Traduire J.M. Coetzee

Volume entitled: Translation-Transnation 1994-2004. Dix ans d' echanges littéraires entre l'Afrique du Sud et la France / Ten years of literary exchange between South Africa and France. Numéro special Rassemblé et dirigé par Jean-Pierre RICHARD, Université Paris 7, en collaboration avec Denise GODWIN, rédactrice de l'AFSSA Special issue collated and edited by Jean-Pierre RICHARD, University of Paris 7, in collaboration with AFSSA editor, Denise GODWIN This piece is a trip down memory lane, through almost 30 years of translating half of the novels of J.M. Coetzee, starting with Dusklands in 1976, by hand and sitting side by side with the young writer, who has since been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (2003). Examples are given of the sort of challenges encountered in translating Coetzee's texts and of what could daringly be called the cooperative mode to which, as a translator himself, the author was amenable.