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French to English: from Benoît Peeters' "Four Conceptions of the Page" ("Quatre conceptions de la planche," in _Case, planche, récit: lire la bande dessinée_ (Paris: Casterman, 1998) General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - French Au début de ma carrière, on vous imposait un découpage tel que la planche puisse se diviser et s'agencer de différentes façons. C'est-à-dire que la page, qui était idéalement composée de quatre bandes de trois dessins, devait pouvoir se recomposer en strips quotidiens, ou même en colonnes. Cela a notamment été le cas pour Buck Danny, dans Spirou ; cet agencement était censé permettre des reventes multiples d'une histoire.
Chaque jour, une bande de trois ou quatre images, d'un format strictement constant, venait donc s'ajouter à toutes celles qui précédaient. Lorsque survenait une édition en volume — ce qui n'était que rarement le cas —, les strips se trouvaient rassemblés l'un en dessous de l'autre sur une page qui n'était rien d'autre qu'un lieu aléatoire, impensé lors de l'élaboration.
Translation - English At the beginning of my career, they imposed a format on you so that the page could be divided and arranged in various ways. That is to say, the page, which was ideally made up of four tiers of three panels, was to be capable of being recomposed into daily strips or even into columns. This was particularly the case for Buck Danny, in Spirou; that arrangement was supposed to allow multiple resales of a story. Each day, a tier of three or four images, of a strictly constant format, thus came to be added to all those which preceded it. When the strip got edited into a volume – which was not seldom the case – the strips were placed one below the other on a page which was nothing other than a random space, not thought of during their development.
French to English: "Little Political Catechism" (from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "Petit catechisme politique," in _De la Justice_) General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: Economics
Source text - French L’escompte des lettres de change est un service que les banques particulières se font payer à un prix assez élevé, mais pour lequel la Banque de France, qui a le privilége d’émettre des billets au porteur et de les faire partout accepter, n’exige qu’un salaire de deux tiers moindre. Et il est prouvé que ce salaire pourrait être réduit encore de neuf dixièmes. Nouvelle économie obtenue, par conséquent nouvelle force créée, du fait des relations sociales. Car qui dit économie de frais, dit, en toute chose, diminution de force inerte ou de poids mort, par conséquent augmentation de force vive.
Translation - English The discount of bills of exchange is a service for which particular banks are made to pay a rather high price, but for which the Bank of France, which has the privilege to issue bearer orders and to make them universally accepted, only charges a fee two thirds lower. And it is proven that these fees could be reduced further by nine tenths. A new degree of economy is obtained, consequently a new force is created, by virtue of social relations. For whoever says a saving in expenses, says, in all things, a reduction in inert force or dead weight, and consequently an increase in vital force.
French to English: from the entry on "Eternal Return" ("Éternel Retour") in Daniel Colson's _Petit lexique philosophique de l'anarchisme de Proudhon à Deleuze_ (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2001)) General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: Philosophy
Source text - French Il faut toujours écouter attentivement le discours humaniste, entendre ce qu’il dit vraiment, derrière ses principes et ses indignations. Selon lui, Nietzsche, avec sa conception de l’éternel retour, rabattrait l’humanité sur la nature, sur ses forces aveugles et ses instincts impérieux, cela au mépris de la spécificité humaine, de la culture et du sens. Selon ce discours, Nietzsche et l’éternel retour soumettraient l’humanité à l’éternelle répétition du même. Selon ce discours, ils priveraient l’être humain de toute liberté. Mais derrière ces paroles on peut en entendre d’autres qui disent exactement l’inverse.
La culture et le symbolique tout d’abord. L’humanisme se réclame et s’enorgueillit du sens, de la signification. Ce sens transcende l’ordre du monde, en donnant à l’humanité « cette solitude de l’homme dans l’ensemble du monde extra-humain 1 ». Mais il est également transcendant à l’être humain lui-même chez qui il opère, à la façon kantienne, sous la forme impérative d’une Loi, d’un impératif catégorique qui le distingue radicalement du monde mais dont il n’est pas le maître2. C’est pourquoi, contrairement à ce qu’ils affirment par ailleurs, ce que Weininger et Löwith reprochent à Nietzsche, avec tant de véhémence, ce n’est pas seulement de vouloir que le passé revienne mais surtout de vouloir, par ce retour, redéfinir indéfiniment le « sens » de ce passé, de prétendre que sa signification n’est jamais fixée une fois pour toutes. Ce que l’humanisme reproche à Nietzsche et à l’étemel retour ce n’est pas de priver l’humanité du pouvoir d’interprétation, de la soumettre au destin aveugle des forces et des instincts du monde, mais au contraire de la doter d’une capacité infinie à interpréter et réinterpréter la signification des événements et des faits. Ce dont l’humanisme accuse Nietzsche ce n’est pas de priver l’humanité de raison d’être, mais au contraire de lui en fournir une infinité et, surtout, de refuser de la soumettre à un sens venu d’ailleurs, un sens univoque et impératif voulu par Dieu, définitivement ; pire, d’inviter l’humanité à s’emparer de cette puissance d’interprétation si mal employée et de la multiplier à l’infini dans un devenir où tout est toujours à reprendre, à redire et à réévaluer de nouveau.
1. Karl Löwith, op. cit., p. 198.
2. « Et c’est pour cela aussi que [l’homme] a en lui une loi, c’est pourquoi il est lui-même loi et non arbitraire inconstant. […] Voilà toute la grandeur terrible : son obéissance au devoir n’a pas d’autre sens. […] il doit suivre l’exigence catégorique, inexorable, ne souffrant aucune négociation, qui est en lui. » Et s’il voudrait encore agir, s’inquiéter, rire, danser ou se révolter, qu’il sache une fois pour toutes que « l’homme […] de Kant ne rit pas et ne danse pas, il ne hurle ni ne jubile », puisque le seul « oui » qu’il a à donner c’est un oui à sa solitude et à la Loi qui la fonde, « c’est là seulement qu’est la morale ».
Translation - English One must always listen attentively to humanist discourse to hear what it is really saying, behind its principles and indignations. According to this discourse, Nietzsche, with his concept of the eternal return, would reduce humanity to nature, to its blind forces and imperious instincts, with contempt for human specificity, for culture and meaning. According to this discourse, Nietzsche and the eternal return would subject humanity to the eternal repetition of the same. According to this discourse, they would deprive the human being of any freedom. But behind these words one can hear others which say exactly the reverse.
Culture and the symbolic first of all. Humanism takes the side of meaning, of signification, and and prides itself on doing so. This meaning transcends the order of the world by giving to humanity its “proud loneliness […] in the whole of the extra-human world.”1 But it also transcends the human being within which it operates, in Kantian fashion, under the imperative form of a Law, a categorical imperative that radically distinguishes it from the world, but of which it is not the master.2 This is why, as opposed to what they affirm elsewhere, what Weininger and Löwith reproach Nietzsche so vehemently for is not only wanting the past to return but especially wanting, through this return, to indefinitely redefine the “meaning” of this past, to claim that its signification is never fixed once and for all. What humanism reproaches Nietzsche and the eternal return for is not depriving humanity of the power of interpretation, subjecting it to the blind destiny of the world’s forces and instincts, but on the contrary for equipping it with an infinite capacity to interpret and reinterpret the signification of events and facts. Humanism does not accuse Nietzsche of depriving humanity of its raison d’être, but on the contrary, of providing it infinitely, and, especially, of refusing to subject it to a meaning that comes from elsewhere, a univocal and imperative meaning definitively intended by God; worse, of inviting humanity to seize this power of interpretation, so poorly employed, and to multiply it ad infinitum in a becoming in which everything is always to be resumed, repeated and revalued anew.
1. Karl Löwith, op cit., p. 198 [Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same 162].
2. “And therefore he [man] also has a law within himself, therefore he is himself all law and no gushing arbitrariness. […] That is the gruesome greatness: it makes no further sense for him to obey the call of duty […] But he must comply with the relentless, nonnegotiable categorical demand in himself.” And if he would still like to act, to worry, laugh, dance or revolt, that he knows once and for all that “Kant's loneliest man does not laugh and does not dance, he does not howl and does not rejoice” since the sole “yes” that he has to give it is a yes to his solitude and the Law which founds it: “only that is morality” (Otto Weininger, Des fins ultimes, op. cit., p. 97, quoted by Löwith, op cit., p. 199, emphasis in O.W.) [Weininger, Sex and Character, quoted in Löwith, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same 162].
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Years of experience: 26. Registered at ProZ.com: May 2012. Became a member: Apr 2016.
I have been translating French texts into English for more than a decade as part of my academic research, joining a 2004 philosophy colloquium in Lyon, teaching and lecturing about the bande dessinée, and spending a 2007 sabbatical working on Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s De la Justice. In 2013, I completed a four-month, 172,732-word translation project for Cadenza Academic Translations, handling a steady stream of articles in professional journals of sociology, history, anthropology, and philosophy; the following year, I translated 49,480 words of texts in commercial fields ranging from tourism and sports to industrial products for Araxi Translations. Prior to this, I edited and proofread translations of Proudhon for AK Press and translated French passages for Wolfgang Eckhardt’s The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Max in the International Working Men's Association (PM Press, 2015). I recently served on a dissertation committee for Rubén Pérez-Hidalgo (Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics, University of Illinois at Chicago) and am revising my translation of Daniel Colson’s Petit lexique philosophique de l’anarchisme de Proudhon à Deleuze for publication by Minor Compositions.
Member since Apr '16
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