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.

--------------------------------

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.

Children's books that are too violent - Clementine Beauvais

Just a few brief thoughts today about what might constitute 'dark' or 'violent' children's books.

As I mentioned a few months ago, I've had the pleasure/ honour/ anguish of translating Sarah Crossan's One into French.

proof is:

(yes, I know, it's called 'Inseparable' in French, and yes, I know, that's kinda paradoxical, but no, you've guessed right, they didn't want my choice of title aka 'Unes'.)

Anyway, one interesting reaction I'm getting from early readers of the book (and I'm sure there's similar reactions in Britain, I'm not suggesting it's only in France) is that it's 'such a dark/ violent/ brutal book', because...

... because they've been very ill their whole lives?
... because they're conjoined twins?
... because of the moment when [spoilers]?
... because their dad [spoiler]?
... because at the school, other kids [spoiler]?

None of that. No, it's a dark/ violent/ brutal story, readers say, because can you imagine living in a country where you'd have to earn money to pay for vital medical treatment of that kind?

Can you imagine living in a country where your only choice is 'go on a TV show' to reimburse basic care expenses for lifelong disability?

To a French audience (and to British readers I'm sure, too), that aspect of the story, the very pressing problem of money in relation to medical care, is completely overwhelming. (As a sidenote, I'm actually pleased that Breaking Bad exists, because it means that the idea of paying for medical treatment now at least exists somewhere in the psyche of the audience that will receive the novel.)

I'm amused that these have been the reactions I've encountered so far. When I think of the number of times when newspapers here in Britain get tired and hire some journalist to tell us how awfully dark, sinister, sad, violent 'Continental' children's books can be. Look at that horrible book about a witch! look at how dark those illustrations are! is this a book about illness, for 3-year-olds? how shocking! Europeans write such terrifying children's books!

But is it more shocking to have a book that's about illness, or a book that's about illness that can only be cured if we pay for it? Is it darker, more sinister, to talk about witches and wolves and monsters, or about the everyday acts of violence inflicted on its people by a society that fails to provide social security and protection?

Sarah's One has now taken on a still more sinister, still darker guise than when it first came out. I hope French readers are sensitive to this important, poignant 'theme' of the book - the brutality of having to pay for medical treatment, at any cost, even that of personal dignity.

Dark theme. But those are dark times...

More Books Please by Savita Kalhan

Happy New Year!

Last year I did my usual reading challenge. It used to be to read 55 books, but for 2016 I decided to up it to 60 books. As usual, the mix of books I've read range from middle grade to teen to young adult to adult, and they include a vast range of genres.

I read the middle grade and teen books for the library reading group that I run in Finchley Church End library, which now also includes some pre-teens as well as 13 to 15 year olds. Here are a few of our favourite reads for 2016. These books made the kids laugh, cry, hold their breath, or cheer. They have held them captive and made them seek out the authors so they can read more by them.

Some of the older teens in the group are now interested in reading young adult books, but I remember when they first started, just under two years ago, when all they wanted to read were older middle grade and young teen books. Some of them only managed to read a book a month then. Now they're are all taking up to four books a month to read for the reading group. It has been so satisfying to see the kids' reading habits develop and their love of reading increasing month by month.

The only thing that's holding us back is the budget for teen books. I'm sure the problem is the same for all libraries. I would love for my group to have more choice available to them. 

So if there are any publishers out there who would like their teen books read and reviewed by a teen reading group and would like to donate some books in exchange, or would just like to donate teen books, then please feel free to get in touch with us!

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Translating One - Clémentine Beauvais

I’ve just submitted to one of my French publishers, Rageot, the full first draft of my translation of Sarah Crossan’s One, to be published next year. Yes, I’ve had the privilege (and the insane good luck) to translate that wonderful, beautiful, exceptionally moving book into French.

Neither of Sarah’s verse novels has been translated into French yet, which is easy to understand: verse novels aren’t an easy candidate for translation. Plus, verse novels for teenagers are virtually unknown in France - when my own verse novel, Songe à la douceur, came out in August, my publisher Sarbacane put together a press release explaining that the format is well-known and popular in the UK and the US, and giving examples, because they knew it wasn’t going to be an easy sell.

Having seen that I’d just published a verse novel, Rageot, who are also bringing to the French market my Sesame Seade series next year (ironically, not translated by me), contacted me one day to ask me if I knew Sarah’s work - they’d just read One and were considering acquiring it. I replied immediately: ‘Of course I know it! Please acquire it! And can I please translate it?’ I’m generally not pushy with publishers, so that was very out of character, and possibly the brashest thing I’ve ever done. Amazingly, they said yes.

Translating One has been a scary experience, not just because it was the first time I’d translated a verse novel, but because it was also the first time I’d translated a novel, full stop (apart from my own translation into English of one of my French novels). I was acutely aware that I wasn’t a professional translator and that drawing from my experience of writing in two languages wasn’t enough; I got as much reading done on the matter as I could, talked to translator friends, and studied various theories of translation.

But of course, translating children’s literature has its own theories; translating poetry, yet more theories; translating novels, more so; etc. The answers just weren’t solely theoretical, and most of what I learned I learned on the go. Here are some of the most interesting challenges and difficulties I ran into while translating Sarah’s text.

An intriguing characteristic of One is that it’s a verse novel with only very few, very strategically-used rhymes. At the beginning, I was extremely keen to stick to what I interpreted as the ‘wishes’ of the text in that respect. But I found that it was actually very hard in French. French has many categories of words that end similarly - adjectives, past participles, verbs in the infinitive, etc. - so it was often tricky not to make two lines rhyme.

Not just tricky - unnatural. And, as I gradually decided, unnecessary. I warmed to the idea that rhyming would not be, as I’d first categorically ruled, an easy concession, a tacky poetic embellishment of a text that was, so to speak, ‘intentionally left blank’. I discovered that, in French, allowing rhymes to exist in their natural space rendered more accurately the fluidity of Sarah’s original text. 

The occasional ‘new’ rhymes also compensated for something that I often had to lose in translation, namely the very alliterative quality of the English language. Non-Latinate English words tend to be short, evocative in sound, often even onomatopoeic, perfect for poetic effect in brief lines, often of one or two words, sometimes one-letter words.

In French, this isn’t so easy. Many words are long, overloaded with prefixes and suffixes, and opting for lighter or more sonorous alternatives, while often possible, isn’t always desirable - Grace and Tippi’s words in the original text sound very natural, simple, instinctive, and I couldn’t have my French Tippi and Grace resort to lighter, but weirder, synonyms.

The added rhymes therefore ‘displaced’, so to speak, the sound effects internal to the lines in Sarah’s original text to the end of the lines; they moved musicality to a different place.

Another difficulty in French was to render the minimalistic aesthetic of Sarah’s language. There is something haiku-like to Sarah’s style, which works in English to a great extent because the grammar is so lightweight, with many optional words (especially articles), and minimal machinery for stringing clauses together. Authors can occult words they don’t want; translators can’t.

In fact, that very sentence - ‘Authors can occult words they don’t want; translators can’t’ - is a good example: in French, a literal translation would have to be ‘Les auteurs peuvent occulter les mots dont ils ne veulent pas; pas les traducteurs’, totalling 5 more words than the original English sentence. Such inflation is a well-known phenomenon in translation; texts are expected to swell in size from English to French.

This is all very well for a ‘normal’ novel, so to speak, but for a verse novel, we couldn’t have Sarah’s small lines suddenly take up a paragraph. Plus, her discreet use of ‘that’, ‘who’, ‘since’, ‘why’, etc - soft sounds in English - would be disastrously unpoetic in French: ‘que’, ‘qui’, ‘jusque’, ‘pourquoi’, are harsh-sounding, chunky words you don’t want to overuse.

One of the tricks I found was to resort to verb-less sentences, which in French are relatively rare but have a dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness quality that rendered, in some places, Grace’s reflections much more fluidly than the stolid French grammar would allow otherwise. I also very rarely fiddled with lines or enjambments, but I did when lines ended too clumsily on brick-like connectives like the ones listed above.

I can’t conceal that I’m a bit terrified, in part because it’s the first time and in part because I know that I’m not a professional translator. I’ve wrestled a lot with the nagging thought that I’m doing someone else’s work, and that I’ve come at it from a weird place. But I feel I’ve learned a lot, and worked and reworked again and changed my mind and fiddled and tweaked and rewritten; in other words, I’ve done my best. It’s now in my editors’ hands, and I look forward to reworking it, again, when it gets back to me.

Fifty Five Books in 2015 by Savita Kalhan

In 2015 I did my usual thing of trying to read at least fifty five books, and I managed to reach my target. I love reading, but sometimes work and life can get in the way, so having a target and keeping a record helps keep me on track.

It's also interesting to look back at what I've spent the year reading. Some of it is work related, of course, and some constitutes research. But it's definitely quite an eclectic list that ranges from middle grade books, to teen books, young adult, and general fiction. 

Last year I also set up a teen reading group at my local library, and what I discovered was that the kids in my group not only share my love of reading, but that, like me, they love a huge range of location, theme and genres in the books they read.

Interestingly, what they don't like is being misled by the blurb on the back of a book - especially if it's written in a very different style to the book. They like an honest blurb that more accurately describes the book. Some of them like chapter headings, some of them glance at the last page - just to make sure that the ending isn't going to be one they're not going to like, which can make them put the book down before the end.

My group are mainly younger teens, so although we did shadow the Carnegie for a while, we moved on within a few months. We discussed all the books on the long list and short list, and the group read several of them, but there were a few books that they could not finish because, in the kids' words, 'they were for much older kids.' I'm glad they tried them and knew when to put them down. Some of them will come back to them in a few years, I'm sure.

So here are a few of mine and my teen library group's favourite reads last year:

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Silent Saturday by Helen Grant

Looking at the Stars by Jo Cotterill

I Heard the Owl Call my Name by Margaret Craven
Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman

Cow Girl by G R Gemin

Whale Boy by Nicola Davies

Liccle Bit by Alex Wheatle

And some more:

Half Lives by Sara Grant
Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

The Fastest Boy in the World by Elizabeth Laird
Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar

She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo by Catherine Johnson
13 Hours by Narinder Dhami

I wish I could fit in more than fifty five books. Maybe I'll raise the bar to sixty books this year...

Happy reading in 2016!


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Calling Teen Readers by Savita Kalhan

After attending a few meetings fighting library cuts in Barnet, I decided to get involved in my local library in a small way. Finchley Church End Library had no teen reading group, so with the help of the head librarian, the wonderful Steve Saunders, I decided to try and set one up. Flyers were sent round to all the local schools, and we were hopeful that it would attract a few kids.

Last week we had our first meeting. I went prepared and armed with lists of books. The librarian had reserved books from the Carnegie shortlist for me, so that the teens could have a look at each book before deciding which one they wanted to read and discuss first.

I got to the library early and set up the table. And then I waited. Ten minutes into the time, no one had arrived and I began to wonder whether there would in fact be no reading group because there was just no interest.

And then four kids arrived! And they were all into books and reading and excited to share what they liked and what they didn’t, what they had read over the last year and what they wanted to read. There were three girls and one boy, and all of them said they had friends who would love to join and could they let them know so they could come next time.

Of course I said yes, happily.

The kids decided that they did want to unofficially shadow the Carnegie and the book they voted to read first was When Mr. Dog Bites by Brian Conaghan (I think the swear words in the book only played a small part in that choice!). Our next session will be discussing the book and the issues it raises. The kids hadn’t heard of either Tourette’s or Asperger’s, so we’ll be talking about both of those conditions.

They have also decided that next they want to read Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan, and then next Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman.

 

Hopefully, from these small beginnings the teen book club will grow and thrive, and I’m looking forward to sharing with them the many amazing teen books that are out there.

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