Iv - University of Salford Institutional Repository

(texte) is open, mobile, vibrating and timeless. While the work is a
finished object, consisting of a body of writing enclosed within the
covers of a book, the text, in the words of Roland Barthes, is "a
methodological field.., experienced only in an activity of
production". "While the work is held in the hand", Barthes continues,
" the text is held in langauge: it exists only as discourse". ('From
Work to Text' included in 'Textual Strategies', ed. by Josue V. Harari,
1980, pp74-75) Signification rather than significance, structuration
rather than structure is what characterizes the text. The difference
between work and text can be conceived in terms of the difference
between "a thing and a process, a product and productivity, signified
and signifier, or 'truth' and 'play'".
(Barthes i 'Untying the Text' by R. Young, 1981, p31)
The hermeneutic model of translation disperses the author as the
centre of the text's gravitational pull and the authenticated voice of
'truth'. It even goes as far, in its underlying philosophical
justification, as to herald the death of the author and pass on to the
reader the responsibility of creating the text anew. As often as a
given text is read by different readers more texts will emerge,
depending on the reading strategy implemented by each individual
reader. This accounts for the heterogeneous interpretations of a
given text by various translators. Hermeneuticists prefer a plurality
of meaning to a polarity of sense; hence the mobility, rejuvenation,
and reincarnation of the text. Different readings, it is true,
generate different levels of text comprehension, interpretation, and
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