ABSTRACT
Literary translation is defined by what it is as often as by what it is not. It is a concept whose polyvalence reflects the contested ground occupied by the practices it encompasses. Throughout history, it has been taken as a model for literary creation, or as a resource for nation building; it has been reviled due to the servility it is associated with, or prohibited as a threat to national integrity; it has been used as an instrument of oppression and resistance. Literary translation is contended ground more in terms of what is does than what it is. And it is so because it is a social practice; it depends on human and institutional agents, it is highly codified and regulated. Traditionally, translation has been understood as the accurate reproduction of an original based on relationships of equivalence. However, according to Jacques Derrida, we never get such transfer of pure signifieds from one language to another; what takes place is “a regulated transformation of one language by another, of one text by another” (Derrida 1981, 20). And, according to Paul St-Pierre, these regulations occur because translation is a form of discourse, “a linguistic event produced by a subject within a specific historical context” (St-Pierre 1993, 62).
