New French Translation for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s Adventures
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Bernard Hoepffner, a translator, has the honor of the media this week. He was on the French public radio this morning, for 45 minutes of pure listening pleasure for translators. A few quotes:
‘Translators are the best readers…. We read down to every comma…’
‘When you translate, you try to replicate the writer’s eye, and ear, and hand… up to the point where you feel you could almost “write” the original… Of course it’s not true, but you often get that impression…’
‘Something is so universal in this book…’
‘There’s a paradox: the original work of art doesn’t age, translations age… Ezra Pound said: each generation should re-translate its classics…’
‘Slang gets outdated quickly. Translators try to use a form of slang that existed in the 50’s and is still here… The reader is led to believe that the book was written today, but it was written in the mid-19th century…’
‘Translators have a little more power these days…’
Here is the link. http://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/em/eclectik_dim/index.php
You can listen again for up to 45 days.
Here is another deeply insightful interview in a news magazine: http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/2008/09/18/cest-mark-twain-quil-ressuscite
Bernard Hoepffner’s own website is here: http://wvorg.free.fr/hoepffner/ with an impressive list of his translations.
With this new translation, the aim is to restore the full power of the books, which have been restricted to the children’s books market. Unfortunately as Bernard Hoepffner states in his printed interview, Mark Twain is so famous here in France that few people bother to read him now. I had to read Huckleberry Finn’s Adventures in English for my degree many years ago, but I never read any translation. I caught a few glimpses of the children’s TV program that was made of it, when my kids were small. That is probably the only version of the book that many people will have had contact with.
I’m definitely getting these new translations. Actually I’ve just ordered them online.
As for now, after an hour of intense daydreaming, I’m back to my technical translations… different styles, different purposes, different uses, but I’m thankful for people like literary translators.
