On the difficulty of translation...

Translating a piece of writing into another language is not an easy task. It asks for a perfect knowledge of both languages in order to stick with the writer’s thinking. Eugene Nida in 'The Theory and Practice of Translation' says that he evaluates on the quality of a translation by its ‘dynamic equivalence’. Such a concept retains the attention of scholars who want to see if the message of the original text has been transported so accurately ‘that the response of the receptor is essentially like the one of the original receptors’. However the question we may ask ourselves is how similar a translation can be. Such a question appears particularly accurate if we look at the problems that translators met for the various translations that have been made of Artaud’s work and Rowell’s doubts on the possibility of understanding Artaud when reading it in another language. Firstly we may say that a translation of Artaud’s oeuvre seems futile if we look at the incredible vitality of his language. As reading it in French, we obviously understand that his texts profits for being spoken aloud. Artaud was himself a fervent defender of places where he could read aloud his texts. Some of the conferences he did in la Sorbonne were consequently seen as live performances where the audience would take part into a disturbing feast of words and meanings never experienced before.

French’s version of ‘To have done with the judgement of God’:
(The consonances are here being explicitly shown to illustrate my thinking);
J’ai appRis hieR
(il faut croiRe que je RetaRde, ou peut-êtRe n’est-ce qu’un faux bRuit, l’un de ces sales Ragots comme il s’en colpoRte entRe évier et latRines à l’heuRe de la mise aux baquets des Repas une fois de plus inguRgités)

English’s version :
I learned yesterday(I must be behind the times, or perhaps it's only a false rumor,one of those pieces of spiteful gossip that are circulated between sink and latrine at the hour when meals that have been ingurgitated one more time are thrown in the slop buckets)

The repetition of the guttural sounds ‘R’, 'ER' and ‘QU’ (which are pronounced « K ») give a dynamic rhythm to the sentence which is not present at all in the English version. Thus we may assert that through translation we loose the content of the text by giving the meaning of the words regardless of the sonority of it.


Artaud shows a profound concern for the words which are heavy in significance to the point where the “words regain some of their old functions” by going back to the ancient and sometimes forgotten roots of the word itself. In his fascinating essay, Paule Thevenin examines the language of Artaud’s 1943 piece of writing ‘Le Rite du Peyotl chez les Tarahumaras’.
As an example, the use of the word ‘escharrasage’ which is formed with the ‘eschare’/or’escarre’(as the new spelling would suggest) which means ‘eschar’ and that Antonin Artaud consciously spells with two ‘r’ as it was originally written. Artaud not only added ‘-age’ to the word which would have formed ‘escharrage’ describing the action which causes ‘eschar’ on the body, but also added the suffix ‘raser’ which can be used not only in his common sense: ‘to shave’ but as a city or a building which has been completely demolished after a battle. “Thus ‘escharrasage’ is the action of producing eschars which ‘destroy’ where it’s being formed”. I here try to give some layers to Artaud’s language in French and give a taste of Paule Thevenin’s essay ‘Antonin Artaud, ce Desespere qui vous parle’ which also puts into perspective the word escharre with the whole extract.

As a result we may argue on the meaning of the glossolalias from an English perspective. English and French languages do not share the same approach to the sound « K » which haunts Artaud’s writings. The glossolalias contain more than a pure ‘symbolic function’; they constitute one of the many composites of an organic ensemble that Artaud formed to find ‘a language prior to language’ which goes beyond the intelligible when words are no longer sufficient.
Finally it seems that the glossolalias cannot cross the boundaries of the language and convey accurately the substancial meaning of it. It is therefore the only moment when translation seems no longer possible the glossolalias remaining as they have been originally written by Artaud. This incapacity to translate the glossolalias materializes in some ways the incapacity to translate fully a piece of writing which calls for a common share of values and knowledge of a certain culture in order to comprehend it.