ABSTRACT
The idea of conceiving of translations as paratexts to original works is not one that has received much attention in translation studies, conflicting as it does with views of translations as creative works in their own right. However, interrogating this suggestion, and in particular its connections with other types of textual transcendence identified by Gérard Genette, offers a springboard for a fresh discussion of the nature of translation and its relation to literary criticism. In this chapter, I suggest that the key to opening up an exciting and innovative role for translation as commentary lies in conceiving of translations as hypertexts rather than as paratexts in Genette’s model. While Genette himself holds back from exploring the considerable productive potential of such a conceptualization, I demonstrate its power by examining Jacques Derrida’s practice of speaking, teaching and writing ‘dans l’épreuve de la traduction’ (through the trial of translation). Taking Derrida’s Spectres de Marx with its four translational hypertexts of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an example, I suggest that the commentary-generating power of translation is at its greatest when multiple translations are held together through a process of adjoining, making visible the “same-ly disparate demands” of the original text.
