How can a music signify without text ? Instead of having a definite perspective, the book reconstructs the debates that happened. It elaborates families of thought and integrates the problem of the performer. Thus it opens the way to a comparative analysis of the styles, in their relation to an anthropology.

This collective book deals with literary translation, be it the very experience of translating or its theory. "Literature" is considered here as a critical expression of artistic worth and a specific view on languages, both of which reveal not only the formal but also the cultural and political stakes of translation.