Antoine Berman (; 24 June 1942 – 22 November 1991) was a French

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and

theorist A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...

of translation.

Life

Antoine Berman was born in the small town of Argenton-sur-Creuse, near

Limoges Limoges (, , ; oc, Lemòtges, locally ) is a city and Communes of France, commune, and the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne Departments of France, department in west-central France. It was the administrative capital of the former Limousin region ...

, to a Polish-Jewish father and a French-Yugoslav mother. After living in hiding during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, the family settled near

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. Berman attended the Lycée Montmorency. Later he studied philosophy at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

, where he met his wife Isabelle. In 1968, they moved to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

where they remained for five years. On their return to Paris, Berman directed a research program and taught several seminars at the Collège international de philosophie (International College of Philosophy) in Paris, and published his major theoretical work, ''L'Epreuve de l'étranger'' (''The Experience of the Foreign'') in 1984. He died in 1991, at age 49, writing his last book in bed.

Work

Antoine Berman's "trials of the foreign", which originates from German Romanticism (especially

Friedrich Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional ...

), tries to show the "deforming tendencies" inherent in the act of (literary) translation. Berman's 'twelve deforming tendencies' in translation were: *Rationalisation *Clarification *Expansion *Ennoblement *Qualitative impoverishment *Quantitative impoverishment *The destruction of rhythms *The destruction of underlying networks of signification *The destruction of linguistic patternings *The destruction of vernacular network or their exoticisation *The destruction of expressions and idioms *The effacement of the superimposition of languages Lawrence Venuti, an American translation theorist, has used Berman's concepts to write a genealogy of translation in an Anglo-American context to introduce the "foreignizing" strategy that is normatively suppressed in mainstream translation.

Influence

Berman was active in philosophical and literary circles, nevertheless he has been influential in translatology, especially in

translation criticism Translation criticism is the systematic study, evaluation, and interpretation of different aspects of translated works. It is an interdisciplinary academic field closely related to literary criticism and translation theory. It includes marking ...

. He claimed that there may be many different methods for translation criticism as there are many translation theories; therefore he entitled a model of his own as an analytical path, which can be modulated according to the specific objectives of each analyst and adapted to all standardized text types.

Books

* ''Moi, le Suprême'' (translation of

Augusto Roa Bastos Augusto Roa Bastos (13 June 1917 – 26 April 2005) was a Paraguayan novelist and short story writer. As a teenager he fought in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, and he later worked as a journalist, screenwriter and professor. ...

' ''Yo, el supremo''). Pierre Belfond, Le Livre De Poche, Buenos Aires, 1979 * ''L'épreuve de l'étranger: Culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin.'' Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Translated into English by Stefan Heyvaert as ''The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany''. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992 * ''Lettres à Fouad El-Etr sur le romantisme allemand.'' Paris: PUF, 1991 * '' Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne.'' Paris: Gallimard, 1995. Translated into English by

Françoise Massardier-Kenney Françoise Massardier-Kenney is a translator and translation scholar. She is the Director of the Institute for Applied Linguistics and Professor of Modern and Classical Language Studies at Kent State University. Her scholarly work includes servin ...

as ''Toward a Translation Criticism: John Donne''. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009 * ''La traduction et la lettre, ou L'auberge du lointain.'' Paris: Seuil, 1999 * '' L'âge de la traduction. "La tâche du traducteur" de Walter Benjamin, un commentaire.'' Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2008. Translated into English by Chantal Wright as ''The Age of Translation''. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018

References

Bibliography

* Berman, Antoine (1999). ''La Traduction-poésie''. Edited by Martine Broda. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg. * Nouss, Alexis (2001). ''Antoine Berman, aujourd'hui'' (Antoine Berman for our time). Montréal:

Université McGill McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univ ...

. * Davreu, Robert.
Antoine Berman, penseur de la traduction
' * * Farrokhi, Mahdi (2009). Les oeuvres complètes d’Antoine Berman. Étude bibliographique. (A full bibliography.) In Equivalences 36:1-2, pp. 183–197. https://www.persee.fr/doc/equiv_0751-9532_2009_num_36_1_1424

External links

Books by Antoine Berman at Amazon.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berman, Antoine 1942 births 1991 deaths French people of Polish-Jewish descent French people of Yugoslav descent People from Indre University of Paris alumni French translation scholars 20th-century French translators 20th-century French male writers French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French philosophers