Liesbeth De Bleeker

Narration and translation

This opening essay of the special issue on ‘Narration and Translation’ discusses the overlaps between the fields of narratology and translation studies. The fact that translation scholars have merely skimmed the surface of narratological issues relevant for the study of translation can be understood within the context of early developments in translation studies. The first explicit use of narratological models in this discipline has grown out of unease with the extant focus on the macrostructural level of translations. In recent decades, translation scholars have begun to include narrative approaches in their research. Some conceptualize the translator’s discursive presence by referring to a model of narrative communication, or borrow concepts from narratology in order to analyse observed shifts in literary translations. Outside the domain of literary translation studies, scholars have looked into the way translation can refashion narratives in the real world. Conversely, narrative theories have rarely dealt with translational issues, even though they often rely on translations of literary texts. The issue as a whole wants to enhance the dialogue between narratology and translation studies. Each essay explores aspects of the relation between narration and translation.

Translating space in narrative fiction: Patrick Chamoiseau’s Martinique seen from a Dutch and English perspective

This article analyzes what happens to the space of a narrative when it is translated. Its main goal is to demonstrate how we can deepen our understanding of space by seeing it through the twin lenses of narratology and comparative translation analysis. I will refer to the fictional universe created by the French Caribbean author Patrick Chamoiseau to illustrate this point. In particular, examples will be taken from Chronique des sept misères (2002 [1986]), from Texaco (2003 [1992]), and from the English and Dutch translations of these novels. After an introductory first section, the article sets out the narratological framework used in the analysis, based on a three-layered approach to space: the space constructed by the reader, its textual rendering, and the discursive space of the text itself. Adopting the same threefold structure, the third section offers an analysis of Chamoiseau’s texts, through a comparison of original and translated texts. In Section 4, the results of the analysis will be confronted with Chamoiseau’s own view on translation. The analysis shows how space is not only created by narratological and stylistic procedures, but also on the level of discourse, in the space the text creates for itself to speak from, which Maingueneau (1993: 123) has termed ‘scenography’. It also demonstrates how insights gained from translation studies can help narratologists to become aware of this interaction, and how a thorough narratological analysis that takes into account constructed space, its textual manifestation, and the space of enunciation, may help translation scholars better evaluate the impact of the translator’s choices.

From ‘Habitation’ to ‘En-Ville’: the play with European models of space in the French Caribbean novel (Zobel and Chamoiseau)

We aim to describe the evolution of the representation of space in the Caribbean novel of the 1950s through to the 1990s. Initially, the rural space of the ‘Habitation’ is seen as a token of indigenous identity, mimetically referring to a regionalist and naturalistic model of space. As Zobel, the first author we discuss, hardly questions the relation between the Creole and the French language, he confirms the nationalist model as it was developed by the European romantics, following the triadic structure of language, nation and territory. The second author, Chamoiseau, interprets urban space as a token of hybrid identity. On the one hand, the new city Texaco, refers to urban models as developed in European and Western cultural geography, and thus seems to replace the model of the ‘Habitation’. On the other hand, the new urban space is understood as a displacement of the centre, since it becomes the meeting place of intersecting cultures. Finally, the role of literature as a constructing force of cultural models will be stressed.