Regard complexe sur la traduction comme réécriture de textes infinis

Though there are theoretical frameworks in Translation Studies and in Adaptation Studies to problematize textuality in its broadest sense, thinking translation studies out of the prism of linguistic transfers between two cultures/two languages is challenging. When audiovisual matters are studied, publications focus on book-to-screen adaptations, or on the linguistic challenges of multimodality (Article 2). Some studies explore cities in translation, cities in performance, or translation as performance, but in Translation Studies, performance as translation remains understudied, though Cultural Studies, Sociology or Performance Studies have established that identity can be translated in clothes, in lighting, in colour, in food, among others (Article 1). This thesis’s transdisciplinary approach draws on concepts from Translation Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Performance Studies. Combining them enables me to analyze understudied translation phenomena from a complex perspective. I study, among others, forms of re-writings that are generally not considered as translations, such as transmedial or performative narrative extensions of sometimes multiple texts with non-verbal elements, such as identities (Articles 1,3). This shows the presence and the importance of translational processes in cultural identity transmission across history (Articles 1,3). For the purposes of this research, I have observed a number of performances, sometimes as a participant, participated in immersive experiences, and conducted interdisciplinary reflexive dialogic interviews with artists, creators or with the family of the subject of a performance.  My observations led me to provide the definition of performative translation as a set of intersemiotic multimodal processes of complex texts such as identities, not limited to verbal elements. The translation fabric of transmedial universes rarely has linear expansions; it oscillates between past and present, ideologies, using various narrative modes. I described these ever-growing narrative universes as infinite texts, evolving in constant disorder. This thesis by publications is composed of a General Introduction (written in French), in which I present the three articles (written in English), then explain my theoretical and methodological approaches. The first article explores the performative representations of political and artistic identities, with the examples of Canadian songstress Feist and « post-Mexican » artivist Guillermo Gómez Peña; it provides definitions of performative translation and infinite text. The second article calls for exploring transmedia storyverses from a translational point of view; it emphasizes the risk for Translation and Adaptation Studies to be invisibilized from ongoing academic conversations on new narrative modes if they do not. The third article adopts a complex Translation Studies point of view to analyze the narrative universe of the Baroness Pontalba, the New Orleans famous Creole builder (Article 3). These articles aim at showing the interest of studying diverse narrative forms from a translational point of view inspired by Complexity thinking.

Keyphrases: Adaptation, Performance, Translation, Rewriting, Complexity, Transmedia