Marlborough LitFest’s annual ‘Translation Duel’ (complete with actual, though disappointingly unused, daggers), provided a brilliant insight into the process of literary translation. This year, literary translators Aneesa Abbas Higgins and Vineet Lal were tasked with translating an extract from French-Moroccan novelist Leïla Slimani’s latest book J’emporterai le feu. Presiding over their ‘duel’ was Daniel Hahn, also a translator.
Hahn opened the talk by explaining the purpose of the ‘duel’. It aims, he explained, to demonstrate what translators actually do in a concrete way. Throughout the event, the audience got to understand how translators carefully consider (or even agonise over) individual words, sentence structures and punctuation in order to produce a translation which both captures the original essence of the author’s writing but is also clearly understandable to those who are reading the work in translation and may have different cultural reference points and expectations.
Lal noted that he felt he had been more creative in this exercise than usual whereas Higgins noted the opposite, that she had tried to be more careful and restrained in her translation as, unusually, her translation would be presented alongside the original text. Both agreed that Slimani’s writing has a distinct clarity of language which emphasises the story rather than style and had tried to emulate this readability in their translations.
It struck me that both translators talked about similar debates but often came to different conclusions. The first point of contention was how to translate À dix-sept heures, Mehdi se leva. Lal translated this sentence as ‘At five p.m., Mehdi stood up.’ and Higgins as ‘At five o’clock Mehdi got up from his desk’. In French, which uses the 24-hour clock as standard, it is clear Mehdi is getting/standing up in the afternoon and thus we assume he is at work. In English, however, the exact time is harder to convey but both translators came up with solutions that demonstrate that Mehdi is in his office and not rolling out of bed at 5am.
There was also discussion of how translators use the strengths of the language they are translating into. Hahn noted that he rarely needs to translate adverbs that describe someone walking in a certain way as English provides so many brilliant verbs for this (think meander, saunter, plod etc.). In his translation, Lal utilised this strength and rendered il traversa, literally meaning ‘he traversed’, ‘he strode’.
Also interesting was the discussion of how to translate terms which either have a specific cultural meaning which would be missed by a literal translation or have no direct English translation at all. The first was gardien de la rue which the panel described as a kind of unofficial ‘parking attendant’ (Lal’s translation) or ‘street guard’ (Higgins’ translation) common in parts of the world including Morocco where Slimani’s book is set. It is difficult, however, to explain to an English-speaking reader who has no concept of such a person, who this is. Similarly, the panel discussed how to translate ratonnade, a term which they explained has roots in the term raton, a derogatory term for North Africans, but which has come to mean a racially motivated attack. The register of the translation, they explained, also had to be matched to its context: a newspaper headline from Le Monde. Higgins translated the term as ‘Violent racist attack’ and Lal as ‘Racist hate crime’.
There was, unsurprisingly, a question on AI and the future of literary translation from an audience member. The panel agreed that, rather depressingly for translators, AI is likely to have a profound impact. Whilst AI is not set (in the near future at least) to emulate the quality provided by professional translators, it seems likely to soon be able to produce translations which are ‘80%’ as good; an attractive prospect for struggling publishing companies.
Hahn was determined, however, not to end on that demoralising note and so I won’t end my review on it either. In sum, I would like to say that this year’s ‘Translation Duel’ provided a wonderful accessible glimpse for the audience, whether they were familiar with French or not, into the minds and work of translators. I look forward to next year’s ‘duel’ and encourage anyone, linguist or not, to attend!
LitFest ’25: Kate Webb – ‘Hollow Grave’
