A (Future) Translator Faces the Text: A Hermeneutical Reading

Abstract

The translation is examined from both a diachronic and synchronic point of view. In the first case, there is namely a “before perspective when the text translated does not exist yet”. This case does, however, include its own after, not concerning yet the text having been translated, which is to be examined as a second step in a synchronic way. So as to appreciate the first situation of a translator facing a text, we find a useful tool to be F. Rastier’s “translator’s critical activity” enabling him “to pass from a retrospective hermeneutics... to a prospective hermeneutics”. Here the translation represents an act of reading and decrypting, followed by an exploration of the target language field. We would like to emphasize the idea of a code or codes to be decrypted and a hermeneutic quest for the author’s vouloir dire.