Sonia Corbeil

Antoine Galland’s and Richard F. Burton’s retranslations of One Thousand and One Nights: A Translation Studies perspective

The tales of One Thousand and One Nights, of Indo-Persian origin, were for a long time transmitted orally, then put down on paper in Arabic from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Under the reign of Louis XIV, Antoine Galland collected these manuscripts, incorporating other stories, to create a highly sought-after compilation. Numerous retranslations followed. Richard F. Burton’s English version, to which he added his own anthropological notes and vision of the Arab world, greatly shocked his nineteenth-century Victorian readership; the work, however, sold very well. Our presentation will focus on the context, habitus, agents, skopos and translation strategies (source-oriented or target-oriented) involved in the retranslations of these tales. The role of editors, who shaped the destiny of this work through their editorial choices, in keeping with the tastes of their times, is significant. One Thousand and One Nights has evolved over time, but the public has never tired of these enchanting tales.

Sonia Corbeil is currently a Master’s student in Translation Studies in the Department of French Studies at Concordia University, where she also received a BA, Specialization in Translation with a Minor in Spanish Translation in 2013. During her studies, she created a blog linking terminology and the concept of a knowledge economy (corbeilsonia.wordpress.com) and co-wrote an article on Termwiki published in Circuit magazine. She began her career as a Part-time Instructor at Concordia in the fall of 2014 and has worked as a freelance translator since 2012. She has also served on the organizing committee for OTTIAQ’s Annual Conference for the past three years.