Being asked to convey someone else’s ideas accurately and effectively into another language is both an honor and a challenge. It is not always a straightforward task, particularly in fields such as Psychology and Psychoanalysis.

Most of the items published on Lacanian Psychoanalysis have originally been written in a language other than English (usually Spanish, Portuguese or French). We strive to offer our readers translations that reflect the contents and the style of the original texts as closely as possible.

With this purpose in mind, we would like to share with our readers some commentaries on our translations.

Quotes from other authors
Whenever an author quotes another author, we try to provide the quote in its original language as a footnote and to include the translated quote in the body of the text. If an English translation of the quote has already been published and we have access to it, we generally use such translation and of course state the source and/or the name of the translator. In the case of quotes from Lacan’s Écrits, for instance, we refer to Bruce Fink’s latest translation. (Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 2006.) If no previous translation is available, we offer our own translation of the quote.

Gender-sensitive language
For the sake of clarity and simplicity, we prefer to use the generic masculine third person singular pronouns or the third person plural pronouns to refer to both males and females. Only seldom do we use both the masculine and feminine pronouns in the same sentence.

For a brief discussion of this issue, please see:
Kenneth G. Wilson (1923-). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
http://www.bartleby.com/68/14/5414.html