As a rule, translation “nurtures” a text, extends its genealogy across cultural and historical divides. The strange account of this article is perhaps the exception that proves the rule. We’ll see a seventy-year old Jorge Luis Borges put heads together with a young Harvard man by the name of Norman Thomas di Giovanni and “re-write the slate clean,” translate old texts for the purpose of “sticking it” to them, suppressing them, even consigning them to oblivion. The collaboration was a bit of inspired naughtiness that we’ll call “translational infamy.” It had enduring consequences, for the good and bad, on the characters populating Borges’s writings and his private life. This equation of translation and oblivion, we’ll see it play out in Borges’s older fictions, specifically Pierre Menard; in the editorial logistics of his collaboration with Di Giovanni; in the creation—and simultaneous translation—of new fictions (Brodie’s Report); and, perhaps most interestingly, in the details of his own biography.En principe, la traduction ménage son objet, cherchant à lui faire franchir intact les frontières culturelles et historiques du pays de destination. Les curieux faits relatés dans cet article sont sans doute l’exception qui confirme la règle. À soixante-dix ans, Jorge Luis Borges s’associe à un jeune homme de Harvard, Norman Thomas di Giovanni, pour effacer l’ardoise de ses premiers écrits, pour les traduire à seule fin de les malmener, de les supprimer, voire même de les vouer à l’oubli. Leur collaboration espiègle, que nous qualifions d’« infamie traductionnelle », ne va pas sans conséquences - heureuses et malheureuses - tant sur les personnages de Borges que sur sa vie privée. Nous verrons que l’équation traduction / disparition opère dans les premières oeuvres de l’écrivain, surtout dans Pierre Menard, mais aussi dans les pratiques éditoriales adoptées avec Di Giovanni ; dans la création – et la traduction en parallèle – de nouvelles oeuvres (Brodie's Report) ; enfin, plus intéressant encore, jusque dans les détails de sa biographie

Méthodologie de la recherche en traductologie : applications Volume 25, numéro 1, 1er semestre 2012 URI : id.erudit.org/iderudit/1015347ar

Woody Allen made his transition from stand-up comedy to cinema not as an author, but as a dialogue adaptor and film dubber. In 1966, he transformed a Japanese spy thriller into an American comedy by removing the film’s original dialogue and soundtracks, and then synchronizing a new dialogue of his own penning with the original film’s images. The result wasWhat’s Up, Tiger Lily?(1966), a film where Allen forces a cast of unwitting Japanese characters to act out one narrative visibly as they speak out another audibly. The film suggests a number of intriguing theoretical vectors for those interested in the subject of screen translation as a mode of intercultural appropriation (or misappropriation).What’s Up, Tiger Lily?,first of all, is a comedic exploration of authorial status in cinema. Indeed, the lesser status of “re-writer” becomes Allen’s cover, a way to avoid taking responsibility for a film that not only indulges in the most counterintuitive of experiments in the sound-image relationship, but also creates a particularly condescending form of Asian exploitation. Perhaps most important, however, is the perspective that the film offers on the voice-image antagonism implicit in any foreign-language dubbed film. Allen’s film may well offer a way for theory to transcend the aura of negativity with which academic discourse tends to surround the practice of dubbing, specifically by putting the latter to use in the service of intercultural parody. Michael Cronin’s latest work on globalization and Hollywood (2009) offers some helpful concepts for examining Allen’s film.