The new Dutch translation
of Dante's
Hell
does not pass.
The text, thought to be more accessible to young readers, has been stripped of its reference to the Prophet Muhammad in order to “
not hurt unnecessarily
”, as
Courrier International
recounts
.
This preventive decision has been criticized since the broadcast of a program on the Belgian station Radio 1. One of his guests was Lies Lavrijsen, the translator signing
De Hel
, the new Dutch version of Dante's text edited by the house. Blossom Books.
The text dating from the fourteenth was translated "
as if Dante was a slam of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
"
,
says Radio 1 on its website.
More than this rather daring rewriting of the text, it is a very specific passage that arouses controversy.
Lies Lavrijsen summed it up on Radio 1: when Dante enters Hell, he visits the nine concentric circles.
He then meets the many people - some of whom are historical figures - who are punished there for their sins.
Arrived at the eighth circle, the poet meets the prophet Muhammad, punished "
because by spreading his religion he would have sowed discord on Earth
" reports the Belgian daily
De Standaard.
This passage has thus been partially amputated in the new translation.
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“
Of all the sinners who appear in
L'Enfer,
he is described in the most atrocious and denigrating manner,
justifies the translator at the microphone of Radio 1.
The goal of the publisher was to make
L'Enfer
accessible to a public. wider possible, and especially young audiences, and we knew that if we left this passage as it is we would have unnecessarily hurt a large part of the readers.
The passage has been preserved, but the name of Mahomet has been deleted.
The translator adds that this withdrawal was decided in concert with the publisher, in a context tense by the assassination of Samuel Paty.
But the decision is criticized both by listeners of the show and those who reacted to it in the following days
,
observes
De Standaard.
“
Many consider this to be a denigrating intervention both vis-à-vis Muslims, but also young readers, who are supposed to be unable to put a fourteenth-century book back into its own right. context
”, writes the Belgian daily
De Standaard
.
"
A funny choice
"
"
It's a funny choice,
" reacts a translator again in
De Standaard
.
"
For me, it's censorship,"
adds Peter Vestegen, author of a previous translation of Dante.
“The Divine Comedy”
is a sacrosanct masterpiece, you can't cut it out like that.
In the Netherlands, I have never been asked.
It is true that, in the case of an adaptation, we have more freedom, but then we must indicate on the book that it is an adaptation and not a translation.
In any case, no one asked for this surrender.
"
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This gesture amounts to "
bowing to avoid problems which would very probably never have arisen
", deplores the writer Abdelkader Benali.
The author of Moroccan and Dutch nationalities explains having studied modern translations of the text in Arabic.
As a result, the translators have kept the passage as it is, "
often with footnotes explaining that it is about a literary author and a scene that must be placed in its time and context. political
”.
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