What if meaning were the last thing that mattered in language? In this essay, Henri Meschonnic explains what it means to translate the sense of language and how to do it. In a radical stand against a hermeneutical approach based on the dualistic view of the linguistic sign and against its separation into a meaningful signified and a meaningless signifier, Henri Meschonnic argues for a poetics of translating. Because texts generate meaning through their power of expression, to translate ethically involves listening to the various rhythms that characterize them: prosodic, consonantal or vocalic patterns, syntactical structures, sentence length and punctuation, among other discursive means. However, as the book illustrates, such an endeavour goes against the grain and, more precisely, against a 2500-year-old tradition in the case of biblical translation. The inability of translators to give ear to rhythm in language results from a culturally transmitted deafness. Henri Meschonnic decries the generalized unwillingness to remedy this cultural condition and discusses the political implications for the subject of discourse.
2025. Ethics and the Translation of Trauma, Gender-Based Violence and Emotions. In A Voice of Their Own, ► pp. 9 ff.
Román-Gamboa, Kevin
2025. El romanticismo alemán como antecedente del pensamiento de Ferdinand de Saussure. Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica 60:157
Sirakova, Yoana
2025. Body and soul, letter and sense: Plato’s receptions in translation theory. Živa Antika :1-2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Wenhao, Yao & Pan Qi
2025. Review of Lambert (2023): Translation Ethics. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción 71:2 ► pp. 275 ff.
Gölz, Sabine I.
2024. Millay Repairs Baudelaire. In Rethinking Lyric Communities [Cultural Inquiry, 30], ► pp. 31 ff.
Thiérard, Hélène
2024. L’apport de la traductologie au renouveau de l’universel dans les sciences humaines : Meschonnic, Berman, Cassin, Diagne1. TTR 37:1 ► pp. 43 ff.
Thiérard, Hélène
2025. On Collaborative Translation and Subjectivity in the Humanities. A Conversation with
The Henri Meschonnic Reader’s Translator Team1. TTR 37:2 ► pp. 179 ff.
汤, 炳杰
2024. The Poetics Rhythm in Non-Literary Translation. Modern Linguistics 12:09 ► pp. 84 ff.
邓, 媛
2024. The Temporal and Spatial Adventures of Rhythm—An Interpretation of Lin Yutang’s Translation of <i>Quiet Dream </i><i>Shadows</i> Informed by Translation Poetics. Modern Linguistics 12:04 ► pp. 803 ff.
Brzozowski, Jerzy
2023. Henri Meschonnic : un maître sans école. Między Oryginałem a Przekładem 29:2(60) ► pp. 57 ff.
Li, Hongzheng & Ruojin Wang
2023. Book Review: the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics. Language Resources and Evaluation 57:4 ► pp. 1819 ff.
2023. Reflexivity in Translation: A Multi-layered, Dialogic, and Self-reflexive Process. Discourses on Culture 20:1 ► pp. 109 ff.
Kadiu, Silvia
2022. Pajević, Marko (2019): The Henri Meschonnic Reader: A Poetics of Society. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 320 p.. Meta 67:1 ► pp. 239 ff.
Lan, Hongjun
2022. “Creative Treason” as a Key to Medio-Translatology: Circulation and Controversies. In Medio-translatology [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 79 ff.
Goldfajn, Tal
2020. Translation and Loss-Aversion1. TTR 33:1 ► pp. 81 ff.
Liu, Yingmei
2020. The Art of Bible Translation. Translation Review 108:1 ► pp. 111 ff.
Mameri, Ferhat & Wissal Ali Jafar AlAllaq
2020. Drama Translation into Arabic. Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Issues and Solutions. In Cultural Conceptualizations in Translation and Language Applications [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 107 ff.
CARRASCO, Cristina
2019. «Tu cuerpo debe ser escuchado»: la postraducción del cuerpo femenino. CLINA: Revista Interdisciplinaria de Traducción, Interpretación y Comunicación Intercultural 5:1 ► pp. 131 ff.
Kopylov, Andrei
2019. Translation in a Hermeneutical Context: Transforming Culture and Human Nature Through Ethics. In Borderology: Cross-disciplinary Insights from the Border Zone [Springer Geography, ], ► pp. 217 ff.
Nkomo, Dion
2019. The translation and adaptation ofAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandinto isiNdebele. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 37:2 ► pp. 130 ff.
Shliakhtina, Elena V.
2019. TRANSLATION OF RHYTHM FIGURES IN LITERARY PROSE FROM ENGLISH INTO RUSSIAN (A STUDY OF K. ATKINSON “LIFE AFTER LIFE”). Bulletin of the Moscow State Regional University (Linguistics) :5 ► pp. 149 ff.
Wang, Guanglin
2019. Against Untranslatability: Rethinking World Literatures. In Translation in Diasporic Literatures, ► pp. 107 ff.
Khan, Afrinul Haque
2018. Rewriting the “Vanishing Present”. In Redefining Translation and Interpretation in Cultural Evolution [Advances in Religious and Cultural Studies, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
MICHIENZI, Rossella
2018. Traducir el blanco de las letras: semánticas de la memoria y sus evidencias cuali-cuantitativas. CLINA: Revista Interdisciplinaria de Traducción, Interpretación y Comunicación Intercultural 4:2 ► pp. 207 ff.
2015. Toward a Rethinking of Retranslation. Translation Review 92:1 ► pp. 73 ff.
Tyulenev, Sergey
2013. Translating in the public sphere: Birth pangs of a developing democracy in today's Russia. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 31:4 ► pp. 469 ff.
Tyulenev, Sergey
2018. Mediating a Compromise. In Translation in the Public Sphere, ► pp. 47 ff.
Kanaganayakam, Chelva
2012. Rethinking Translations from a Postcolonial Perspective. South Asian Review 33:3 ► pp. 349 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.
