Polyglot orientalist-translator Joseph Benoliel: a study of his Hebrew translations for the Lisbon 1892 International Congress of Orientalists

What is it about?

As a field of study that developed under a philological impulse, Orientalism created its own sites of knowledge exchange and sociability, well-illustrated by the International Congresses of Orientalists (1873–1973). This article focuses on Hebraist and Arabist Joseph Benoliel (1857–1937) who published two Hebrew translations within the orientalist congress that was supposed to have taken place in Lisbon in 1892. These translations will be examined peritextually so as to analyse the orientalist translation paradigm followed to voice otherness considering the (con)texts selected for translation, to unveil perceptions about translation, and inquire into a discursive form of knowledge as subordinated to an epistemological or hermeneutical agenda. To this end, the article is structured as follows: first, I will outline Benoliel’s life narrative to shed light on his polyglot background; second, I will formally describe the translations he prepared for the Lisbon congress in which Hebrew is the privileged target language; third, the peritextual analysis of these texts will be discussed against the voices paratextually framing them. The last part reviews the implications of Benoliel’s idiosyncratic translation strategy under the idea of a translational epistemology, or hermeneutics, in that Benoliel openly relies on the use of the Bible as intertext.

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