Some linguistic and cultural difficulties in the translation of «L’Épopée des Trois Royaumes» by Luo Guanzhong

Abstract

With these retrospective reflections, inspired by translinguistic and transcultural hermeneutics, on the essential linguistic and cultural difficulties encountered during the translation process of the famous Chinese epic and historical narrative, L'Epopée des Trois Royaumes de Luo Guanzhong (1330 -1400?), from a mother tongue, Chinese, to an acquired language, French, two languages ​​that belong to two very distant linguistic groups, this article, therefore, seeks to elucidate some of the unavoidable problems of translation both in China as in the West: the definition of translation according to Steiner, basic criteria of translation according to Yan Fu and Qian Zhongshu, the role and objective of the translator according to Proust, etc., and always without ceasing to insist on the specific features of a figurative language such as Chinese, as well as in the ambivalence and polysemy of Chinese and Western cultures, with the purpose of providing certain methodological clues or advice icons for its translation and to demonstrate that despite the multiple difficulties both at a linguistic and cultural level, translation is possible if the translator knows how to appropriate the genius of the two languages ​​involved in this formidable process of verbal alchemy, and knows how to transcribe, or how to manage, to revive, in its translation, the deep meaning that the translated work contained and communicated.