John West-Sooby

Translating national allegories: the case of crime fiction

The title of this special issue represents an attempt to chart the interrelationship of three sites of tension, each of which might easily justify its own discrete study: first, the translation of crime fiction; second, the translation of national allegories, including here the markers of specific national identities, or culture-specific items; and third, the articulation of the national in crime fiction, including the importance of place in the latter. As Peter Flynn, Joep Leerssen and Luc van Doorslaer (2015) note, translation studies and imagology, which is to say, the study of the ways in which national (stereo)types are constructed, are both necessarily focused on the transnational, the translational; indeed, these disciplines, taken together or individually, depend on borders, typically national but also other geographic or linguistic ones, in order to assess the kind of transfers necessary for cultural mobility. For Flynn, Leerssen and Doorslaer, the tendency among scholars to overlook national characteristics over the last 20 years has led to a rather ‘vaguely termed intercultural hermeneutics’ (2015, 1). They note further that imagology derives from literary studies, and they place their emphasis on a certain ‘literary canonicity’whose guarantee of historical longevity assists the construction of ‘ethnotypical perceptions’ (2015, 4). Canonicity also influences translation choices as well as, often, being facilitated by translation. While the question of crime fiction’s relationship to the canon is not yet entirely settled, its successful adaptation to translation markets is long since proven. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Flynn, Leerssen and Doorslaer consider crime fiction interesting by virtue of its very conventionality (2015, 13). One of our aims in this issue is to support the notion of crime fiction’s relevance to the fields of translation studies and imagology; our second aim is to focus on what happens, what sometimes fails to happen and what is lost, and sometimes gained, when national characteristics described in crime fiction are translated; and our final aim is to show how translation can force us to rethink the genre as unconventional, or perhaps as a series of conventions that mask the tendency of individual crime novels to refuse to be contained. Like the walls of the locked room, the conventional borders and bordering conventions of crime fiction are designed to be breached. With this in mind, we shall begin here by saying a little about our three concepts before aiming to convey what happens when they are brought together.

Matthew Flinders through French Eyes: Nicolas Baudin’s Lessons from Encounter Bay

ABSTRACT The encounter between Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders off the south coast of New Holland in April 1802 has attracted considerable attention. For many, it has come to symbolise the triumph of the spirit of international scientific cooperation over national rivalries and personal ambitions. Scholarly analysis of the complexities of the encounter moment itself has, however, served to modify this idealised image. The injustice subsequently done to Flinders by François Péron and Louis de Freycinet, who failed to acknowledge his discoveries on this coast in the published account of the French voyage, has also generated much discussion. The impact of the encounter on Baudin and his men, on the other hand, has not been subjected to the same scrutiny. Through a close examination of the archival documentation, this essay offers the French perspective on Matthew Flinders and highlights the ramifications for the Baudin expedition of this fateful meeting with him.

Barbey d’Aurevilly, Ce qui ne meurt pas. Édition par Marie-Françoise Melmoux-Montaubin

This is the latest offering in Champion’s re-edition of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Œuvres romanesques complètes. Initially entitled Germaine, it is thought to have been written in 1834–35 and thus represents the young Barbey’s first novel-length work. It also has the distinction of being the last novel he published during his lifetime, as it was only in 1883 that it saw the light of day. As this fifty-year gap might suggest, Barbey had great difficulty finding a publisher for his manuscript, which he referred to in a letter to his friend and confidant Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien as his ‘belle au bois dormant’ (in Correspondance générale, 9 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1980–89), III (1983), 216; 23 June 1853). Ce qui ne meurt pas is not as well known as Barbey’s other novels and has attracted less scholarly attention. It nevertheless features many themes and tropes that will be familiar to readers of his work — its Normandy setting, for example, which the author accentuated as he continued to work on his text over the years. The novel’s marshland topography offers a complementary vision to that of the moors, which provide the setting of L’Ensorcelée (1852). The claustrophobic and gothic atmosphere of this story is likewise reminiscent of many other Barbey texts, as are its psycho-sexual thematics. The novel recounts the obsessive love of the young orphan Allan for his protectress, Yseult de Scudémor (initially named Germaine de Valombre). Allan’s attraction for this older woman is due in large part, and somewhat perversely, to her attitude of indifference, which is the result of her youthful erotic excesses. He eventually marries her daughter, Camille, and it is this relationship that forms the basis for Part Two of the novel. The intertwined stories of these three protagonists allow Barbey to explore themes such as adultery, incest, Sapphic love, matricide, and necrophilia — a heady mix that bears the traces of Chateaubriand’s René and George Sand’s Lélia. This edition of the novel features an extensive critical apparatus: an eightytwo-page Introduction, thirty-four pages of manuscript variations, two appendices reproducing the preface that Barbey wrote in 1835 and contemporary reviews of the novel by Octave Mirbeau and Léon Bloy, a useful bibliography, an index, and numerous footnotes on aspects of the text. This scholarly material is erudite and informative, and will undoubtedly make this an indispensable reference work. The sheer volume of commentary offered here, however, invites reflection on the limits that should be imposed on the critical apparatus in such scholarly editions of texts. The Introduction is especially long, and, when we get to the story itself, the number and volume of the footnotes are often a distraction on the page. The end result is a volume of 600 pages costing e100. This will no doubt prove offputting to interested individuals and even university libraries, subjected these days to tight budgets.

On being translated: John West-Sooby speaks to Peter Temple

Peter Temple is an internationally acclaimed Australian crime fiction writer. Born in South Africa in 1946, he moved to Australia in 1980 to continue his work as a newspaper journalist and editor. ...

Language and the national allegory: translating Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore and Truth into French

ABSTRACT Language plays a key role in the crime novels of Peter Temple, where it serves both as a means of constructing a distinctive Australian identity and as a vehicle for expressing Temple’s critique of Australian society and its ills. A close comparative reading of his two landmark novels, The Broken Shore and Truth, and their French translations highlights the significance of their linguistic features and the challenges they pose to translators. By focusing on particular aspects of Temple’s style, the lexicon he favours and his use of the Australian vernacular, notably swear words, we can see how crucial language is to his construction of the national allegory – and the impact that differing translation strategies and practices can have on the representation of that national allegory for a different target audience.

If I say If: The Poems and Short Stories of Boris Vian

edited by Alistair Rolls, John West-Sooby and Jean Fornasiero; translations by Maria Freij and Peter Hodges

Translating Nice Try into Bien joué

Notwithstanding its universal appeal, crime fiction frequently emerges as a vehicle for the expression of national identity. However, since the global readership of crime novels inevitably leads to their translation into other languages, the question arises as to what then happens to the national or cultural identity they project. Taking as a case study one of Shane Maloneys Murray Whelan novels, this article proposes a comparative analysis of the original text in Australian English and its French translation. It aims to identify the strategies used by the translators when confronted with the task of translating for a French readership the culturally specific features that characterize the novels Melbourne setting, focusing on three fundamental dimensions: the spatial, the sociological and the cultural.

Aux origines du roman criminel: Eugène Sue et les mystères de la Seine

English title: The origins of the Roman criminal: Eugene Sue and the mysteries of the Seine