Читать книгу A Treatise on Political Economy - Antoine Louis Claude Destutt De Tracy - Страница 8

As the introduction makes clear, when Thomas Jefferson finally received the translation of Destutt de Tracy’s text, he was not pleased with what he found and thus set about revising and correcting it as best he could. “The claim of the present translation,” he wrote in the Prospectus, “is limited to its duties of fidelity and justice to the sense of the original.” In preparing this edition I have sought to approach Destutt de Tracy’s text and Jefferson’s translation in the same spirit and have, therefore, kept revisions to a minimum.

Certain changes have been made in terms of presentation. I have restored the paragraph structure of the original French text. I have done the same with the use of italics and capitalization, as the English version used these randomly. I have similarly removed the vast number of dashes deployed needlessly in the translation. I have likewise endeavored to correct typographical errors and, upon a few occasions and where necessary, have corrected the translation. I have retained the page order of the English translation, where the Abstract or Analytical Table appears at the beginning rather than at the end of the book.

All translations present the translator and editor with dilemmas. Destutt de Tracy’s text in its Jeffersonian version is no exception to this rule. As far as possible I have modified the translation of key terms only when if left unchanged they would confuse the modern reader or obscure the meaning of the text. Below I set out the specific decisions I have made with regard to key terms.

Agriculteur: Rather than the original “agricolist,” I have chosen the more familiar “farmer.”

Besoin: Although we might more normally translate this as “need,” I have retained its translation as “want.”

Commerçan: Rather than the original “commercialist,” I have chosen “merchant.”

Entrepreneur: In the Jefferson edition this is translated as “undertaker.” To avoid an obvious misunderstanding I have chosen “entrepreneur.”

Fabrican: Rather than the original “fabricator,” I have chosen “manufacturer.” Similarly, for the verb “fabriquer,” I have chosen “to manufacture” rather than “to fabricate.”

Impôt: In the original text this is translated as both “impost” and “tax.” I have decided to leave this unchanged.

Métairie: Rather than the original “half-shares,” I have chosen “sharecropper” and “tenant farm.”

Rentier: Rather than the original “annuitant,” I have chosen “rentier” as it now has an accepted English usage.

Salarié: Rather than the original “hireling,” I have chosen “wage earner.”