In the first of our guest posts for European Literature Night 2014 Emily Boyce, in-house translator for Gallic Books, discusses how she and two others worked on the translation of this year’s featured French book.

It might surprise readers to learn that the English version of Antoine Laurain’s 208-page novel The President’s Hat, a light-hearted and uplifting meditation on the nature of power and self-confidence in Mitterrand’s France, was worked on by three translators; myself and Jane Aitken from Gallic Books and freelance literary translator Louise Rogers Lalaurie are unmasked at the end of the text rather than on the title page as is customary. Perhaps a collaborative effort might be expected of a weighty tome which would take an age for one person to tackle (Penguin’s recent multi-handed re-translation of Proust,  for example), but a whimsical tale of a mislaid hat?
 
In our case, although timing was an issue and the text was certainly not without its challenges and complexities (how to deal with all those 1980s cultural and political references, for one thing), the main reason for splitting the translation was in order to capture the distinct voice of each character. The book is almost a succession of short stories as the hat passes from one head to another changing the lives of those who wear it, from the accountant who finds himself dining next to the presidential party in a Paris brasserie, to the aspiring writer struggling to free herself from a dead-end affair with a married man, to the perfume maker who’s lost his inspiration, to the staunch conservative set to surprise his fellow dinner party guests...

Voice is often the hardest thing to get right in a translation. The author will have carried each character around in his or her head for months if not years, perhaps building up a whole picture of that character’s life and personality, only a fraction of which might have made it into the finished book. The translator can usually only go on what’s on the page. In this respect, it occurred to Gallic MD Jane that the act of translation was rather like interpreting a play script, and it made sense to ‘cast’ translators to play each part.

Translators are undoubtedly versatile actors, but putting on a convincing portrayal of such a range of characters of different sex, age and background presents a real challenge. No matter how skilled a writer the translator is, he or she will have registers they feel more or less comfortable in, and their choice of words will always be influenced by their own experience. A translator of Proustian prose may struggle to render the kind of urban slang the award-winning translator Sarah Ardizzone   specialises in; Sarah spent time living in Marseille specifically to pick up  ‘Beur’ Verlan.

I translated twenty-something Fanny in The President’s Hat, being of a similar age myself, but I was also the voice of Bernard, the middle-aged man whose transformation from stiff bourgeois to art-loving liberal is signalled when instead of his usual copy of Le Figaro, he picks up leftie Libération. The casting of translator to role was partly practical – Louise had already translated the beginning of the story featuring accountant Daniel as an extract for Fiction France,  so it made sense for her to continue with him – and partly a matter of personal preference; Jane may have been closest in age to perfumier Pierre, but she was also drawn to his story.

Jane and I are set to stage another co-translation with Antoine Laurain’s next book, The Red Notebook, which is coming out in spring 2015. This time the main characters are Laure (played by me), an expert gilder who has her handbag stolen, and Laurent (played by Jane), a bookseller who finds the bag and sets out to return it to its rightful owner. Perhaps Jane can draw upon her experience of running Belgravia Books  in interpreting the part of Laurent. As for my method acting, I’d better start surrounding myself with gold!  

Suggested further reading:

Hélène Gestern, The People in the Photo, translated by Emily Boyce and Ros Schwartz (London, 2014) H.2016/.7895. Original, Eux sur la photo (Paris, 2011) YF.2014.a.12047

Faïza Guène  Just like Tomorrow, translated by Sarah Ardizzone (London, 2006) H.2007/2783. Original: Kiffe kiffe demain (Paris, 2004) YF.2008.a.30567.)

  Author Antoine Laurain, photographed in Gallic Books’ bookshop

An artist who was constantly preoccupied with the theme of memory, true or false, Marguerite Duras had no shortage of such material to draw upon. Born on 4 April 1914 in Gia-Dinh (now Saigon) to parents attracted by government incentives to settle in French Indochina, the exotic nature of young Marguerite Donnadieu’s life bore striking resemblances to that of Madame de Maintenon; the colonial adventure turned out badly, her father died leaving her mother to raise her four-year-old daughter and two other children in relative poverty following a calamitous business investment, and at seventeen  Marguerite returned to France to study at the Sorbonne, but not before embarking on a colourful affair with a wealthy Sa Dec merchant, Huynh Thuy Le. Although she returned to this period of her life in various memoirs and works of fiction, her most famous treatment is in her novel L’Amant (The Lover: BL shelfmark YA.1986.a.10677), with which she won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award, in 1984.

After studying mathematics, political sciences and law, Duras joined the French Communist Party and subsequently worked for the French government office representing Indochina. From 1942 to 1944, she worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper to publishers (virtually acting as a book censorship system), but was also, together with her first husband Robert Antelme, a member of the French Resistance. He was deported to Buchenwald, and although he survived, the marriage did not. In 1943 she published her first novel, Les Impudents under the surname Duras, the village in the Lot-et-Garonne département which had been her father's home.

  The first edition of Les Impudents (Paris, 1943). British Library YA.1993.a.26454

Although her early works were reasonably traditional in form, in her later novels she achieved an increasingly streamlined style of prose in which even the characters are stripped to essential qualities, sacrificing even the need for names and appearing simply as ‘Elle’ and ‘Lui’. The immediacy of her dialogue lent itself particularly well to cinematic adaptations, and she was also a gifted scriptwriter. Perhaps her best-known work in this capacity is the screenplay for Hiroshima mon amour (Paris, 1960; 11455.a.16), directed by Alain Resnais  in 1959, a dialogue between a Japanese architect and French actress who, analysing the breakdown of their relationship, explore the truth and fallacy of memories and the analogy with the Japanese catastrophe of the Second World War.

Her explicit treatment of sexual relationships, her idiosyncratic use of dialogue and her distinctive prose style inevitably made Duras’s work the object of parody and pastiche, notably at the hands of Patrick Rambaud in Virginie Q. (Paris, 1988; YA.1989.a.8242) a skilful and witty treatment which is based on a sound knowledge of her writings. Yet she also inspired more serious works in other media; a recent exhibition at the Maureen Paley Gallery in London featured paintings and drawings by Kaye Donachie based on Duras’s novella La Maladie de la mort (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1983;  X.958/26494).

These are only a limited selection of the works held by the British Library from the many which Duras produced during an outstanding creative life which drew to a close after a struggle with alcoholism and cancer of the throat on 3 March 1996. We hope that readers will be encouraged to embark on their own voyage through her strangely compelling world and, in doing so, to gather memories of their own.

Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak Studies

On 14 May 2014 the British Library will host European Literature Night for the 6th consecutive year with an exciting new extended programme of events – the well-established evening Writers event in the Conference Centre Auditorium which brings together six diverse and compelling European writers in conversation with acclaimed journalist and passionate advocate of European literature, Rosie Goldsmith; a parallel Graphic Novelists event  in the Terrace Restaurant with four high-profile writers chaired by Paul Gravett, Co-Director of the Comica Festival and curator of the British Library Comics Unmasked exhibition, and an afternoon  panel discussion Stories in Translation: Translating the Untranslatable run by the Open University and chaired by Dr Fiona Doloughan, which will bring together two exciting writers who will later feature in the Auditorium event, a translator and a publisher.

Illustration by Lucie Lomova, one of the artists featured in ‘European Literature Night: The Graphic Novelists’

In the run-up to European Literature Night you will find a selection of exclusive posts from and about the writers and their work here on the BL European Studies blog beginning with a post very soon about Antoine Laurain’s The President’s Hat. You can also find more information about the writers, some special video interviews and extracts from their books on the website of the Writers' Centre Norwich.

The British Library feels like a natural home for European Literature Night. In the field of literature, our collections range from literary archives to sound recordings, translators’ papers, electronic archives and a vast array of print publications from fiction, poetry and drama in most written languages of the world and in translation, to critical texts about them. We aim to inspire the widest public with a lively programme of events, exhibitions, seminars and online offerings which capitalise on the expertise of our curators to bring to life our extensive collections from continental Europe alongside our incomparable English-language and other international collections. Along with colleagues in English & Drama, European Studies curators engage in a range of collaborative projects which explore literature in translation from many perspectives.

European Literature Night is presented in partnership with EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) London which brings together 28 European Cultural Institutes and Embassies, the European Commission Representation in the UK, Czech Centre London and Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions, along with a host of other supporters including publishers, translators and arts organisations. It gives us all the opportunity to work together towards a common goal of promoting to UK audiences the best of European culture in all its diversity.

Julia Franck, one of the novelists featured in this year’s European Literature Night

Having participated in the selection panel for the European Literature Night Writers event I am really excited about the stellar line-up:  Jonas T. Bengtsson (Denmark), Julia Franck (Germany), Antoine Laurain (France), Diego Marani (Italy), Witold Szabłowski (Poland) and Dimitri Verhulst (Belgium). Don’t miss these great writers in conversation with Rosie Goldsmith, followed by short readings from their work. If you’d like to hear Diego Marani and Witold Szabłowski speak in a little more detail, along with award-winning translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones and publisher Eric Lane (Dedalus), consider joining the afternoon seminar in the Brontë Room in the BL Conference Centre. Tickets are free but seating is limited, so it is essential to book.

A whole new dimension is being brought to European Literature Night with the addition for the first time of a celebration of  the burgeoning graphic novels scene with Line Hoven (Germany), Lucie Lomová (Czech Republic), Max (Spain) and Judith Vanistendael (Belgium) who will read, discuss and live-illustrate their work. The events will run in parallel, but we can expect a real buzz when all the writers and both audiences come together for a joint reception and complimentary viewing of the exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK.

Tickets are currently available for all the events. And don’t forget to check back here to the British Library European Studies blog for discussion about European Literature Night and exclusive posts from the writers.

Janet Zmroczek, Head of European Studies