Vers une historiographie des politiques des traductions en Belgique durant la période française

The language policy of the French Revolution is known today especially for the imposition of the national language and the oppression of dialects and regional languages in France. This pilot study focuses on a less-known phenomenon of that period: translation policy. From 1790 on, several decrees stipulated the translation of national laws and decrees into the regional languages of France and some languages of other European countries. We will illustrate this translation policy focusing on translations of political and administrative texts from French into Flemish in Belgium (which was annexed by the French Republic in 1795 and remained French until the end of the Napoleonic era). We will not only try to shed some light on the conditions under which the translations published in Belgium were produced, but also analyze some typical examples drawn from different genres.