Covert plural translation: the re-translation of literary classics

Even though literary translators are almost universally asked to defer to their source authors, there is at least one respect in which practitioners like to think of their work as primary and original – i.e., in its possible relation to, and derivation from, other translators’ achievements. When a translator is working on a literary text important enough to warrant re-translation (normally, the kind of work that is termed a classic), he/she will rarely go beyond the occasional nod to previous versions, to be smuggled as inconspicuously as possible in the paratext and/or the notes. Given that there is ample evidence for the influence exercised by translating predecessors, such passing references seem to be the product of translational anxiety of influence. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of re-translation as subtle revision or open strife, Morini’s article proposes a definition of the whole process as a form of covert plural translation.