Derrida, What Is a Relevant Transaltion

What Is a "Relevant" Translation? Author(s): Jacques Derrida and Lawrence Venuti Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Winter, 2001), pp. 174-200 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344247 Accessed: 22/03/2009 14:03
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What Is a "Relevant" Translation?Jacques Derrida

Translated by Lawrence Venuti

ThenmusttheJew bemerciful. (I leave untranslated this sentence from Portia in The Merchantof Venice.) seasons Portia will also say, Whenmercy justice, which I shall later proto translate as Quand le pardonrelevelajustice . . . pose How dare one speak of translation before you who, in your vigilant awareness of the immense stakes-and not only ofthe fate of literaturemake this sublime and impossible task your desire, your anxiety, your travail, your knowledge, and your knowing skill? How dare I proceed before you, knowing myself to be at once rude and inexperienced in this domain, as someone who, from the very first moment, from his very first attempts (which I could recount to you, as the English saying goes, off the record), shunned thetranslator's metier, his beautiful and terrifying responsibility, his insolvent duty and debt, without ceasing to tell himself "never ever again": "no, precisely, I would never dare, I should never,could never,would never manage to pull it off"? If I dare approach this subject before you, it is because this very discouragement, this premature renunciation of which I speak and from which I set out,this declaration of insolvency before translation was always, in me, the other face of a jealous and admiring love, a passion for what summons, loves, provokes, and defies translation while running up an infinite debt in its service, an admiration for those men and women who, to my mind, are the only ones who know how to read and writeCriticalInquiry27 (Winter 2001) ? 2000 by The University ofChicago. 0093-1896/01/2702-0002$02.00.

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translators. Which is another way of recognizing a summons to translation at the very threshold of all reading-writing. Hence the infinity of the loss, the insolvent debt. Much like what is owed to Shylock, insolvency itself. Speaking, teaching, writing (which I also consider myprofession and which, after all, like many here among you, engages me body and soul almost constantly)-I know that these activities are meaningful in my eyes only in the proof of translation, through an experience that I will never distinguish from experimentation. As for the word (for the word will be my theme)-neither grammar nor lexicon hold an interest for me-I believe I can say that if I love the...