Alienability and Creativity: the role of sounds and sensations in translation

International audienceOpening on a quote by Dana Goodyear about Lydia Davis in The New Yorker (2014): “Some said her stories sounded like translations, vaguely alien,” this article aims at debating the status of the original text as a definitive version. Goodyear’s sounded like translations strikes as a perfect match to the French sentir la traduction and reverses the situation. If both languages use sensory metaphors to speak of translation—auditory in English, olfactory in French—it may show that the reception and appreciation of texts cannot be limited to an intellectual activity, but rather opens onto a whole world of perceptions. Moreover, it helps to strengthen my defence of the taste, smell and sound of translation and to refute the quest for invisible translation. Why? Because if a translation provokes sensory responses it means it is alive and it can only be so with the help of a life-giver: the creator of the translation. Reading implies exchanges with another living being—not the author, not the translator, not the narrator(s), not the characters, but the textual body itself, with all its vigour. When I read, I expect to hear the breathing of a text, its hiccups, to feel its moods, to share emotions with it, to get close to it. Then the word “alien” raises a complementary question: how could I, as a reader, get close to something unfamiliar, disturbing, distasteful, something I would spontaneously reject? Perhaps because this “alienability”, or ability to be alien, opens the doors to sensations which are essential to the full understanding of an artistic creation