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Translating Cultural Identity

French Translations of Australian Crime Fiction

by Sarah Reed (Author)
©2019 Monographs XII, 248 Pages

Summary

The genre of crime fiction – so often rooted in the details of a place, time and subculture – enjoys significant international popularity and provides readers with a unique opportunity to explore the different cultural identities represented in its texts. This book offers a convincing rationale to illustrate how crime fiction in translation can be especially productive when examining the projection of a specific cultural identity to a new, foreign readership. Focusing on the intercultural transcreation of Australian cultural identity for a new francophone readership, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible theme-based analysis highlighting how the choice of translation strategy can significantly affect representations of cultural identity. The author asks important questions about the compromises that are necessary in finding creative solutions to translation problems and discovers some unexpected and surprising consequences of the decisions made for the new readers who believe they are gaining insights into another culture through reading crime fiction in translation.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • Preface
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • Part I Translation, Cultural Identity, Crime Fiction
  • Chapter 1: Australian Cultural Identity
  • Chapter 2: The Fortunes of Australian Crime Fiction in France
  • Chapter 3: Richard Flanagan and Philip McLaren: ‘Australian Authors’
  • Part II Comparative Textual Analysis
  • Chapter 4: Approaches to Translation
  • Chapter 5: Translating Place
  • Chapter 6: Translating Behaviours
  • Chapter 7: Translating Language Use
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series Index

Translating Cultural Identity

French Translations of
Australian Crime Fiction

Sarah M. A. Reed

image
PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-

bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reed, Sarah M. A., 1959- author.

Title: Translating cultural identity : French translations of
Australian crime fiction / Sarah M. A. Reed.

Description: First edition. | Oxford New York : Peter Lang, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019016707 | ISBN 9781788740074

Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories, Australian--Translations
into French--History and criticism. | Detective and mystery stories,
French--History and criticism. | National characteristics, Australian in
literature. | Group identity--Australia.

Classification: LCC PR9612.6.D48 R44 2019 | DDC 448/.043021--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/201901670

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

ISSN 1664-249X

ISBN 978-1-78874-007-4 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78874-008-1 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78874-009-8 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78874-010-4 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2019

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Sarah M. A. Reed has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Sarah M. A. Reed holds a PhD in French and Translation from the University of Adelaide, where she is currently a Visiting Research Fellow and casual French tutor. She is the author of ‘Howdunnit? The French translation of Australian Cultural identity in Philip McLaren’s crime novel Scream Black Murder/Tueur d’Aborigènes’, published in The Translator in 2016. Her main research interest lies in the textual and paratextual representations of cultural identity when translated for a new readership, with a particular focus on the translation of Australasian and Pacific literatures.

About the book

The genre of crime fiction – so often rooted in the details of a place, time and subculture – enjoys significant international popularity and provides readers with a unique opportunity to explore the different cultural identities represented in its texts. This book offers a convincing rationale to illustrate how crime fiction in translation can be especially productive when examining the projection of a specific cultural identity to a new, foreign readership. Focusing on the intercultural transcreation of Australian cultural identity for a new francophone readership, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible theme-based analysis highlighting how the choice of translation strategy can significantly affect representations of cultural identity. The author asks important questions about the compromises that are necessary in finding creative solutions to translation problems and discovers some unexpected and surprising consequences of the decisions made for the new readers who believe they are gaining insights into another culture through reading crime fiction in translation.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgements

I wish to profoundly thank my doctoral thesis supervisors, John West-Sooby and Jean Fornasiero, for their unwavering support and inexhaustible willingness to share their vast knowledge and wisdom with me during the course of this project. A particular thanks to John, whose maddening but impressive and invaluable attention to detail succeeded finally, I hope, in steering me towards a more comprehensible and much improved manner of writing. I feel extremely honoured to have received such careful guidance from you both while negotiating my way through the multitude of distractions and déviations in this topic, to achieve something I thought was entirely possible – but mostly in my dreams. Thank you, John and Jean.

I would also like to thank Deborah Walker-Morrison from the University of Auckland, whose passion for this subject in my undergraduate years – a time when I still had trouble pronouncing la spécificité – was the undeniable catalyst that set me off on this journey. Thank you, Deborah.

My thanks also go to Richard Flanagan, who was gracious in granting me some of his precious time so that I could gain insights into the life, work and challenges of an author. Thank you, Richard.

Scholarship funding from the University of Adelaide in the form of an Australian Research Council Scholarship is gratefully acknowledged. I was also the fortunate recipient of a P. W. Rice Travel Scholarship which enabled me to travel to France for a period of three months to undertake research for this project. The University of Adelaide also enabled me to continue my research and the writing of this book by providing me with a Visiting Research Fellowship and space to work in, for which I am very grateful.

Acknowledgement must also be given to The Translator journal, which accepted and published the first research that emerged from this study in 2016, my first published work: ‘“Howdunnit?” The French Translation of Australian Cultural Identity in Philip McLaren’s Crime Novel Scream Black Murder/Tueur d’Aborigènes’, The Translator, 22(2), 157–75 (<https://www.tandfonline.com/>).←vii | viii→

Finally, my thanks go to my family and friends, and particularly to my three children, Matthew, Jeremy and Rebekah. Thank you for your constant encouragement, particularly when it got tough, your bottomless cups of tea and your never-ending optimism and love. Matt, Jem and Bekah – you inspire me every day and I am so proud to be your mum.←viii | ix→

Preface

The recognition by translation theorists that literary translation has the ability to perform a culture for a target readership has led to intense debate surrounding the difficulties posed by the translation of cultural specificity. This is now referred to as ‘the cultural turn in Translation Studies’. Theorists supporting a ‘foreignization’ strategy in translation argue that this facilitates understanding of the source culture by highlighting cultural difference. Thus, paradoxically, the staging of difference serves to draw cultures closer together. Theorists supporting a ‘domestication’ strategy, however, suggest that the goal should be to create equivalence – adapting the source text to provide understanding for the target culture by neutralizing, naturalizing or even eliminating cultural difference. In order to explore the ramifications of the strategies adopted by translators, this book will undertake a comparative textual analysis of four crime fiction novels by two Australian authors, Richard Flanagan and Philip McLaren, in which both authors have consciously set out to construct a distinctive sense of Australian cultural identity. The micro-textual analysis of the original texts and their translations aims to identify the ways in which the peculiarly Australian features of these novels are conveyed to the French target readership. This will allow conclusions to be drawn on the influence that translation practices can have on the intercultural transcreation (Reed 2015) that takes place in the transportation of texts between cultures.

Details

Pages
XII, 248
Year
2019
ISBN (PDF)
9781788740081
ISBN (ePUB)
9781788740098
ISBN (MOBI)
9781788740104
ISBN (Softcover)
9781788740074
DOI
10.3726/b12036
Language
English
Publication date
2019 (August)
Keywords
translation studies cultural identity French translation of Australian literature twentieth-century Australian crime fiction comparative literature genre fiction Australian and French cultural specificity in translation
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2019. XII, 248 pp.

Biographical notes

Sarah Reed (Author)

Sarah M. A. Reed holds a PhD in French and Translation from the University of Adelaide, where she is currently a Visiting Research Fellow and casual French tutor. She is the author of «Howdunnit? The French translation of Australian Cultural identity in Philip McLaren’s crime novel Scream Black Murder/Tueur d’Aborigènes», published in The Translator in 2016. Her main research interest lies in the textual and paratextual representations of cultural identity when translated for a new readership, with a particular focus on the translation of Australasian and Pacific literatures.

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