For the past twenty years, there has been a growing trend in translation studies to follow a deconstructionist philosophy and give translators authorship of their work. Translation, in this sense, is no longer a target language equivalence of an 'original' text by an author, but rather a creative process of 're-writing.' In this regard, translators have the possibility of showing their own voice in the translation. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether either of the French or English translators (Albert Bensoussan and Suzanne Jill Levine, respectively) of the Cuban novel Tres Tristes Tigres (Barcelona: 1967) intervened in the text to show their own voices; and in Levine's case, whether this intervention corresponded to a declared ideology of 'subversion.' A systematic analysis of the wordplay in Chapters 16, 17 and 18 of the two translations reveal significant differences. Whereas the French translation has only minor adjustments, the English translation shows a large number of alterations to existing source text wordplay as well as additional instances of wordplay. In the final tally, there are almost twice as many instances of wordplay in Levine's English translation than in the Spanish source text. From the results of the analysis and from Levine's own self-portrayal in her book The Subversive Scribe (St. Paul: 1991), it would appear that her extensive intervention in the text is ideologically motivated. However, closer examination of circumstances surrounding the actual translation process reveals that the author, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, greatly influenced the final 're-writing.' Therefore, Levine's translation was not so much subversion as it was a sub-version of the original.

In this study, we have explored the prefaces of monolingual English, monolingual French, and bilingual French-English dictionaries of the 17 th century. The monolingual works studied constitute the first of this kind to have been published. Over the course of this research, we have demonstrated that despite different lexicographic traditions, dictionary prefaces convey basically the same type of information, and address the same general issues. This study is divided into two main sections. In the first, we have provided historical information on the dictionaries, so as to illustrate the historical context in which they were published. In the second section, we have examined the prefaces themselves, first giving an overview of each text studied, and then providing a thematic analysis of the prefaces within each group as a whole, observing topics that are commonly treated among them, within the broader categories of dictionary content, lexicographic context, and linguistic context. Over the course of the research, we have established that though each text is unique, certain features are shared not only among the prefaces within one same category, but in fact across all three types of dictionary.

The cultural turn in Translation Studies is the name given to the shift from an inter-lingual approach to the study of translation to an inter-cultural one. Since the cultural turn, meaning is no longer considered to be reducible to the level of word, sentence or even text within a specific situation of utterance. Instead, culture as a whole is considered to be the prime locus of meaning. Translators, then, are not expected to be simply bilingual, but to be bi-cultural. This thesis is a comparative discourse analysis that explores how pre-existing discourses in English Canada, Quebec and France affect the representation of the United States in print media coverage following terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001. More specifically, the impact of the discourse of counter-Americanism in English Canada is analyzed in a corpus of newspaper articles selected from five major Canadian dailies. Similarly, articles from Le Devoir and La Presse are analyzed in relation to the discourse of americanite in Quebec and articles from Le Monde are analyzed in relation to the discourse of anti-Americanism in France. In each case, the construction of an American identity can be traced to the specific geographical, historical, political and economic relationships of each country to the U.S. This means that representations of an American Other serve primarily to support representations of self, thus revealing the relative and constructed nature of national identity. Drawing on scholars in both Cultural Studies and Communications, this study outlines how discourse constructs national identity. In addition, it illustrates how identity discourses affect the construction and interpretation of meaning, thus meriting attention in the field of Translation Studies. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

"Puisque Dieu ne veut mettre d'enfant dans mon corps, que le diable en mette un alors!" Voilà les paroles fatales que la mère de Robert, fils du duc de Normandie, prononce au moment de le concevoir. Homme marqué du sceau du diable, Robert parcourt le pays avec une bande de brigands et fait preuve d'une violence incommensurable, jusqu'à ce qu'il apprenne la vérité au sujet de sa naissance. Commence alors pour lui de difficiles épreuves au cours desquelles il tentera de regagner la faveur divine et de sauver son âme.... La légende de Robert le Diable, populaire au Moyen-Âge, connaît diverses réécritures, dont le trente-troisième miracle des Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, recueil de pièces de théâtre qui auraient été jouées de 1339 à 1382. Nous présentons ici le Miracle de Robert le Dyable dans une nouvelle édition critique, suivie d'une traduction inédite.

A critical comparison of the theories of language of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Early German Romantic Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) based on their models of language as trope. Six forms of trope are used to show how language functions for each thinker and to provide a precise framework for comparison. It is found that both present similar notions of language as tropic in nature, that is to say as fundamentally creative and subjective, but that while for Novalis this underlies the possibility of genuine knowledge and communication, for Nietzsche it undermines these. Novalis' acceptance of trope in language allows him to present a model of the human subject in communion with other human beings, nature, and the divine, while Nietzsche's rejection of the validity of trope results in his essentially negative and isolating philosophy of the subject.

Fictional texts represent a particular challenge for translators due to their use of expressive language. The translation of audiovisual texts in particular is complicated by various institutional and technical constraints. As such, assessing the quality of translated televisual fiction is a complex undertaking that requires an approach more flexible than that prescribed by proponents of textual-linguistic models. This thesis looks at translation quality from another angle, that of audience reception. As a case study, this thesis investigates the reception of the French dubbed translation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a popular American television show characterized by its frequent use of illocutionary elements, including wordplay, neologisms and cultural references. One interpretive community's response to the French dubbed translation is examined through the document analysis of a French chat room thread dedicated to the dubbed version of the show. In order to check the legitimacy of fans' claims, a translated episode of Buff the Vampire Slayer is assessed, with posters' comments informing the evaluation criteria. In particular, the target text is evaluated according to its treatment of illocutionary strategies. The results of the document analysis and the translation evaluation are compared to give a multidimensional perspective on the quality of the target text. The evaluation highlights the prevailing tendency of the target text to omit illocutionary elements in favour of neutral paraphrase, and the document analysis suggests that this tendency may in part account for the chat viewers' largely negative response to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's French dubbed translation.

Translation is everywhere in the written press: journalists often select their topics from existing texts like newswire or newspaper articles. This thesis focuses on the selection of newspaper articles for re-publication, after they have been translated, in another newspaper, another country and for new readers. It includes an overall presentation of two important factors in the selection and the elimination of press articles: ideology and power relations among languages. Ideology is examined from four different points of view: ideology and society---that is the influence of society and the workplace on the journalist; personal ideology---that is the journalist's personal ideas and life experience; newspapers' ideology---that is the editorial policy and those who create it; and finally, ethics. Under examination as well are certain techniques that are frequently applied in newspaper translation and that affect text selection (adding, suppressing, contextualising). These may result in a new shorter article or in a "whole" translation. A French weekly newspaper, Courrier international, has been chosen as a case study, because it is made of translated articles from newspapers around the world. And the study focuses on one topic: pateras arriving on the Canary Islands in the summer of 2006, in other words, illegal immigrants leaving the coasts of Western Africa and Maghreb and heading for Spain. Three corpora are compared: the "local corpus" built on articles from six newspapers (two from Senegal, two from Algeria and two from Spain); the "French corpus" built on articles from two French newspapers; and the "translational corpus" built on articles from Courrier international.

Multilingual films, such as Lost in Translation (2003), have recently become a phenomenon. Various popular television series also feature an element of multilingualism in their plots. This inclusion of the cultural "other" and its language, specifically, the dubbing into French of "French situations" in American television shows, presents an interesting challenge for audiovisual translation (AVT). In my study, I begin by discussing research on multilingualism in literature, film and television. I then discuss the relevance of translation studies concepts to AVT, and apply them in examining the dubbing into French of American television shows that include situations involving the French language. I describe and analyze how this challenge has been met, where the "other" in the original is the television viewer for whom the show is translated. My work studies the many different strategies used to deal with a very specific translation problem in the field of AVT.

Language has been seen as a central pillar to ethnic identity. When languages are at risk, therefore, the relationship between language and ethnic identity can become particularly salient (Edwards, 1991). Heritage languages, in particular, often face what has been called a language shift, where the heritage language is replaced by the dominant language. When the heritage language is threatened, what happens to the heritage identity? In an attempt to answer this question, this study investigated the relationship between language and ethnic identity among 75 Gaelic learners living in eastern Nova Scotia. In order to identify the specific processes of heritage language use, the Gaelic learners were compared to non-learners of Gaelic and French learners living in the same milieu. Path analyses indicated that, among Gaelic learners, there is an initial separation of language and ethnic identity, but that, over time, ethnic identity is a direct outcome of language use. This finding was unique to the heritage language learners. Further, desired language vitality was a direct precursor to contact, language confidence, Gaelic and Anglophone identity and willingness to communicate among Gaelic learners. Actual language vitality played no role in the language use process among Gaelic learners, suggesting that vitality perceptions that are egocentric are better predictors of language use than those that are exocentric. The implications of these findings are discussed not only in relation to the future of Gaelic in Nova Scotia, but also to the survival of heritage languages in general.

Dans cette thèse, l'auteur met en lumière l'interdependance logique de deux projets philosophiques: celui d'une détermination des conditions de satisfaction de l'usage du langage et celui de l'élaboration d'un modèle d'authenticité qui prend en compte les avancées récentes dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage. Si la définition des conditions de l'authenticité permet de fonder et de préciser les conditions de l'usage satisfaisant du langage, ces dernières déterminent en retour concrètement l'idéal d'authenticité. Ainsi, pour déterminer comment l'être de langage que nous sommes peut actualiser ses possibilités les plus propres, nous ne pouvons faire abstraction d'une définition solide des conditions pragmatiques de l'usage satisfaisant du langage. Chacun des chapitres qui composent cette thèse contribue a tirer au clair les relations entre l'usage satisfaisant du langage et l'idéal d'authenticité. L'auteur prend d'abord pour point de départ des analyses concrètes de l'usage du langage. Ce sont alors les analyses de la philosophie du langage ordinaire de J. L. Austin qui sont mises a contribution. Mais pour définir l'ensemble des maximes qui doivent être considerées en tant que règles constitutives et normatives de l'usage satisfaisant du langage, l'auteur s'inspire des analyses de P. Grice et de F. Armengaud. Trois exigences fondamentales (veridicité, pertinence et clarté) sont ainsi définies et explicitées sous la forme de quinze maximes normatives. Celles-ci s'appliquent certes à l'usage du langage, mais aussi plus généralement à l'action. De là, l'auteur élabore un modèle d'authenticité qui peut à la fois intégrer et rendre compte des conditions de l'usage satisfaisant du langage. L'éthique téléologique et l'ontologie de l'ipséité sont alors mises a contribution. Mais pour faire le pont entre les conditions de l'authenticité et celles de l'usage satisfaisant du langage, l'auteur situe, au coeur de la quête d'authenticité, l'actualisation d'une compétence pragmatique essentielle. S'inspirant de l'approche pragmatique de F. Jacques puis de celle herméneutique de P. Ricoeur, l'auteur propose un modèle d'authenticité novateur ayant comme clef de voute la définition de cette compétence pragmatique essentielle. Ainsi s'établissent au passage un ensemble de rapports entre différents types de discours philosophiques et un dialogue fécond entre les auteurs qui les ont pratiqués.