nothomb, amélie loving sabotage (le sabotage amoureux 1993)

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This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University] On: 17 December 2014, At: 21:22 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Translation Review Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrv20 Nothomb, Amélie Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux 1993) Jean Anderson Published online: 01 Oct 2012. To cite this article: Jean Anderson (2007) Nothomb, Amélie Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux 1993), Translation Review, 73:1, 65-67, DOI: 10.1080/07374836.2007.10524121 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2007.10524121 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Nothomb, Amélie               Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux               1993)

This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University]On: 17 December 2014, At: 21:22Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Translation ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrv20

Nothomb, Amélie Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotageamoureux 1993)Jean AndersonPublished online: 01 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Jean Anderson (2007) Nothomb, Amélie Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux 1993), TranslationReview, 73:1, 65-67, DOI: 10.1080/07374836.2007.10524121

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2007.10524121

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Nothomb, Amélie               Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux               1993)

Translation Review 65

specifically feminine, feminist, and decidedly unified subjectivity. This effect remains regardless of whether it was produced by a single female writer or a sixteenth-century collaboration; it can also still be heard in the translations of Lesko Baker and Finch. By conveying Labé’s message so effectively and passionately to a twenty-first-century audience, Lesko Baker and Finch argue and demonstrate persuasively how original, modern, and most importantly, vital, the poetic voice of Louise Labé resounds. (This review was originally published in H-France Review, Vol. 6 (September 2006), No. 119: http://www.h-france.net/ vol6reviews/chang.html.)

Notes 1Lesko Baker’s introductions adapt for a more general audience many of the points and analyses of her full-length study of Labé’s corpus in English, The Subject of Desire: Petrarchan Poetics and the Female Voice in Louise Labé (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1996). 2Debate of Folly and Love, trans. Anne-Marie Bourbon (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2000); Louise Labé’s Complete Works, ed. and trans. Edith R. Farrel (Troy: Whitson, 1986). Jeanne Prine translates the dedicatory letter in “Louise Labé, Poet of Lyon,” in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). 3Mireille Huchon, Louise Labé: Une créature du papier (Genève: Droz, 2006). Nothomb, Amélie. Loving Sabotage. (Le Sabotage amoureux. 1993.). Translation by Andrew Wilson. New York. New Directions. 2000. 136 pp. Cloth $21.95. ISBN 0-8112-1459-1. Jean Anderson, Reviewer

Since Andrew Wilson’s translation was published, several of Amélie Nothomb’s other

works have made their way onto the scene in the English-speaking world. Including Loving Sabotage (Le Sabotage amoureux), some half a dozen books are available in English: Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements, 1999), translated in 2001 by Adriana Hunter; The Character of Rain (Métaphysique des tubes, 2000), translated in 2002 by Timothy Bent; The Book of Proper Names (Robert des noms propres, 2002), translated in 2004 by Shaun Whiteside; Antichrista (Antéchrista, 2003), translated in 2005 by Whiteside; The Life of Hunger (Biographie de la faim, 2004), translated in 2006 by Whiteside; and Sulphuric Acid (Acide sulphurique, 2005), translated in 2007 by Whiteside. Andrew Wilson’s translation is thus one of the earliest of the English translations of Nothomb’s work.

Originally published in 1993, Le Sabotage amoureux was the follow-up to the young French author’s ground-breaking Hygiène de l’assassin (1992), which had an enormous and instantaneous impact as well as set the scene for her now famous series of quirkily written, auto-fictional novels that are half-way between autobiography and fiction. Nothomb, nominally of Belgian nationality, was born in Japan into a diplomatic family. She then lived in rather quick succession in China, New York, and Bangladesh.

The contrasts and paradoxes of Nothomb’s life experiences are reflected to a considerable degree not just in the subject matter of her books, several of which explore the clash of cultures, but also in her inimitable writing style. Reviewers of her work habitually speak of “vitriol,” of sharpness, and of a scathing wit. Indeed, the dust cover of Wilson’s translation for New Directions quotes from a review originally published in Le Figaro that highlights Nothomb’s “verve, vulgarity, provocation, wit, cutting words and paradoxical formulas” that help create a clear impression of “ill-tempered purity and a perverse innocence.” The combination of childhood experiences and an extremely sophisticated, even erudite, adult perspective is a common factor in several of her works.

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66 Translation Review

Loving Sabotage shares with the later Stupeur et tremblements (and other of Nothomb’s novels) a central first-person character who is set down in another culture. Whereas the subsequent work relates a young Belgian woman’s misadventures while employed in Japan, Loving Sabotage tells the story of a young girl in Peking who, except for when she rides her trusty bicycle, rarely ventures outside the confines of the multi-national diplomatic community. She meets and falls in love with Elena, an attractive but emotionally detached Italian girl.

When not attending the hopelessly incompetent French school, the narrator is deeply involved in the gang warfare that rages between rival groups of children in the “international ghetto” where diplomats and their families are housed. Much of the text is devoted to detailing the unhygienic and even scatological tortures inflicted on “enemy” captives. The obvious challenge to the translator is to maintain the witty lightness of the original texts in spite of the unsavoriness of the events, a wittiness arising in part from Nothomb’s use of elaborate language and sophisticated concepts juxtaposed with banal actions or with expressions or images of a distinctly lower register.

Such deliberate inconsistencies of tone are an enormous challenge in translation; it is no small achievement to capture accurately the delicate balance of tone and register, as well as perversity and innocence, between the distanced adult voice and the child’s immediacy of experience. When the text deals with such a range of elements, from children urinating into their unsuspecting neighbours’ yoghurt to Wittgenstein’s reflections on life, it is desperately important to find the appropriate tone at all times if the book is not to cross that invisible but crucial line that separates the original author’s authority from the supposition of an inadequate translation.

Let me say at once that Andrew Wilson’s translation taken ‘dry’, that is, without comparison with the source text, reads very well indeed, and certainly manages to convey

the essentials of both story and character. There are, nevertheless, some issues that warrant consideration. Admittedly, given Nothomb’s preferred style, occasional stiltedness may be a reflection of the original. It is worth thinking about, however, that the linguistic difference between English and French known as the “doublet savant” or “learned equivalent” means that the closest (Latinate) equivalent to the French may have a more usual (Anglo-Saxon) term. Liberté, for example, may equate to both liberty and freedom, with a difference of register. To choose an example from Loving Sabotage, why translate “La question de l’après-moi ne me préoccupait pas” (46) by “The question of post-me occupied my thoughts but little” (30)? A less stiff alternative is available: “The question of post-me was not a concern.” Keeping the register slightly lower whenever possible by opting for the less “‘savant” term in English would mitigate a problem frequently encountered in French-to-English translation: that of over-elaborate language due to direct influence of the French forms, a problem — I need hardly add — that is particularly acute in dealing with Nothomb’s style.

Wilson does opt for simplicity at times, but this is not always respectful of the formal elements of the writing:

C’est pourtant là, au coeur de la Cité des Ventilateurs, que ma décadence a commencé. Elle a débuté à l’instant où j’ai compris que le centre du monde, ce n’était pas moi. Elle a débuté à l’instant où j’ai été émerveillée de découvrir qui était le centre du monde. (47)

becomes: Nonetheless, it was in the heart of the city of Electric Fans that my decadence began. It commenced the moment I realized that I

was not the centre of the world. The moment I discovered, to my astonishment, who the centre of the world actually was. (31) While I would not quibble with the rearrangement of paragraphs in many cases, Nothomb’s somewhat aphoristic style relies

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Translation Review 67

heavily on a punchy sentence division that Wilson regularly smoothes over into longer syntagms and paragraphs. This is the most consistent stylistic difference between the original and the translated text.

Some cultural differences result in a perceived need for adjustment in translation: “encre de Chine — encre doublement de Chine” (45) clearly poses a problem when the English equivalent is “Indian ink” (29), but is the transposition of “jardins d’Allah” (30) into “Nirvana” (18) a stroke of genius or an unnecessary intervention? Elsewhere, Wilson’s interpretations are more obvious: “la peau couleur de sable mouillé” (49) becomes “skin the color of sand on a dampened beach” (32), when perhaps the addition of a color adjective (e.g., “golden”) would have been more helpful to the reader. One might also question the elaboration of “les adultes étaient consternés” (52) into “the adult foreigners lived depressed and uneasy lives” (32), or the loss of imagery in rendering “décrire Eléna renvoyait le Cantique des cantiques au rang des inventaires de boucherie” (50) as “compared with a proper description of Elena, the Song of Songs was a shopping list” (32), where the butcher’s inventory of cuts of meat is lost in favor of a much more neutral grocery list.

The somewhat odd expression “over-aged adolescents that we are” (113) for “les grands dadais que nous sommes” (158), more usually “over-grown” or “‘great lumps” may be attributed to the translator’s personal preference. On the other hand, there are some clear indications of erroneous interpretation: “ancient ghetto” (12) for “ancien ghetto” (21), which is more properly “former ghetto”; and “my copy” (80) for “ma copie” (114), which should be “my work.”

These errors, however, do not detract from the overall success of Wilson’s translation of Nothomb’s Le Sabotage amoureux, particularly when these errors are considered in the context of the very considerable stylistic difficulties encountered in dealing with this particular author’s work. The translation flows well on the whole and generally captures the adult-

child voice of the narrative convincingly. In many instances, Wilson’s choices are convincing and the book maintains the tricky balance between opposing elements. Stylistic considerations of the kind I have highlighted here are unlikely to be of concern to the majority of readers, and the idiosyncrasies of Amélie Nothomb’s work clearly deserve to reach a wider audience. Bernhard, Thomas. In Hora Mortis/Under the Iron of the Moon. (In Hora Mortis/Unter dem Eisen des Mondes. 1958.). Bilingual Edition. Translation by James Reidel. Princeton. Princeton University Press. 2006. 192 pp. Paper $15.95. ISBN 978-0-691-12642-5. Cloth $37.95. ISBN 978-0-691-12641-8. Richard Millington, Reviewer

“Translations are always disgusting But they brought me a lot of money.”

— Thomas Bernhard, Der Weltverbesserer

Bernhard’s characteristically caustic

remarks about translators and translation should not distract us from the excellent work done (above all) by David McLintock in bringing the works of this master manipulator of German syntax — and master vituperator of post-war Austrian society — to an English-speaking readership. With Bernhard’s status as a major writer of international standing now beyond question, the translations look set to proliferate. Multiple English versions of several better-known works are already available, and it is only a question of time before the remaining gaps in his oeuvre are filled.

One such gap is represented by the Gesammelte Gedichte (Collected Poems), compiled and edited by Bernhard himself in the last decade of his life. A large step toward filling this gap has been taken with the appearance of James Reidel’s translations of the second and third of Bernhard’s five lyric

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