In the last posting, I began to describe some of the ways in which the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling had been imaginatively translated into French. I mainly spoke about the ways in which the often humorous and 'double-meaning' names of characters and artefacts in the original English novels had been Gallicized for a French readership. I promised to return to the topic of Rowling's translation treatment by the French writer for children, and translator, Jean-François Ménard, in a future posting. On this occasion, I want to look at some varied aspects of Ménard's use of French target language in his Potter renderings. I will describe the sort of French language he uses, and try to suggest possible causes and effects of the translational language chosen.
Use of the Passé Simple (Passé Historique) in the French rendering of Harry Potter
The translator employs the Passé Simple throughout the corpus of TTs, this being the traditionally employed past tense for narrative description. The Passé Simple is primarily associated with a high literary style and with adult novels. An examination of some contemporary, non-translational French literature for younger readers reveals that the Passé Simple is not often used in these comparable corpora, having been largely superseded by the Passé Composé. This is true, for example, of the writings for children and adolescents produced by the Franco-Algerian author Azouz Begag. In addition, Begag uses a much less formal register than is evident in the Ménard translations – he writes in a colloquial style which frequently descends into taboo language. However, Begag’s text world is the working class, immigrant French suburbs, so his style of writing is perhaps intended to convey the dialect of young Algerian immigrants, just as the Dublin novelist Roddy Doyle seeks to convey the Dublin working class informal, colloquial and sometimes taboo uses of language.
There is extensive normalisation, leading to usage of a standard register of French, in Ménard’s TTs. Such stylistic flattening may be partly due to universals of translation behaviour, but, in the case of these two comparable corpora, Ménard’s and Begag’s works, the stylistic differences may be largely accounted for by the differing social worlds represented. Because the fictional world of J.K. Rowling conveys notions of the preservation of ancient magical traditions, her novels appear steeped in antiquity and combine an archaic orientation with a contemporary setting. Thus, the Passé Simple, being associated with an older, elevated literary style, is suited to the atmosphere of the Potter novels. It helps to secure equivalent effect, in communicating an arcane world, which Rowling conveys through her use of a formal register of language, high in literary values.
One can see that the Potter translations are situated in a higher linguistic register than Begag’s non-translational French, thus conveying the middle-class, well-educated world of Harry Potter and many of his readers, in contrast to the working-class environment of Begag’s works. Begag’s norm-subverting language helps establish affiliation with the marginalized youth readers he addresses, and realistically conveys their world. I suggest that the primary, intended target readership of a literary work influences the textual-linguistic norms followed, especially in the case of translations and adaptations of literary works for children.
One thing I do need to say about the Passé Simple or, as it is sometimes called, the Passé Historique, is that it is not at all as restricted in usage as traditional French teachers many decades ago in secondary school might have had as believe. I have realised for several years now, from copious reading of French literature from various different eras and genres, that the Passé Simple is regularly used, right up to the present day in 21st century French novels, including some popular and youth fiction. Some earlier 20th century French writers such as Marguerite Duras and Albert Camus did, at times, try to make more use of the Passé Composé in order to play with and interrogate perspective. But the use of the Past Historic is pretty much ubiquitous in French writing of the past and present. But I digress ...
Comparative Analysis of Non-Translational Text
I carried out a comparative analysis of Ménard’s non-translational French, by reading two of his original children’s novels, Dehors La Sorcière and La Sorcière Mange-Tout. There are close similarities in textual-linguistic norms between his Potter TTs and his original texts. The most striking resemblances include his consistent use of the Passé Simple; a formal register; a consequent avoidance of colloquial French or dialects; a preference for standardised usage; idiomatic language, leading to greater nominalisation and, finally, more abstract expression. These common features can, perhaps, be explained by such normative and idiosyncratic factors as Ménard’s personal style of writing, which happens to accord with conventional approaches in French literature; the value attached to the pedagogic function of youth literature, which conditions correct, formal usage, and the lack of interest in French sociolinguistic variety on the part of some sectors of the French literary/academic establishment. Furthermore, Ménard’s original works – in common with Rowling’s works – describe, and address, a middle-class world, so that standardised language becomes the norm.
The Continuing Invasion of the French Language by the English language? A 'good' or a 'bad' thing? Or neutral?
A further notable textual-linguistic feature of Ménard’s non-translational French is his occasional use of English-language names for characters, as well as his fondness for interjecting English expressions, placing them in the mouths of characters who are learning English and who proceed to give the French translations of such phrases. Thus, Ménard has created such characters as Destroy Kid (a juvenile graffiti artist), Miss Tidy (a witch with a mania for cleaning) and Ittitôl (a phonetic play on ‘eat it all’, this being the name of a sorceress with a passion for eating.) These Anglicisms, when considered in tandem with the use of similar items in the Potter TTs, may reveal a normative fondness for importation of Anglophone terms rather than a grudging acceptance of them. However, the Potter TTs contain more Anglicisms, given that they are based on English STs.
Textual-Linguistic Norms – An Examination of Individual Textemes in Selected Extracts from the Corpus – the Operation of Textual-Linguistic Norms
Having studied the entire parallel corpus, it was decided to subject Chapter Four of the second Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets) to detailed analysis. This chapter is entitled At Flourish and Blotts (Chez Fleury et Bott). A minute comparison of ST and replacing TT items was carried out. Following Toury’s recommendations, a similar analysis was carried out on further sections of the corpus for comparison, replicability and validity of findings, in other words, to verify whether similar findings would be gleaned.
The findings confirmed a number of major translational trends: these are now outlined.
There is a constant drive towards the use of idiomatic French, as I mentioned in the previous posting. This indicates that the underlying, primary textual-linguistic norm is a TL-oriented one – the translator’s concern is to render the TT as acceptable (in Toury's understanding of the term 'acceptability') as possible, through transposition and modulation, an idiomatic style of expression being a normative value within mainstream French children’s literature. In addition, the TT manifests greater use of nominalisation, formality of register and abstraction, thus confirming the norm of literary acceptability and pointing to contrastive stylistic between English and French, whereby the latter uses a greater number of noun forms than the former. There is also much evidence of the ‘universals’ or ‘laws’ of translation, including explicitation, standardization and normalization.
Let us now examine the major translation shifts, together with postulated normative reasons for these choices. I have decided that the most convenient way of presenting the findings is to cite each pair of replaced and replacing segments, with my comments, in order of occurrence within the text. The following is a selection of some of the main shifts.
Finally, though I am drawing attention to these shifts, we must keep in mind what a language can, must, does and cannot say, based on the possibilities of that language. Many translation shifts are clearly not cultural but linguistic in nature; they reflect the causal influence of the causa materialis on a translator's shifts, that is, the translator, like a sculptor, is constrained by the materials she must work with; here, the materials are the contrasting stylistic and grammatical building blocks of the English and French languages.
Examples of Coupled Pairs of Replaced (ST-English) and Replacing (TT-French) Segments.
· Life at the Burrow was as different as possible from life in Privet Drive is rendered as La vie au «Terrier» n’avait rien à voir avec celle que Harry avait connue à Privet Drive. Globally, this coupled pair of segments reveals free translation yet preservation of complete meaning, as evident throughout the entire corpus. As regards individual findings, it can first of all be noted that the ST name of the Weasley family residence, the ‘Burrow’, is given a literal, faithful rendering in TL French as ‘le «Terrier»’. The name of the residential area in which Harry Potter lived with his cruel relatives at the beginning of the first novel, is transferred into the TL as the clearly British location ‘Privet Drive’. Such details manifest an ST orientation. Did Rowling choose the name 'Privet Drive' to sound like 'deprive' and 'deprivation', thus emphasizing how badly Harry was treated when living in that estate? There is an instance of modulation in the shift from 'as different as possible 'rom' to 'n’avait rien à voir avec…,' this being an example of frequent modulation in this corpus to a more idiomatic style of French linguistic expression. The concealed norm detectable in this and other instances of modulation is a preference for a style of writing which is idiomatic and thus acceptable within the TC. In addition, there is interpretation and explicitation in the shift from life in Privet Drive to celle que Harry avait connue à Privet Drive. It is hypothesized that the translator is, perhaps unconsciously, adhering to what I feel is a universal impulse of translation activity, towards the addition of explanatory information, even where it is not strictly necessary. However, the French language also shows here that it has different cohesive possibilities due to its being a grammatical gender language (i.e. in the use of ‘celle’ to refer back to ‘la vie’.)
· The Dursleys liked everything to be neat and tidy: the Weasleys’ house burst with the strange and unexpected – Les Dursley tenaient à ce que tout soit propre et en ordre, alors que la maison des Weasley baignait dans l’étrange et l’imprévisible. Modulation is evident in the shift from ‘liked’ to ‘tenaient à ce que’ – this involves a desire for interpretation as an idiosyncratic choice, and for greater stylistic normality in the TL. Transposition is employed in the shift from ‘neat and ordered’ to ‘propre et en ordre’ because of the French linguistic preference for nominalisation. The use of a colon in the ST is replaced by the conjunction ‘alors que’ in the TT, again to comply with normal, idiomatic French usage, as French shows more explicit use of subordinating conjunctions and explicit causal connectors. There is modulation in the change of metaphor from ‘the house burst with…’ to ‘baignait dans’, and in the change of SL adjective ‘unexpected’ to TL adjective ‘imprévisible’, these alterations appearing to reflect the translator’s idiosyncratic choice of synonyms which work well.
…the ghoul in the attic howled and dropped pipes: la goule qui habitait le grenier se mettait à hurler et à jouer avec les tuyaux de plomb. The shift from ‘in the attic’ to ‘qui habitait le grenier’ shows use of explicitation to remove ambiguity, as an idiosyncratic choice. The expansion from ‘howled and dropped pipes’ to ‘se mettait à hurler et à jouer avec les tuyaux de plomb’ manifests the use of modulation, transposition and interpretation as a stylistic preference.
Inferences from the foregoing analysis
It can be concluded that Ménard’s translations are, for the most part, meticulously accurate. They represent a close translation of their STs, and are faithful to the positivist, discernible truth of the ST messages, although individual readers will deconstruct the texts differently. These faithful translations nevertheless succeed in achieving idiomaticity, because they use such multiple translation shifts as synonymy, syntactic modification, transposition, modulation and creative changes of language use and character names, in order to produce a non-imitative rendering of Rowling's originals. The translator chooses mainly a sense-for-sense approach, to translate the spirit rather than the exact letter, as opposed to a more literal, imitative, word-for-word strategy. The French renderings are therefore acceptable as idiomatic literary texts.
It can be inferred from such translation strategies that an important textual-linguistic norm is a strong preference to conform to the normal, accepted forms of expression in the French language, as opposed to offering the target readership of preteens and adolescents a foreignizing, possibly alienating style of (word-for-word, unnatural, foreignizing) form of the French language. This norm would, I suspect, be the translator’s personal preference as he is a writer of children’s fiction (his non-translational French has been discussed earlier.) It would also have been strongly enforced by translation commissioners to ensure acceptability.
On the other hand, these translations cannot be simply categorized as completely acceptable, but must rather be regarded as being a hybrid of acceptability and adequacy, given that there is significant loyalty to the STs in preserving the full details of their plots, settings and cultural artefacts as well as the essentially British names of their main protagonists. This adherence to SC norms was, I had thought, perhaps enforced by the owners of ST copyright, as names of major characters and artefacts – such as the game of Quidditch – are seen as important global brand names. Or so I wrongly conjectured, until I realised that in other languages, Quidditch is changed to neologisms in the relevant target languages. The hybrid nature of the TTs supports Toury’s contention that most translations are situated somewhere on a continuum between the polar opposites of adequacy and acceptability. And translation decisions may follow patterns within individual target texts, and across texts, but they are never uniformly patterned; instead, translation decisions within the same single translated book are complex and unpredictable, and tend towards entropy in the sense of 'system leakage towards disorder'. I am not using the terms 'entropy', 'leakage' or 'disorder' in any negative or critical sense, but rather, in a descriptivist sense. Language leaks, or so linguists propose; similarly, translated language seems to leak.
Various ‘agents’ and multiple causes of translation outcomes undoubtedly exerted influence on the French Potter translator’s decision-making. The ST author and original copyright holders doubtless required the preservation of many proper names, with international marketing considerations in mind. On the other hand, it was TT publishers who no doubt insisted on an idiomatic translation and on the Gallicization of minor proper names to ensure TT acceptability/readability/popularity. The translator’s training would have also influenced him to strive for idiomatic TL use, and to opt for such procedures as explicitation and simplification, wherever necessary. The translator’s cognitive processes and translational ‘reflexes’ may sometimes have automatically or subconsciously guided him towards using such procedures. For instance, the translation theorist Malmkjaer has suggested that translators tend to explicate perhaps because the translator views her or his role as one of ensuring maximal clarity and understanding as an inter-lingual mediator. And other theorists have more recently suggested a neurological/cognitive basis for such translation 'universals' as standardization and simplification. I will return to these points in future postings, as they are among several exciting new translation theories appearing in the major Translation Studies journals in recent years, theories which merit further discussion and application to corpora such as those of Rowling, Verne and their translators.
Many choices made by Ménard in the direction of synonymy and lexical expansion would have been exercised as idiosyncratic decisions, as part of the translator's unique individual verbal identity or style, and as his means of self-inscription on the target text, to show his own resourcefulness and creativity as a literary translator, and not merely a scribe or amanuensis. In my doctoral thesis, I referred to this translatorial self-inscription as translatorial idiolect or translational diction. Such idiolect is regularly in evidence across all of the target texts I have studied. Expectations of TT readers and critics would also have had a normatively influential role – both would expect a readable, idiomatic translation, faithful to the original’s messages and impact. Such idiomatic expression could be regarded as a mainstream, primary and quasi-obligatory norm in French TTs, and in the contemporary translated texts of many other cultures. Andrew Chesterman, my external examiner for the PhD last year and a prominent translation scholar, has suggested differing templates of norms, and of the most standard, commonplace norms of translation, in an article for which I will post the reference to this blog shortly. Complete, semantically loyal/accurate/faithful, but non-imitative, idiomatic translation, may be among the most commonly expected and implemented norms of translation nowadays, across languages and cultures. Chesterman goes into much more detail on such norms.
These findings allow predictions to be made as to how other contemporary youth fiction is likely to be currently rendered into French. Based on the merit and success of Ménard’s translations of Rowling, other Anglophone youth fiction is likely to be translated using comparable strategies. Thus, such translations will probably be loyal to the truth of their STs, yet idiomatic in TL expression, thus maintaining the delicate balance between ‘adequacy’ and ‘acceptability’. In fact, my research of the French translations of contemporary children’s novels by Lemony Snicket, Philip Pullman, and of popular writers and older writers for children rendered into French (e.g. Twain, Alcott), appears to confirm that similar translation norms (to the Potter TTs) apply.
I will discuss some of the broad conclusions which this examination of the Potter renderings into French suggests, in a future posting later this month.
