Arbitraire du langage et traduction: de l'interprétation du texte à la médiation de l'autre

This article, structured in three parts, intends to highlight the close relationship between the arbitrariness of language and interlingual translation. In the first part, the complex idea of arbitrariness of language is defined. In the second part, it is pointed out that the arbitrariness of language implies, for a traducteur-de-la-lettre, four questions corresponding to four levels of analysis of the source text (lexicon, grammar, rhetoric, rhythm-prosody). In the third part, through some examples taken from the Italian translation of Anne Garréta’s French novel Sphinx, it is shown that the solutions to these four problems depend both on the genre to which the source text belongs, and on its specific linguistic features: translating means interpreting the source text, in order to achieve the best suitable solution for the target text. Through his own interpretation, the translator acts as a mediator for the readers