{"id":852,"date":"2011-03-21T12:20:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T16:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=852"},"modified":"2011-04-22T09:46:56","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T13:46:56","slug":"behind-the-scenes-a-note-on-the-french-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/behind-the-scenes-a-note-on-the-french-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes: A Note on the French Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter and I met H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Bury, the French translator of Birthmarked<\/em>, in front of the H\u00f4tel de Ville in Rennes at 10:00 Saturday morning and instantly bonded.\u00a0 H\u00e9l\u00e8ne is funny, smiley, and genuinely nice, and what\u2019s more, she and I have certain things in common that sealed our friendship: we both prefer hot chocolate to coffee and adore Colin Firth.<\/p>\n

\"\"

C. O'Brien and H. Bury, in Rennes<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m particularly grateful that H\u00e9l\u00e8ne was chosen to translate my novel.\u00a0 In the first place, she has lived in Texas, so her command of American English allows her to grasp the subtleties of connotations in the original text.\u00a0 Consider, for instance, how \u201cslender,\u201d \u201cthin\u201d and \u201cskinny\u201d are all versions of the same concept but convey very different meanings. \u00a0\u201cFinish\u201d and \u201cterminate,\u201d are literally close, but one seems far more violent.\u00a0 In a similar vein, when I have characters say something sarcastic, I choose words that will make that clear to an American reader without having to add a clumsy \u201che said sarcastically\u201d in the tag.\u00a0 I also pick certain words because of how they convey a character\u2019s education or attitude, so the language in dialogue is especially important to me.\u00a0 There are layers, too.\u00a0 If Leon is described as \u201cdreamy,\u201d the word sounds sort of cute and dated, yet when a teen says it in a teasing way, it adds a quick sting of humor.<\/p>\n

H\u00e9l\u00e8ne made thousands of word choices to accurately translate Gaia\u2019s story into French, but there\u2019s another factor I hadn\u2019t considered.\u00a0 She explained that sometimes one word in English would need three words in French to translate accurately, and it simply couldn\u2019t be done with any artfulness, so something got lost.\u00a0 Conversely, there were other places where a literal translation was possible, but there was a more graceful way to say the same thing in French.\u00a0 In those cases, because she\u2019d had to drop out a certain element in one place, she tried to add it back in where she could.\u00a0 She knew what would sound smooth and polished in French, knowing that was what I valued in my English.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very clear to me that my book was entirely in H\u00e9l\u00e8ne\u2019s hands, and that translation is another form of writing, really–an art in itself.\u00a0 In her effort to do the best job she could, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne asked her parents to read her translation to check for clarity or confusion, which is exactly the sort of thing I would do (Merci \u00e0 vous, les parents!<\/em>).\u00a0 To my delight, she and her parents invented a verb \u201cGa\u00efater\u201d that means \u201cto work on the translation of Gaia\u2019s story\u201d because that\u2019s what H\u00e9l\u00e8ne was doing so intensely for so long. \u00a0(Bonjour, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne. \u00a0Qu’est-ce que tu fais ce soir? \u00a0Je Ga\u00efate.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s another reason why I\u2019m glad H\u00e9l\u00e8ne was the one who translated Gaia\u2019s story.\u00a0 She gets Gaia.\u00a0 For me to sense a kindred spirit in H\u00e9l\u00e8ne so quickly, I believe we share some of the same sort of vulnerability and strength, the outsider-ness and longing that underscore Gaia\u2019s own character.\u00a0 This translation wasn\u2019t only an intellectual exercise, but a work from the heart, too, and that pleases me enormously.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to add that of course the translation also depended upon my wonderful French editor Sarah Millet for even more fine-tuning, just as it went through many versions of editing in the original American English.\u00a0 Birth Marked Rebelle<\/em> is really a book in its own right, another team effort.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading it while I\u2019m here in France, skipping ahead to my favorite sections, and je dois dire<\/em>, it makes me tr\u00e8s heureuse<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter and I met H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Bury, the French translator of Birthmarked, in front of the H\u00f4tel de Ville in Rennes at 10:00 Saturday morning and instantly bonded.\u00a0 H\u00e9l\u00e8ne is funny, smiley, and genuinely nice, and what\u2019s more, she and I have certain things in common that sealed our friendship: we both prefer hot chocolate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[68,9,37],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-behind-the-scenes","tag-birthmarked-2","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":856,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}