Saussure translated

This article examines the degree to which Saussure has been well served in English translation. It looks at features such as the disappearance of mark ers of uncertainty and the contribution of sentence structure to the develo pment of a convincing argument, to see how these fare in the various versio ns. Taking the key Saussurean terms of langage, langue and parole, it evalu ates the translations of the Cours de linguistique generale by Baskin (1959 ), Harris (1983), as well as those edited by Harris, Komatsu and Wolf (1993 , 1996, 1997).