Sur le terrain de la traduction

Based on a joint process of analysis and translation, this research explores the challenges of translating into French a novel by Samuel Selvon titled The Lonely Londoners (1956), one of the first and few English Caribbeans novels entirely composed in a vernacular style and sold to an international English-speaking audience. Using a Bourdieusian methodology of praxis, the thesis analyses the interaction between the various levels of decision-making and the linguistic, political and aesthetic factors that interfere with the translation process, from the interpretation of the text to its rephrasing. It consists of six chapters that, from the second to the fifth, trace the stages of the translation process. Through a review of the critical reception of Selvon's novel, the second chapter examines the stakes of translating The Lonely Londoners from a theoretical perspective. Via a close reading of the text, the third delves into some of the interpretative suggestions made by recent critics. In a discussion leading to the layout of a translation project, the fourth explores the relation between the linguistic and cultural constituents interacting in Selvon's text and those that are likely to play a role in translation. Commenting on some of the translation strategies chosen, the fifth presents part of the formal realization of this project. The opening and closing chapters enlarge the framework by inscribing the object in a wider perspective. While the first chapter offers a panorama of the place of English Caribbean fiction in French translation, the final chapter reflects on the translation process undertaken in order to address more political/ethical issues. In the final analysis, the author concludes that for linguistic and political reasons as much as aesthetic ones, it is necessary to refocus the ongoing debate on the ethics and politics of translation, a debate traditionally dealt with in terms of particular translation strategies, on the interpretative proces