ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Sandra Garbarino provides an analysis of the two existing translations of Invisible Cities into French. Drawing on the complicated start of Calvino translations in France, which is illustrated by the significant number of translators of his first works, Garbarino unravels the details of the process that led to the author himself choosing Jean Thibaudeau as his translator. The comparison of the two translations is in part inspired by Berman’s “deforming tendencies”, but it is mainly an analysis of how the texts resonate with four of the literary qualities – lightness, quickness, exactitude and visibility – that are foregrounded in Calvino’s seminal essays in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Garbarino shows that both translations, the first published in 1974 and the second in 2012, illustrate the translational norms of their times: Thibaudeau’s translation embodies a freer and less faithful attitude towards the source text, while Martin Rueff’s retranslation provides a more respectful translation by adopting primarily foreignising strategies.
