie as a ‘science d’observation’ is followed up in a proposal from Teresa Tomaszkiewicz to replace monological Think-Aloud Protocols as a means of observing the translator’s decision-making processes with conversational analysis of dialogues between collaborating translators. Several papers by translation practitioners look, sometimes sceptically, at the relevance of theory to their working methods and offer practical suggestions on training. Elisabeth Lavault denounces the continuing practice, in most French universities, of using translation only as a language-learning tool, the archaic ‘prose composition’ divorced from any reflection on context, purpose or audience. This institutional critique is taken up by Delphine Chartier, who points out that traductologie is not recognized in France as a doctoral subject and that only the first tentative steps beyond the criterion of straight linguistic equivalence can be detected in recent rapports de jury of the Capes and Agrégation, which suggests that, despite well-established pockets of research excellence such as at Artois or Rennes, the discipline will gain only its academic lettres de noblesse in France once it has managed to tuer le père of its monolithic higher educational environment. Daniel Gouadec’s concluding ‘plaidoyer pour une modélisation de la prestation de traduction’ returns to the everyday pragmatic need to define parameters for the evaluation of translation quality.