http://www.ulbsibiu.ro
http://www.ulbsibiu.ro/ro/facultati/litere/

 

› Current Issue

  
  › Volume 5, December 2004
Archive:
 
Volume 32, 2019
Volume 25, 2015
Volume 24, 2015
 
Volume 23, 2014
 ›Volume 22, 2014
 ›
Volume 21, 2013
 ›
Volume 20, 2013
 ›Volume 19, 2012
 ›Volume 18, 2012
 ›Volume 17, 2011
 ›Volume 16, 2011
 ›Volume 15, 2010

 Volume 14, 2010
 ›
Volume 13, 2009
 ›Volume 12, 2009
 ›Volume 11, 2008
 ›
Volume 10, 2008
 ›Volume 9, 2007
 ›Volume 8, 2007

 Volume 7, 2006
 Volume 6, 2005
 Volume 5, 2004
 Volume 4, 2001
 Volume 3, 2000
 Volume 2, 1999
 Volume 1, 1999

 
 

 

“One does what one can (on fait ce qu’on peut)”:
Joseph Conrad as Translator


 

RANDALL STEVENSON

University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Abstract
 

Joseph Conrad’s fiction – Lord Jim especially – contains several instances of characters struggling with translation, or with foreign languages more generally, or transferring speech or syntactic patterns from one language to another. These features have much to suggest about Conrad’s own multilingual early life and his eventual adoption of English for his writing. They also have wider implications concerning his vision and tactics as a novelist – including his reliance on French fiction, and his regular emphases on cultural difference and on the cognitive and epistemological challenges of communicating experience. These challenges, in turn, initiate or anticipate concerns widely apparent in modernist fiction, indicating stresses in an advancing, globalised modernity which made its innovations so necessary. Appreciating Conrad’s interest in translation elucidates and confirms Fredric Jameson’s judgement of his writing as a key factor in the emergence of modernism in the early twentieth century.

Keywords:

Joseph Conrad, translation, Lord Jim, French language, modernism, globalisation

 

BACK