Les dynamiques de la transformation spirituelle d'Henri Le Saux comme traduction

In this thesis, we look at translation from another angle than that of transferring a text from one language to another. Here we consider translation as a transforming life experience of a human being outside his natural or usual environment. Henri Le Saux's life illustrates this phenomenon; he is a French Benedictine monk who leaves his Breton monastery to go to India in order to Christianize the Indians. But upon his arrival in the land of Bharat, his journey takes another turn and he becomes a sannyasi or renunciate. What nevertheless distinguishes Le Saux's experience is that he does not convert to Hinduism; he is transformed, and inside him two religions amalgamate. He transforms himself, which means that the initial form of his religion changes but not its roots, just as a translation will only change the form of a text. In the same way as a text that has been transposed into another language opens itself to another culture, in India, Le Saux opens himself to change: he welcomes the Other's religion and integrates some of its elements. The Advaita Vedanta mixes itself with his Christianity and his source religion undergoes some changes; the ascetic experiences a hybridization just like the translator, who, while translating, also translates himself and becomes a mestizo. All through history, people have been "translated" and translation has played a major role in the colonizing missions. Vicente Rafael notably relates the translation strategies equally used by the colonizers from Spain and the Tagalogs, the native people of the Philippines. As an indispensable agent for any interlingual exchange, translation allows cultures to meet and thus shows the existence of a universal semantic substrate that unites a text and all its translations. As the journey of Henri Le Saux unfolds, it itself illustrates the existence of a universal substrate inherent in all the religions that exist on our planet. This thesis therefore endeavours to point out the translation phenomena that altogether allow for the meeting of the semantic and the religious, and make of the diversity of this world a mosaic that is built on a basis common to all human beings.