La manipulation idéologique dans l’édition et deux traductions de la Description de l’Afrique de Hassan El Wazzan / Jean-Léon l’Africain

Abstract

This paper draws mainly on our Master’s thesis (Chaib 2015). It deals with the visible changes noted in the first edition and in the two French translations of the Description of Africa written by Hassan el Wazzan / Ioannes Leo Africanus in 1526. In 1550, a Venetian scholar named Giovanni Battista Ramusio published an Italian version of Leo’s work in a collection of travel narratives. This version, which differs considerably from Leo’s original manuscript, has served as a source text for many of the translations that followed. The first French translation was by Jean Temporal in 1556, a publisher and printer based in Lyon. A second translation, completed by Alexis E?paulard, was first published in 1956 and then reissued in 1980. The article aims to show that the two French translators heavily intervened in the translated text in order to serve colonialist and expansionist goals. It highlights the translators’ position as well as the ideologies conveyed by their interventions.