The Need for Retranslating Literature

Abstract

The current paper addresses the issue of the necessity for producing retranslations of a literary source text into the same target language. Firstly, it briefly reviews a selection of scholarly publications with a view to clarifying the meanings of the term ‘retranslation’ and to identify factors that underlie this necessity and the strategies translators resort to during the process. Secondly, the paper proceeds with a qualitative analysis of two Romanian versions produced by the same translator (Petru Comarnescu) of Daniel Defoe’s novel entitled “Robinson Crusoe”.