Thursday, July 22, 2004
(12:19 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Thursday Translation Attempt
In addition to the famous Friday Afternoon Confessional, I am now instituting the Thursday Translation Attempt. The expected format is that I will display a French text, give my best attempt at a translation, then put a "real" translation for comparison. In the hope that some of my readers are French scholars, I will also add any questions I had.This week's passage is from Alain Badiou's "Thèses sur l’art contemporain". Though I did translate the whole thing, I will only subject you to one thesis:
Il y a nécessairement pluralité des arts, et quelles que soient les intersections imaginables, aucune totalisation de cette pluralité n’est, elle, imaginable.My translation:
There is necessarily a plurality of the arts, and whatever may be the imaginable intersections, no totalization of this plurality is imaginable.Official translation (handed out before the event at which Badiou presented the theses):
There is necessarily a plurality of arts, and however we may imagine the ways in which the arts might intersect there is no imaginable way of totalising this plurality.Mine is slightly clunkier and more "literal," but it doesn't seem to be wrong. My only question is from the final phrase: "aucune totalisation de cette pluralité n’est, elle, imaginable." What is that "elle" doing there?
