Nicolas Perrot D'Ablancourt - Translation Style

Translation Style

In the prefaces to his translations, Perrot d’Ablancourt set out his principles of translation. He followed the somewhat contentious practice of Valentin Conrart, one of the founding fathers of the Académie française, of modifying or modernising expressions in the original text for reasons of style. While some authors praised the elegance and subtlety of Perrot d’Ablancourt’s translations, a disparaging remark by one of his contemporary critics gave rise to the expression « la belle infidèle ». The French scholar Gilles Ménage is reported to have compared the translation to a woman he had once loved, who was “beautiful, but unfaithful”. This expression was later picked up and popularised by other authors such as Huygens and Voltaire. Some of Perrot d’Ablancourt’s translations are still being edited, and the debate regarding the necessity of absolute fidelity to the source text when translating continues to this day.