Pascal's Pensees

A translation of Pascal's Pensees that I read many years ago, Sec. VII, No. 434 of the translation used the word "shame" for Pascal's use of the word "rebut" in French. The passage is from the paragraph beginning with "What a chimera, then, is man? . . .The glory and the shame of the universe." However, recently, in several websites on the Internet, I saw several English translations using the word "refuse" for "rebut", meaning, I would assume, scrap or garbage. I was going to borrow several lines of the passage for one of my writings and would prefer to use the phrase, "The glory and the shame" rather than "The glory and the refuse of the universe. My question: Can anyone enlighten me concerning whether the words in French are interchangeable, especially in the context of Pensees? I was wondering why the earlier translation I read many years ago, as I note above, distinctly used the phrase "The glory and the shame of the universe." I was thinking that the translator felt that Pascal indeed meant to refer to shame, rather than scrap or refuse, in the context of the entire writing. I eagerly await some response(s).

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 13, 2012 at 1:04am

Remember that translation is a creative process and is partly about interpretation.

The word "rebut" essentially means something like "thing/person rejected because they/it is felt to be abhorrent". And obviously in this particular case, Pascal is using the word as something of an antonym of "glory".

So, clearly one translator felt that "shame" was one word that conveyed that idea (and I think it's quite close in the sense that "shame" can denote "thing that is a cause of shame") . If I was translating the passage myself, I would maybe consider using a word such as "scourges"... but as I say, it's essentially a question of interpretation.

Aesthetically, a word such as "refuse" feels a little bit "mechanical" to me, and I'm not sure that it quite conveys an idea of being an opposite of "glory".

In other contexts, "rebut" can mean "thing physically discarded", but I don't think translating the word with that interpretation (which is essentiallywhat "refuse" does) is quite using 'le mot juste' in this particular context.