Translation, retranslation and dialogism

This article seeks to explore what Bakhtinian dialogism could mean for the poetics of literary translation. Using Bakhtin's theory of discourse, the claim made is that translation involves a dialogical process of creation. This process is described as the incorporation, in the "created"of the translated text's form, of a "given,"that is, a translation material that entails the fundamental non-equivalence of the other's word. The differential binarism of supposedly equivalent "source"and "target"forms is thus replaced with an inclusive poetics that considers the "original"to be a non-translated text, and the translated text to be an original, which newly created form integrates the translation material of the other's non-equivalent word. Retranslations, moreover, are all the more dialogic because they imply a dialogical position with regard to a "given"that comprises both the translation material and the forms by which first translations have dialogically incorporated that material. By analysing dialogism in the English retranslations of Camus' L'tranger (Kaplansky 2004) and Zola's Nana (Brownlie 2006) and in the French retranslation of Joyce's Ulysses (Hoepffner 2011), evidence is provided to show that retranslation redefines and intensifies dialogical intersections between texts, languages and cultures. In brief, the retranslations under investigation are not more "source-oriented"as is suggested by the retranslation hypothesis, but more openly dialogic, that is, both-source-andtarget-oriented, than first translations.