Moose and Caribous: Translating Meg Rosoff's Moose Baby - Clémentine Beauvais

I'm currently translating Meg Rosoff's uncategorisable little gem Moose Baby into French.

For those of you who haven't read this delightful tiny novel, it's the story of a teenage couple who give birth to a baby moose. Lucas Imogen Rudolph, or Moosie as he is affectionately known, is a charming little fur ball but also relatively maladjusted to the world around; at the age of eight months he already weighs one hundred kilos and not much of the furniture survives his toddlerish antics. It is not just funny but also clever, with biting satire of middle-class parenting, deft commentary on special education and on the world's perception of teenage parents, and also extremely moving at times. A perfect little novel, really, somewhere between Kafka and Louise Rennison (I know, not names you often see together in the same sentence). 

Anyway, this novel is tricky to translate in part because you laugh so much the whole time, but also because of a central difficulty at its core. This is a moose:

In French, it's called un élan, or un orignal.

Moose is a funny word in English, which is lucky because the animal is also, well, fairly ridiculous-looking (sorry, moose fans). Unfortunately, in French, élan and orignal are not funny words. They are perfectly bland and boring. Worse, élan also means an impulse or build-up and it's most often used in that sense, so there's some potentially problematic semantic confusion there.

For Moose Baby to work in French, I had to turn Moosie into another animal:

Those of you who know their cervidae will have spotted straightaway that this is a reindeer, like Rudolph (and Olive, the other reindeer), and not a moose, which is bigger. 

Reindeer, alas, look less ridiculous than moose (sorry again, moose fans). However, what comical potential it loses in appearance it makes for in denomination, because switching species meant I could use the word Caribou, which is astronomically funnier than élan or orignal. The word Caribou is so weird that it somehow conjures up a more grotesque creature than the word élan, which sounds loftier and more serious. Caribou is clearly clunky and clownish, while élan ambles gracefully, towering above the steppes.

Of course, this wouldn't happen if this was about, say, a film adaptation. Visually, a moose would be more impressive and funnier. But in a novel, you need to pay close attention to the shape and sound of words - sometimes even more so than to what they refer to in the world. 

So in the French novel, Moosie the Moose becomes Boubou le Caribou. It will require some adjustments regarding size and weight indications, but it will, I think, be faithful to the comical power of the source text.

When we're translating, of course, we're constantly confronted to those strategies of compensation. Sometimes a pun just won't translate, so you delete it there and add another one, that didn't exist in the source text, somewhere else. 

But sometimes, like here, it's a more radical move than just microscopic compensations. It's happened to me several times to have to make such a move. Stylistically, for instance: I wrote elsewhere about translating Sarah Crossan's One, which required thinking strategically about where to locate 'the poetic' in that verse novel, which led me to opt for a much more rhyme-heavy French version. 

I've also written about my own self-translation of Les petites reines into Piglettes, which required entirely changing the central pun ('boudin', black pudding, a funny word for 'ugly girl', didn't work in English) and therefore adjusting a lot of the story. 

Moose Baby is therefore just another one of those choices, but it still makes you bite your nails in anguish. What if the baby actually needs to be, fundamentally, a moose ? What if, as a caribou, it just loses all power? 

In my case, I could just message Meg Rosoff to ask if it's OK (and in fact I have done so), but the problem is that, notwithstanding the fact that she is, of course, a pretty exceptional person, she's not better placed than anyone else to judge, just like I'm not a good person to judge whether 'black pudding' should become, in the translation of my Petites reines, sausages (as in the German version) or paté (as in the Polish version). Even after 11 years of living in Britain I had trouble figuring out how to translate it into English myself. Probing authorial intention in the case of translation is a dangerous game.

Translation choices are endlessly puzzling to writers, but I think it's important to trust that the other country does in fact, most of the time, know best. I was a bit taken aback when it was suggested that my Songe a la douceur (an untranslatable par excellence, since it's a line of poetry by Baudelaire) be translated into English as In Paris With You. 

proofs!

To a French person, even one strongly Britannicised like me, there's nothing particularly romantic about being 'in Paris with you'; I'm often 'in Paris with' random people, and it generally doesn't mean I spend my time eating croissants with them, gazing into their eyes and listening to an accordion piece while the Eiffel Tower sparkles in the background. But when I started hearing the enthusiastic reactions of my British acquaintances to this title, I understood that I had, in fact, clearly no legitimacy whatsoever to assess the power of that title. 

I had a similar conversation with Sarah Crossan regarding the title of her Weight of Water, which I also translated into French. After many weeks of painful brainstorming, my editor came up with the perfect title for our French version: Swimming Pool. Now, I can't quite explain to you why it's the perfect title, but it just is. Swimming Pool. It's mysterious, it's attractive, it's sexy, it's melancholy, it's blue-green and it's perfect. End of story. 

Sarah, however, was a little underwhelmed, because of course 'Swimming Pool' in English is a banal word that evokes not much more than rubbery swimming caps, eyes red from goggles, and the smell of chlorine. But see, that is what French people think, too, when they hear the word Piscine, while Swimming Pool is endlessly mystical. 

I'll never tire of exploring that 'can't quite explain why, but trust me, it is the best option' area of translation. It's important to talk about it, too, because every time you're reading in translation you're doing a kind of leap of faith and you need to understand that it's OK. Better than OK: wonderful. You have to trust the translator and their editor because they're the one in charge and chances are, they know better than - well, than you, for a start, and also than the author, doubtlessly - how to carry that story across to you. 

So it's caribous and swimming-pools, not élans and poids de l'eau. 

Just because. 

Trust me.

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Clémentine Beauvais is a children's and young adult author in French and English, as well as a literary translator. Her latest YA novel, Piglettes, is out with Pushkin Press. Her next novel, In Paris with You, will be out with Faber in June.

Thinking aloud by Miriam Halahmy

Meg Rosoff observed that writing is 80% day dreaming and 20% writing and I quite agree with that. But I would also add into the mix my speciality - saying it out loud, preferably to someone listening. I really find that actually saying the thoughts tumbling through my mind helps both inspiration and organisation. Even if the audience is the poor old better half who is trying to have a quiet coffee up the road in our local Cafe Nero.

Of course if my audience is one of my experienced writer friends then that's really helpful. I have long suffering friends who meet me for nice literary coffees,long walks on the heath and even too many margaritas. Talking over a plot line or character development with experienced writers can of course help to keep me on the straight and narrow and avoid the pitfalls of the whimsical and outlandish.

But the better half, listening with only half an ear, allowing me to whitter on to my heart's content ( even as he yells, GOAL!) also works for me.



I also need to do my 'thinking aloud' when asked to give a talk. The thing about giving talks - well I find this anyhow- is that each one is slightly different, according to the audience, time factor and many other variables. I don't really have set talks, its more like themes which I can return to.

This month I have been invited onto a panel for the LSE Literary Festival, together with Philip Womack. We have to talk for 15 minutes on Re-writing the past vs Re-imagining the future.

This is a nice one for me because history is a great passion of mine and I've spent practically all my life imagining the past. But as my very first historical novel is due out in May and I am currently writing a second one, both set during WW2, then my thinking aloud currently focuses on how I have brought this era alive and made it relevant to 9-12 year olds.

The Emergency Zoo, (Alma Books, May 2016) asks the question, When war breaks out, who will save the animals? My characters are children aged between seven and fifteen, with the main cluster being four twelve year olds - 2 girls and 2 boys. Imagining their lives, clothes, setting, food, interests, worries and concerns was a mixture of research - my main character Tilly wades through streams and climbs trees all in a dress, usually tucked into her knickers - and quite simply thinking back to when I was twelve and how I viewed the world.

My imagination likes to soar when I am alone and fuelled up with coffee but it also likes time to bounce ideas off someone else and I think it is the very action of saying my words aloud which helps me to focus and develop my stories.

www,miriamhalahmy.com

New Adult or Young Adult?

Open Book, Radio Four’s programme about all matters literary turned its attention to New Adult fiction last week. Was it, asked presenter Mariella Frostrup, just a marketing ploy? Or is there a need for a bridge between Young Adult fiction and Adult fiction?

Cue an intelligent and interesting  discussion between journalist Caroline Sanderson, writer Liz Bankes and editor Emily Thomas, which nonetheless had me grinding my teeth and throwing things at the radio.

It seems to me that the title New Adult could mean books about older teens  moving from the world of school, homework and exams into the adult world of further education, employment, unemployment, sex and parenthood.  These books already exist and are labelled Young Adult.  A New Adult label isn’t therefore strictly necessary but could serve as a useful label to identify books for and about older teens.  It might help them crossover into an adult market. It might encourage publishers and booksellers to see older teen books as a genre worth investment, and keep older teens interested in looking at the teen shelves in book shops. It could, above all, be a useful way of marketing e-books to older teen readers.

New Adult could be this...

..but is actually this

Recent books that might fit into that sort of New Adult category might include Lydia Syson’s A World Between Us – three young people caught up in the Spanish Civil War,  working as a nurse, a journalist, and a printer turned soldier.  Or Malorie Blackman’s Boys Don’t Cry, about a boy whose plans to go to university are hijacked by becoming a father. Helen Grant, Melvin Burgess, Meg Rosoff ,  Sarra Manning, Mal Peet, Kevin Brooks  and many other UKYA authors often write about older teens.  These books are labelled YA or teen fiction, they are shelved as such, they are received with enthusiasm by the supposed gatekeeper. Publishers publish them, and teachers and librarians are not scared of  coming of age books.  On the contrary, they often favour them over  books aimed at younger children -  just take a look at most Carnegie shortlists.

He's 18, having sex, bringing up a child. New or Young Adult?

My next book, Salvage, has two narrators. One is Aidan, 18, who is living with an older girlfriend, Holly and her two-year-old son, Finn.  Is Aidan a Young Adult or a New Adult?  His sister Cass, the other narrator, is 16 and embarking on her first sexual relationship. Is she Young Adult or New Adult?

Unfortunately New Adult has stopped being a useful label for my books and the books of the authors mentioned above, because New Adult has come to mean ‘books about teenagers having sex, generally originally self-published, and picked up by publishers who want a slice of the action.’ Unlike most YA authors writing about sex, they include an element of soft porn (generally the softest of soft porn, almost always from a female point of view, with far more about 'panties' than throbbing or thrusting Men's Bits).  The ‘Adult’ has taken over from the ‘New’.  The quality of writing isn’t great in any of these books that I’ve read, and the sex is often boring (one New Adult book that I attempted to read seemed to have been written by someone who’d never had sex in her life, so was hopelessly vague and boring, others are just a bit tacky and embarrassing). In a matter of months New Adult has come to mean ‘rubbishy’  and ‘put that label on my books and I will kill you’ for most authors writing books about new adults.

Having said that, I think that these New Adult books are not a bad thing. Porn is generally produced by men, for men, and it’s surely good for girls to have access to their own brand, written by women. These books do address emotional issues around sex, and they generally feature interesting  and engaging characters.  They may not engage me, but I’m not their target market. If I were 16 and in possession of an e-reader, I think I’d love them.  As Malorie Blackman said recently, books are a great place for children to learn about sex.  The 'New Adult' romances, or -  to use a word invented and only used by marketing managers - 'steamies', are part of that process.

For the last few weeks I’ve been taking my daughter to university open days. I’ve sat in lecture theatres full of 17 and 18 year olds and their parents, learning about the next stage of their lives. What will they study, how will they find jobs, where will they live, how will they make friends?  I’ve had fascinating conversations with my daughter about her hopes and plans for the future, watched as she was inspired, reassured and challenged by visions of her future. I'd love to have more books to suggest to her which focus on the transition from school to adult life, which tell you what it's like to unpack your suitcase on the first day of university (and I don't mean Charles Ryder at Oxford).

New adulthood is one of the most interesting and important times of anyone’s life. It  offers writers many exciting possibilities.  Right now, though, I’d rather steer clear of the New Adult label.