Themes and Perspectives of the TransIslam Project. The Fonds des traductions and Its Role in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

This article outlines the main themes and perspectives of TransIslam, an ongoing research project funded by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) under Horizon Europe. The project examines a corpus of Ottoman-to-French translations produced in Constantinople between 1730 and 1753 for the "Bibliothèque du Roi" in Paris. Known as the "Fonds des traductions", the corpus comprises approximately 130 manuscripts, generally presenting Ottoman texts alongside their French translations. Focusing initially on manuscripts concerning Islam, TransIslam investigates both their production, circulation and preservation, and the translators’ practices and interventions. The corpus offers a perspective on how Islam was selected, represented and interpreted in early eighteenth-century Europe. By analysing textual divergences from a sociolinguistic perspective, the project seeks to distinguish misunderstandings from deliberate choices shaped by the translators’ cultural, religious and ideological contexts. The article also considers dragomans and "jeunes de langues" as interreligious mediators, highlighting the potential of the manuscripts to illuminate Christian-Muslim encounters and dialogue. It presents these questions as an open framework for further collaborative research, including through the TransIslam International Network.