Abstract
The reformulation of the original Arabic text by the 18th and 19th century French translator testifies to this translator’s commitments to the Arabic original as well as to his future French-speaking audience. It is indeed a text determined by a number of constituent elements, whether in form, style or substance, ideas which naturally follow the culture and the environment. To illustrate these ideas, we treat the case of the translation of Thousand and One Nights. Antoine Galland, the orientalist scholar and the first French translator of these oriental tales. The Thousand and One Nights, Arabic tales from oral and written sources, are thus fixed in the classic French writing which takes as a model the language and the style of civil and literate spiritual conversation, thus reaching, thanks to the singularly inventive talent of a learned man of letters, with the status of literature. His method of translation, already presented in his previous translations, he specifies in the Warnings. It concerns the desire to put the decorum and delicacy of the French language before fidelity to the original.
Recommended Citation
HAMMOUMI, Khalid
(2021)
"The translation of the oriental tale: The translator has a decisive cultural role,"
Faits de Langue et Société (FLS): Vol. 7:
Iss.
1, Article 8.
Available at:
https://scholarhub.univh2c.ma/fls/vol7/iss1/8