While the translation of être as “being” poses no particular problem, the translation of étant (originally with reference to Heidegger), which is the substantive from the present participle of être, presents more difficulty. I have adopted the translation of Alan Bass in Writing and Difference and rendered this term as “the being” (slightly modifying Bass’s translation as simply “being”) or “beings,” according to context (rather than the alternative translation as “entity” or “entities,” or as “existent” in other cases). However, in order to avoid all confusion, I have provided the French word in parentheses in most cases. For a detailed explanation on this term and its translation, I refer the reader to “Translator’s Introduction,” in Writing and Difference (Jacques Derrida, trans. Alan Bass, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, p. xvii–xviii). For the term “being,” in the sense of being in general, since the context is not strictly Heideggerian, I have written it each time with a lower-case initial.
Le vide is translated as “the void.” MBK also makes frequent use of its different forms, such as vidé, évidé and évidement. I have translated these terms respectively as “emptied” (from vider, “to empty” or “empty out”), “voided” (from évider, “to hollow out” or “scoop out”), and “voiding.” I have translated évidant, the present participle of évider as adjective, also as “voiding.” In most cases, I have provided the French term in parentheses.
I have translated s’approprier, which ordinarily means “to appropriate” as “to (self-)appropriate,” adding the “self-” in parenthesis, because MBK plays on the reflexive prefix se or “self.” This is also the case with se posseder which, instead of “to be in possession of oneself,” I have translated as “to be in (self-)possession of oneself.”