A Translator's Note: On the Voices of Love or, Why Translate Roland Barthes Again?

Abstract

Timothy Mathews reflects upon the practice of translation and translating again, and on the specific qualities of a consistent and renewed encounter with the text of Barthes Fragments of a Lover's Discourse. The affective dimensions and the critical implications of this encounter are foregrounded. Following the Note, he proposes new translations of a selection of ‘figures’ of the discourse of love as originally proposed by Roland Barthes in the work Fragments d’un discours amoureux (1977).