TRADUCTION : « L'ÊTRE ET LE NÉANT »

greg   Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:14 pm GMT
C'est le titre d'une œuvre de Sartre, « L'être et le néant ».

À vous de le traduire !
Godot   Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:49 pm GMT
Portugu|es

"O ser e o nulo"
Vladimir NotNabokov   Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:03 am GMT
Abstract:
Already done :
In English: Being and Nothingness
In Portugues: O ser e o nulo

In Russian: Бытие и ничто.
In Dutch: Het zijn en het niet.
In German: Das Sein und das Nichts.
In French ! : L’être et le non-être.

A) I happened to come across this forum by accident or by chance (*) (see below for how):

B) In russian:
1) «Бытие и ничто» - the “official” translation.
2) «Бытие и неБытие» - another mathematically possible variant.
In fact,
Etre = cущество OR cуществование OR бытие.
Néant = неБытие OR ничто OR нет.
So, there exist at least 3x3=9 logical choices for a literal transplantation (one to one correspondence in the word level). Obviously, “literal” is intended for everyone who did not read the full text: me for example.
C) I have not read the book yet – neither in French nor in Russian. What a shame!

On the other hand, I bought the original book a few days ago, on amazone.fr.

In order to understand
Sartre’s Being and
Sartre’s Nothingness
That is, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness
Just as a matter of the transcendence of my Ego’s spineless, brainless and gutless
And thereafter, all Sartre’s works – not more nor less
And also the Sartre’s life as one, unique and indivisible mess
In other words all this stuff as a whole
Why hell do I need to fill the gap between my body and my soul ?

Very soon I hope to be able to certify the exactitude of the “official” Russian translation (the title and the text).

D) Now that’s how I came across this forum. I was searching for the official translation of « L'être et le néant » in Russian by making running Google’s query : “etre et le neant” + traductions.

E) Thanks to some similar google’s queries I found (I am not sure they are all ok) the following.
In Dutch:
Het zijn en het niet.
In German:
Das Sein und das Nichts.
F) And now last but not least:
In French !
L’être et le non-être.
See for exemple a définition of “être” given in Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Universel (FRENCH-FRENCH) , 1998, Précis :
Etre n.m. 1. PHILO Etat, qualité de ce qui est ; essence (pas celui dont le prix frise 8 euros litre). L’être et le non-être. 2. Tout ce qui par l’existence, par la vie. Les êtres animés. L’être humain etc. …
See also B) if you always hesitate between “fun” and “crazy.

G) Now, like greg, I am waiting for other translations.

(*) « Il convient, disait Sartre, que l’écrivain accepte sans réserve, mais non sans contrôle, la collaboration du hasard. » - Bernard Lallement. SARTRE L’IMPROBABLE SALAUD, 2005.
Viri Amaoro   Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:07 am GMT
I believe in Portuguese is "O ser e o nada"
Vladimir NotNabokov   Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:37 am GMT
I don’t speak Portuguese and I mentioned “O ser e o nulo” in my abstract simply because it was already proposed in this forum.
Once more, google is really a marvellous tool which permits to make a right judgement without even knowing one word in Portuguese.
So, for example, the following google query "O ser e o nada" returns 17 900 hits with a lot of references to Sartre.
On the other hand, the query "O ser e o nulo" returns only one hit – a reference to a probably wrong translation appeared on this forum.

For the sake of completeness, I used Google’s translation features (see Google -> plus -> Traduire/Translate/…. -> "O ser e o nulo" from Portuguese to English. The answer is “the being and the null one”. Very fun!
With “O ser e o nada” we have in English “the being and the nothing”. We see that the Google’s automatic translator doesn’t give us the same result as the “Being and Nothingness” proposed by a Guest and which I used in my verse. I believe that “Being and Nothingness” is the official translation.
Gringo   Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:53 am GMT
The title of the book is:

Sartre - "O Ser e o Nada". Lisboa. Círculo dos Leitores.1993

But you can translate it as :
O ser e o nulo.
O ser e o nada.
O ser e o não ser.

It all means the same thing, but the title of the book is "O ser e o Nada" I suppose it is what you wanted to know.
Vladimir   Mon Mar 06, 2006 3:13 pm GMT
Ok. Now I’d like to make a first sum up.

In English: Being and Nothingness (***)
In Portugues: O ser e o nulo
O ser e o nada (***)
O ser e o não ser.
In Russian: Бытие и ничто (***)
Бытие и неБытие
In Dutch: Het zijn en het niet. (*** ?)
In German: Das Sein und das Nichts. (*** ?)
In French: L’être et le non-être.

I marked the official translations with a star. By “official” I mean a title which appears on an existing translation of the book. Potentially there can be more there one official translation.
I kept the order in which different languages made their apparition in the forum. So far, we have:
English
Portuguese
Russian
Dutch
German
French

I think that everybody (greg et compagnie, me and others) is waiting for Spanish and perhaps other languages.
Meanwhile I suggest another translation in French:
L’être et ne pas naître.
Vladimir   Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:05 pm GMT
About my last French translation of “L’être et le néant” as “L’être et ne pas naître ».

Yesterday I was browsing in a bookshop and I came across a Serge Gainsbourg’s “Pensée, provocs et autres volutes”, le cheche midi, 2006.
First words (first thinking) were:
« Que vaut-il mieux ? Etre ou ne pas naître ? »
JR   Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:52 pm GMT
Well it looks like your waiting is over.
The official translation of "L'etre et le néant" in Spanish is
"El Ser y la Nada"
Which translates to
"The Being and the Nothing(ness)"

In other languages, this book was translated to:

L'Essere E Il Nulla - Italian (The Being and the Null)
O Ser e a Nada - Galician (The being and the Nothing(ness))
Fiinţa şi neantul- Romanian
Byt i nicość - Polish
augustin717   Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:32 pm GMT
"Fiinţa şi nefiinţa" would also be a possible translation.
Vladimir   Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:42 pm GMT
JR
Thank you for an injection of new languages.

I am not a native English speaker/writer/reader so, actually, I don’t understand completely what does it mean “Well it looks like your waiting is over”.

Now just a remarque. I don’t think that it would be correct to translate other translations which have been already made from French, to English.
For example, your double translation French -> Italian -> English gives
“The Being and the Null”.

English loses definitely his nature of universal language of reference in the case of
Sartre
Poincaré
Voltaire
Descartes
Molière
Galois
Fermat
Thom
Nietzsche
Kant
Leibniz
Gauss
Fermi
Leonardo da Vinci
Dostoevski
Platonov
Lenin
Mendeleev
Ortega y Gasset
Cervantès
Aristote
Moïse
etc., etc.

Excuse me, the Polish Plumber, that I did not mention Copernic, Maria Skłodowska-Curie etc. etc.
Excuse me, other native languages which contributed to our civilisation and which are not on the list.

We have of course Newton, Shakespeare, Maxwell etc., etc.

By the way, I don’t speak Italian but it seems to me that “Nulla” is null as a translation of French “néant”. Could you make references as an year of translation and publishing house ? See, for example, Gringo, Sartre - "O Ser e o Nada". Lisboa. Círculo dos Leitores.1993, in this tread.
Or it’s just your personal translations ?
Vladimir   Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:50 pm GMT
****We have of course Newton, Shakespeare, Maxwell etc., etc.***

And of corse James Bond.

And finally, George W. Bush, Bill Gates etc., etc.
Gringo   Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:22 pm GMT
JR
««O Ser e a Nada - Galician (The being and the Nothing(ness))»»

Is "Nada" in the feminine gender in Galicia? Shouldn't the article be in the masculine? Like "O Ser e o Nada".
Miquèu   Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:19 am GMT
Italian title : « L'essere e il nulla »

Catalan title : « L'ésser i el no-res »

I don't know if an Occitan translation of Sartre's œuvre exists, but the title would probably be « L'èsser e lo nient ».
JR   Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:15 am GMT
>>ould you make references as an year of translation and publishing house ? See, for example, Gringo, Sartre - "O Ser e o Nada". Lisboa. Círculo dos Leitores.1993, in this tread. <<<

Yes, I got them from Wikipedia's article on Sarte. This interested me so I clicked on the link which allows you to see the article in the different languages it is available in, and that is what I was able to identify. The article is in many more languages, but since I do not know what they are saying, I cannot know where the name of the book is.

>>>Or it’s just your personal translations ?<<<

With the above being said, no, they are not my own personal translations.

For Spanish version of the article:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

For Galician version of the article:
http://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

For Italian version of the article:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

For Polish version of the article:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

For Romanian version of the article:
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

\
>>>Is "Nada" in the feminine gender in Galicia? Shouldn't the article be in the masculine? Like "O Ser e o Nada".<<<

I would have thought that Nada is masculine as well. I originally did a search for the Spanish "El ser y EL Nada", and few results came up. After trying "El ser y LA Nada", dozens of thousands of results came up. But this is the title that appears in Wikipedia, O Ser e a Nada for Galician.


For those that can understand it, the article is written in:
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I am not sure how many of those show the name of the book, or if they are only stubs.