ABSTRACT
This early essay already contains the kernels of Godard’s material-semiotic theory of translation. Speaking from a gendered standpoint, Godard starts by distancing herself from an “anti-theoretical” view of translation as mechanical substitution or approximation (equivalence). Turning to linguistic and literary theories of dynamic communication, she re-defines translation as a creative process based on the model of reading as decoding and active recoding of meaning. She then explores the libidinal investment – what she calls “the illicit pleasures” – of translation, involved in her own practice of translating Brossard and Maillet. She unpacks several analogies applied to the translator as a puzzle-solver, monster, and ventriloquist.
