Intralingual Diachronic Translation and Transfer: The Case of Old French

ABSTRACT

Intralingual translation presupposes the crossing of several types of boundaries: societal, geographic, religious and diachronic among others. This paper focuses on the diachronic aspect. The French language has seen a large number of diachronic intralingual transpositions throughout its history, such as gloss, summaries, extracts, adaptations, reduced copies and translations. Interestingly, a text can be taken for a translation at a given moment, but viewed differently at a later stage and vice versa. The label ‘translation’ is significant because its use reflects accepted conceptions of change and linguistic continuity. Indeed, descriptive translation studies avoid formulating a rigid definition of the process and the product of translation. Based on a corpus of modern transpositions of medieval French texts, we aim to find the contexts and circumstances in which the term ‘translation’ emerged, demonstrating the different categories of intralingual transfer, in particular the affinities and relations between translation and paratext on the one hand and editions and translations on the other. As a case study, the paper reviews the various translations of Saint Alexis since 1880 and examines the circumstances of their production, their features and their positions on relevant questions of language and literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Intralingual translation
• diachronic translation
• transfer
• Old French
• Saint Alexis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper constitutes a part of a large research project funded by the Israel Science Foundation, entitled ‘Intralingual translation: from Old French into Modern French. Through the Text and beyond’ (ISF grant no. 1905/17). We are grateful to the ISF for their generous support.

The project aims at a cultural examination of translations from Old into Modern French, investigating modern transpositions that were presented or considered as translations, and their relation to other types of transposition.

2. For more information on the legend, see: L. J. Engels, ‘The West European Alexius Legend, with an Appendix presenting the medieval Latin text corpus in its context’, in A.B. Mulder-Bakker, The Invention of Saintliness, London and NY, Routledge 2002.

3. For another study regarding Saint Alexis, see also Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot and Karas (2021).

4. Such an example may be found in Gautier’s 1881 postface in which he also presented the partial translation to Alexis. Gautier promised to publish later a chrestomathy, which we were unable to trace.

5. As mentioned in a review (Meyer, Romania, 1872, 111–113) this text is particularly important as its versions draw the evolution of the language, literature and culture in the course of four centuries and provides a scientific corpus for the recently-founded École pratique.

6. This variety of items includes a cantique accompanied by pious ‘reflections’ and a short miracle story published in the Bibliothèque bleue.

7. A method developed by K. Lachmann in the nineteen century aiming to provide a systematic way to trace the genealogy of manuscripts according to their common mistakes. The procedure is titled stemmatic recension. For a detailed review see Timpanaro 1963 (2016).

8. Meyer’s partial edition was published by Slatkine (Meyer 1874).

9. The French Philologist J. Bédier introduced a new approach to reconstruct ancient texts relying on a single manuscript, which is corrected as little as possible. For a further discussion see Trotter (2015) see also Trovato (2014).

10. He seems to have participated, perhaps as a secretary, in Guessard’s Anciens poètes de la France and in a list of the poetry of the Troubadours, conserved in files at the École de Chartes (Léon Gautier, Henri-François Delaborde, Léon Le Grand, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 1899: 60, 228–266).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation under [Grant 1905/17].

Notes on contributors

Hilla Karas

Hilla Karas is a translation scholar at Bar-Ilan University. She focuses on subjects related to intralingual diachronic translation, heterolingualism, the status of the translated text and non-prototypical translations. She has translated works by several French thinkers into Hebrew, including Derrida, Kristeva and Barthes.

Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot

Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot is professor of French Linguistics and Cognitive sciences at Tel Aviv University. She has published numerous articles on prepositions, conjunctions, perception verbs and auxiliaries. Her more recent research focuses on grammaticalization, construction grammar and intralingual translation. Professor Shyldkrot has edited over 15 books and special issues in major collections and journals and is a member of more than 15 editorial boards. She has supervised 10 Phd researchers, the majority of whom are currently holding posts in colleges and universities. In 2012 Professor Shyldkrot was awarded the prestigious palmes académiques from the French government for her contribution to the study of French linguistics.