I never thought before starting
the MA in literary translation about translation so much. It literally invaded
my life! I cannot read a book or the newspaper, watch a film or tell a story
from France without thinking about domestication, adequacy or equivalence. I
cannot help myself thinking: ‘This does not work.’… ‘They did that well.’…
‘What would be the best way to translate this?’ or ‘What theory is behind
that?’ And I realised that translation theories could be applied not only to
literary translation but also to every communicational instruments. That
realization stroked me, when I thought about people in France who spend their
lives surrounded by translation results; about one book published out of six is
a translation and most of the films, programs and adverts of television are
dubbed, but they do not really think about it or realise it. I personally think
that being able to translate is opening a door on a new writer, a new story, a
new style to another culture and other people.
I would like to discuss a
translation I have done myself for the MA. The book I translated into French
was the children’s book The very hungry
caterpillar by Eric Carle. I came across several issues with this
translation. What theory should I work with? Children’s literature is different
from the rest of literature; it is addressed to a very specific audience, with
particular needs. Children do not care in what language and what culture the
book is from, so I decided to go for a translation following the principal of
dynamic equivalence. As Eugene Nida explained in his essay ‘Principles of
correspondence’, ‘the relationship between receptor and message should be
substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptor and
the message.’ The story must seem as natural for the readers of the target text
as it is for the readers of the source text.
So my first issue was the fact
that the caterpillar in the original version is a male caterpillar that becomes
a butterfly. The problem was that in French noun have an already predetermine
gender and in that case, caterpillar in French is feminine ‘une chenille’ and a
butterfly is masculine ‘ un papillon’. I remembered as a kid making the
association between the gender of the signifier and the representation I was
making of the signified, so ‘une chenille’ in my head was a girl, and ‘un
papillon’ was a boy. Because the butterfly is used only once in the whole book
and the story is actually about the caterpillar, I decided to change the
original male caterpillar into a female caterpillar. I thought it would be more
relevant or familiar for children.
The second concern I had was with
the listing of food there is at a point in the story, the caterpillar in the
source text goes through a lot of different types of food that are quite common
for French people but I thought that some changes would be needed in order to
make it sound natural for a French child without changing the illustrations. So
the aliments I changed even though the words are known and used in French are
‘salami’ and ‘cupcake’. I know these words as an adult but I was not sure that
every child would know them. So I replaced them by words close to the original
ones but words that I was sure children would know better. I used ‘saucisson’
(which is a type of dry sausage very famous in France) for ‘salami’ and
‘muffin’ (even though it is an English word it is commonly used in France) for
‘cupcake’. The other touch I thought
would make the children go ‘I know that’ was to add ‘de Strasbourg’ (from
Strasbourg) behind ‘sausage’ as ‘les saucisses de Strasbourg’, which are a
famous specialty from that city that kids often have in canteens.
Even though I took liberties for
these examples, I tried to stay as close as possible to the original with the
idea always in the back of my mind that children do not really care if it is a
translation or not, they just want to hear a nice story with which they feel
familiar and comfortable. This is the reason why I thought dynamic equivalence
would be the best solution for this translation.
Charlotte Laruelle
translates from English into French, currently studying for the MA in literary
translation at UEA. Can be contacted at charlote.bdf@hotmail.fr
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