The French Translation of The Age of Innocence

Transcription

UNIVERSITE NANCY 2
U. F. R. Centre de Télé-enseignement Universitaire
The French Translation of Edith Wharton’s Novel
The Age of Innocence: a Case Study
Maîtrise d'anglais soutenue par
Véronique Hugel
sous la direction de
Mme Dominique Hascoët
Septembre 2005
Table of content
Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................4
Introduction...................................................................................................................5
Part1: The French Translations of Edith Wharton's Works.......................................... 9
I.Wharton's Special Relation with France...............................................................10
II.Wharton and the French Language......................................................................12
III.Wharton's French Translations until 1937......................................................... 15
IV.Wharton’s French Translations after her Death in 1937....................................23
V.Why Translation was Important for Edith Wharton............................................24
VI.Wharton's Conceptions about Translation......................................................... 26
Part 2: The French Translation of The Age of Innocence: A Case Study...................29
I.The Theoretical Problems of Translation Assessment......................................... 30
II.The Analysis of the French Translation of The Age of Innocence: Our Approach.
32
III.Methods..............................................................................................................34
A.Quantitative Methods......................................................................................36
B.Qualitative Methods........................................................................................ 41
IV.The Plon Nourrit Translation.............................................................................44
A.Extensive Analysis of the First Chapter..........................................................44
B.The Different Types of Shifts..........................................................................45
C.The Geographical Names................................................................................ 48
D.The Proper Names ..........................................................................................50
E.Money and Luxury.......................................................................................... 51
F.Sensuality and Intimacy................................................................................... 53
G.The Characters................................................................................................ 54
H.The Register.................................................................................................... 55
I.The Quotation Marks........................................................................................58
J.The Accuracy of the Lexicon........................................................................... 59
K.Assessment......................................................................................................60
V.The Revue des Deux Mondes Adaptation...........................................................62
A.Methods...........................................................................................................62
B.Results............................................................................................................. 63
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C.Assessment...................................................................................................... 65
VI.The Flammarion Adaptation..............................................................................65
A.Methods...........................................................................................................65
B.Results:............................................................................................................ 66
C.Assessment...................................................................................................... 67
Conclusion: ................................................................................................................ 68
Should The Age of Innocence be Retranslated?......................................................... 68
Bibliography................................................................................................................72
I.General Bibliography............................................................................................72
II.Translation Bibliography.....................................................................................72
III.Edith Wharton Bibliography.............................................................................. 75
A.Works by Edith Wharton................................................................................ 75
B.Critical Works on Edith Wharton................................................................... 76
C.Other Works.................................................................................................... 77
Appendices..................................................................................................................79
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Acknowledgements
To
Mme Dominique Hascoët, Director of this research paper for her advice and
encouragement.
Mme Noémi Hepp, granddaughter of Mme Madeleine Taillandier and daughter of
Marianne Taillandier, who gave me a copy of her grandmother’s memoir.
Mme Andrée Putman, granddaughter of Mme Madeleine Taillandier and niece of
Marianne Taillandier, who gave me valuable information.
Ms Leigh Golden, assistant at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, who sent me the copies of Wharton’s letters.
Mme Claudine Lesage, who kindly answered my emails.
The assistants at Epernay Médiathèque, who allowed me to borrow the old issues of
La Revue des deux mondes.
Renaud, Camille and Marc-André who managed to live without me during the long
hours required by my research.
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Introduction
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Edith Wharton is considered one of the great American novelists of the early
20th century. Her fiction and non-fiction have been translated world-wide into many
languages, including French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. Still,
within her translated work, her French translations hold a special status for three
reasons: first, because she spoke French perfectly, and she supervised most of her
French translations; secondly, because she spent the second half of her life in France;
and thirdly because her French translations were published almost at the same time as
the originals. Contrary to most translated literature, where the translator remains
anonymous and the process of translation is unknown, Wharton’s French translations
offer the scholar a very interesting opportunity to study a translation within its whole
environment, thanks to the numerous documents available on the subject. Edith
Wharton was very cautious about the quality of her translation, and she was
undoubtedly very interested in the process. She left a large correspondence on the
subject, and her biographies contain many details on how she chose her translators
and supervised their work.
Moreover, the subject of Wharton’s French translations recently came back
into favour, when after thirty years of relative obscurity following her death, her
works reappeared in the French bookshops and libraries. In France, during that
period, there were neither translations nor reprintings of her works. In 1964, The
Custom of the Country, which had never been published in French because the
translator had died during World War I, was translated by Suzanne Mayroux. In
1969, Ethan Frome, supposedly badly translated in 1912 by Charles Du Bos, was
retranslated by Pierre Leyris. Still, it was not before the eighties that the Wharton
phenomenon took wing, thanks to the writer and translator Diane de Margerie, whose
grand-mother Jeanne de Margerie had been Edith Wharton’s friend. It started in 1986
with the retranslation of The Reef, (another bad Du Bos translation from 1922) and it
was followed by the publication of many short stories. The diagram on appendix 1
(page 79) shows that the number of French publications of Wharton’s work
(reprintings not included) follows an exponential progression. The table on the same
page shows that the recent publications concern less famous Wharton novels as The
Gods Arrive and Twilight Sleep, which had never been translated into French, as well
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as numerous short stories, some of which have already been translated twice like:
“The Lady's Maid's Bell,”1 “The Eyes,” “Miss Mary Pask,” and “Pomegranate Seed.”
In the meantime, Wharton’s most famous novels like The House of Mirth and
The Age of Innocence were adapted for the cinema and their French translations Chez
les heureux du monde and Le Temps de l'innocence have been constantly reprinted,
but never retranslated. Although both were written under Wharton’s strict
supervision, and were much praised by the critics in their time, the question of their
retranslation will inevitably arise, for the simple reason that translations get old
whereas originals do not. Moreover, some literary critics pretend that Wharton’s
older translations are obsolete, as in this 1991 article:
Au terme du purgatoire imposé par la postérité, les grands seuls ressusciteront. […]
Edith Wharton, incontestablement la plus importante des romancières de la
littérature américaine, a de grandes chances d'être plus connue au vingt et unième
siècle qu'elle ne l'a été au vingtième. En effet, en moins de dix ans, son œuvre aura
eu plus d'une quinzaine d'éditions et de rééditions de romans et de nouvelles qui,
chaque fois, ont été saluées comme de véritables événements littéraires. Notamment
en éditions de poche, où l'œuvre se trouve trop souvent, hélas, empoussiérée et
défigurée par des traductions vieillies non révisées.2
Therefore we will study the French translation of Wharton’s best known work, the
1921 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Age of Innocence to find out whether it can
still be considered a good translation, or if it should be retranslated.
As the subject of the French translations of Edith Wharton’s novels has until
now drawn little scholarly interest, we will dedicate the first part of our paper to a
general study of the French translations of her works. In this part we will first collect
and synthesise the biographical information about her relation with France and with
the French language; secondly we will chronologically describe the conditions of the
translation of her works; thirdly we will try to find out for what reasons translation
was important for her; and last we will investigate her conceptions about translation.
In the second part of our work, we will examine in detail the French
translation of The Age of Innocence. First, we will discuss the theoretical problems of
1
First published in 1902 by Scribner's and first translated into French in 1989 by Florence Lévy-
Paolini in Le Triomphe de la nuit under the title "La Cloche de la femme de chambre". Retranslated in
2005 by Jean Pavans in Preuve d'amour under the title "La Sonnette de Madame."
2
Anonymous, “La perversité des mères.” Le Monde (31 May 1991)
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translation assessment in order to build our personal approach. Secondly we will
explain our methods and thirdly we will analyse the three successive texts that gave
birth to the current French translation of The Age of Innocence: Le Temps de
l’innocence.
In our conclusion, we will discuss our results and try to answer the question:
“Should The Age of Innocence be retranslated?”
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Part1: The French Translations of Edith Wharton's
Works
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Contrary to most modern American writers from the end of the 19th and the
beginning of the 20th centuries, Wharton was translated very early in her literary
career. Her major novels were published in French less than one year after their
original publication in the United States, whereas Henry James’ The Portrait of a
Lady (1881) was published in French in 1933 and Washington Square (1881) only in
19553. This exception could be explained by Wharton’s expatriation in France, as
well as by her almost perfect command of the French language.
I.
Wharton's Special Relation with France
Wharton's first encounter with France took place at a very early age. In 1866,
Frederic and Lucretia Jones took little Edith, then age four, to Europe for six years. In
A Backward Glance, Wharton explained that “the depreciation of American currency
had so much reduced [her] father's income that […] he had gone to Europe to
economize.”4 Later, when Edith was eighteen, the family went back to the old
continent in a useless attempt to restore Frederic's failing health. He died in Cannes
in 1882, when Edith was twenty. After her marriage to Edward Wharton in 1885, the
couple spent a few months every year in Europe, mainly in Italy. In 1893, when they
were on vacation in Newport, they met the then famous novelist Paul Bourget who
had come to the United States with his wife Minnie to write a volume of essays5. A
friendship developed immediately between the Whartons and the Bourgets, and when
Edith and Teddy came to Paris in June 1900 and were unable to find a hotel room
because of the International Exposition, they stayed with the Bourgets at 20 rue
Barbet de Jouy, in the old Faubourg Saint Germain.6.
3
Quoted in Jean-Marc Gouanvic "Les enjeux de la traduction dans le champ littéraire : le roman
américain traduit dans l'espace culturel français au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale".
Palimpsestes 11 (1998): 99.
4
Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance (New York: Appleton-Century, 1934. Rpt. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1998) 44.
5
Bourget, Paul. Outre-mer. Paris: Ed. Lemerre, 1895.
6
Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1994) 113.
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In 1904, the Whartons gave up their annual trip to Italy; instead, they visited
the Bourgets at their villa in Costebelle, near Hyères, in the south of France.7 They
would return there every summer to stay with their friends. In 1906, after the success
of The House of Mirth, Bourget introduced Edith to the Parisian social and
intellectual circles. She found there the intellectual stimulation which she had missed
so much in America. In her memoir, she confided that she had found in Paris “the
kind of human communion that [she] had longed for.”8 In 1907, she decided to rent
an apartment in the old Faubourg, thereafter spending the winters in Paris and going
back to America every summer.9
In 1911, The Whartons decided to sell their American home, The Mount in
Lenox (Massachusetts.) As a consequence of Teddy's mental illness, Edith asked for
a divorce, which was pronounced in 1913.
She settled down in Paris, and she spent World War I there, organising
various charities for war relief, the most prominent being her two organisations for
war refugees, the Children of Flanders and the American Hostel for Refugees. For
her aid to France and French refugees, she was awarded numerous decorations, the
most noted being the French Legion of Honour. During the war, she wrote a series of
articles in which she discussed the fundamental elements of character and behaviour
of the French people. After the war, the articles were published in a volume under the
title French Ways and Their Meaning.10 The book received mixed critical reviews.
Some critics accused Wharton of being over-enthusiastic about the French. Still, the
qualities she attributes to the French (reverence, taste, elegance, intellectual curiosity)
tell us more about the reasons why she chose to expatriate. Clearly, she found in
France the intellectual stimulation that she had lacked in America.
She only returned twice to the United States, and when she died in 1937, she
was buried in the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles.
7
Bird Wright, Sarah. Edith Wharton A to Z (New York: Checkmark Books, 1998) 30.
8
Wharton. A Backward Glance 257.
9
10
Wharton, Edith. French Ways and their Meaning. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1919.
Rpt. Lennox, Mass.: Edith Wharton Restoration and Lee, Mass.: Berkshire House Publishers, 1997)
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II.
Wharton and the French Language
Having spent most of her childhood abroad, Edith Wharton was fluent in
French at a very early age. She had a French governess and French friends, but being
a rather shy and solitary child, she turned to her father's library and improved her
command of the French language with Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine and Victor
Hugo for poetry and Sainte Beuve, Sévigné, Augustin Thierry and Philarète Chasles
for prose.11 In her autobiography, she explains why she thought her French rather
formal and old-fashioned:
Though I had spoken the language since the age of four I had never had much
occasion to talk it, for any length of time, with cultivated people, having usually,
since my marriage, wandered through France as a tourist. The result was that I had
kept up the language chiefly through reading, […] most of my polite locutions dated
from the seventeenth century, and Bourget used to laugh at me for speaking "the
purest Louis Quatorze".12
Therefore, when she came to live in Paris with her husband, she decided to polish
and enlarge her vocabulary. A young professor used to give her a lesson two or three
times a week; when he asked her to prepare an exercise, she decided to write a story
in French and began the French draft of Ethan Frome.
Later, she wrote a short story directly in French, “Les Metteurs en scène,”
which was published on October 1st, 1908 in the Revue des deux mondes, a
prestigious French periodical. Most Wharton biographers report that Henry James
criticised the novel very caustically, and that he told her never to do it again13. To
justify her attempt, Wharton said that she was “responding to an S.O.S. from the
Revue des Deux Mondes, for a given number of which a promised translation of one
of [her] tales had not been ready, [she] had offered to replace it by writing a story
[herself]—in French!”14 Today, critics agree that the story was quite good: Benstock
11
Wharton. A Backward Glance 66-67.
12
Lewis, R[ichard] W[arrington] B[aldwin]. Edith Wharton: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row,
13
Publishers, Inc., 1975. Rpt. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1985) 234.
Benstock. No Gifts from Chance 188.
Bird Wright. Edith Wharton A to Z 165-166.
14
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argues that the story was “written as a lark”15 and Lesage thinks that James's
judgement was very unfair.16 During our research, we had access to the complete
Revue des Deux Mondes collections17, and we searched systematically through the
issues that followed the publication of “Les Metteurs en scène” in order to find out
which story had not been translated on time. We found out that the years 1908 and
1909 contained no other short story written by Wharton. In her autobiography,
Wharton says that she knew that James would disapprove her writing in French.
Could she possibly have invented the story of the delayed translation because she was
afraid of James’ reaction? In the “Old New York” society in which Wharton grew up,
and that she described so well in The Age of Innocence, dissimulation was not
unusual for a woman who wanted to get her own way… Although Wharton seemed
to regret her attempt, she had her story published in May 1909 by Plon Nourrit,
together with some other short stories translated into French. The title of the book
was Les Metteurs en Scène, and the story originally written in French opened the
volume.18
Nevertheless, this French story is not the only testimony of Wharton's French.
She wrote many letters to her French friends; most of those letters are kept at the
Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and some are
still in possession of the children and grand-children of Wharton’s friends. The
letters she wrote to her friend Léon Bélugou from 1908 until 193119 show only one
indisputable anglicism: Claudine Lesage points out that Edith Wharton wrote “un
climat lourd stupéfiant” for “un climat lourd et paralysant”20. Still, when we read her
letters, we understand what Bourget meant by “the purest Louis Quatorze.” Like
many foreigners, Wharton tended to write an exaggeratedly correct French. In
particular, she frequently used the “imparfait du subjonctif” that even then was
15
16
Lesage, Claudine. Postface. Les Metteurs en scène. By Edith Wharton (Paris: Michel Houdiard,
2001) 36 Lesage writes: “James était décidément un censeur bien sévère…”
17
The Revue des Deux Mondes ancient collections are available in most French municipal libraries.
18
Wharton, Edith. Les Metteurs en Scène (Paris: Plon Nourrit, 1909)
19
Wharton, Edith. Lettres à l’ami français, Correspondance établie et présentée par Claudine Lesage
(Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2001)
20
A heavy and stupefying climate. (stupéfiant means amazing in French.) Wharton, Lettres à l’ami
français 36. (endnote on p. 143)
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considered obsolete. In a letter written from a trip to Germany, she hesitated between
the “nominatif” and the “subjonctif”: “Nous avons passé à Munich deux jours tout à
fait agréables, bien que les principaux théâtres étaient (fussent) fermés à cause / du
décès du Duc Karl Théodore.”21 This example shows that she really wanted to use the
correct tense. She had probably been influenced by the works of Philarète Chasles
(1798-1873), that she had read as a young girl. Chasles was the champion of the
correct use of the French language; in his Mémoires, he frequently used the
“imparfait du subjonctif” in its most unusual forms: “Depuis ce temps, sous M.
Guizot, comme sous l’Empire, je ne crois pas avoir fait un acte, écrit un mot ou dit
une parole qui abaissassent ou diminuassent ces sentiments.”22
She also wrote in French two tributes to close friends: one for Jean du Breuil
de Saint Germain who died for his country during World War I23 and the other in
1936, one year before her death for her friend Paul Bourget: “Souvenirs du Bourget
d'outre-mer.”24 Both show a perfect command of the French language, but here again,
she used a conspicuously correct language: “J’avais naturellement lu tous les livres
de Bourget, et quoique, même à cette époque, ses romans ne me plussent pas
beaucoup, j’avais au contraire la plus vive admiration pour ses Essais de Psychologie
contemporaine.”25 The use of the “imparfait du subjonctif”, though absolutely
correct, produces a rather awkward effect because of its unusual sonority. Still, most
French writers used those forms, like André Gide in Les Caves du Vatican: “Anthime
ne se souciait plus des modes; mais pour simple qu’il désirât sa cravate, […] encore
la voulait-il choisir.” 26 The singular form “désirât” sounds like the “passé simple”
“désira” therefore it does not seem old fashioned. If the sentence had been a plural
21
22
Wharton, Lettres à l’ami français 44-45.
Chasles, Philarète. Mémoires. Cited on the web site of the Centre d’Etudes des Littératures
Anciennes et Modernes (Université de Haute-Bretagne)
23
Published in the Revue Hebdomadaire on May 15th 1915 (351-361) and translated into English by
Louise Willis in Wegener, Frederik. The Uncollected Critical Writings (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996) 197-204.
24
Published in the Revue Hebdomadaire on June 20th , 1936 and translated into English by Willis in
Wegener. The Uncollected Critical Writings 211-226.
25
Wharton, Edith. “Souvenirs du Bourget d'Outre-Mer.” Paris: La Revue Hebdomadaire, June 20th,
1936: 268.
26
Gide, André. Les Caves du Vatican (Paris: Gallimard 1922) 13.
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form, it should have been “mais pour simples qu’ils désirassent leurs cravates.”
Gide’s novel does not contain any plural in “asse” “isse” or “usse”. We can assume
that he avoided them because of their awkward effect; the sound “asse” produces a
particularly awkward effect because the suffix “asse” is almost always pejorative in
the French language.27 Wharton, who had a very good command of French, but who
was not a native speaker, did probably not perceive this subtlety of the French
language.
III.
Wharton's French Translations until 1937
When Edith and Teddy Wharton came to visit Paris in June 1900, Edith’s
literary career had only just begun. She had published a non-fiction book The
Decoration of Houses in 1897, and a few short stories which had appeared in various
American magazines, starting in 1891 and published later in 1899 in a book called
The Greater Inclination. At that time, Edith’s literary ambitions were modest. While
the Whartons were staying with the Bourgets, Minnie Bourget was translating Edith's
short story “The Muse's Tragedy” into French. Most of Wharton's biographers report
that she took an active part in the translation, but none explains who initiated this
first French translation. As the Whartons and the Bourgets were close friends, and as
Paul Bourget was acting as a literary mentor towards the young Edith, we can
imagine that it was he who decided that the short story had to be translated and
published in a French periodical. Lewis reports that “the translation [was] somewhat
roughly done.”28 Nevertheless, it was published in the July 1900 Revue
Hebdomadaire with an enthusiastic introductory note by Paul Bourget, in which he
congratulated the translators. During their collaboration Edith and Minnie became
friends, and Minnie, who was a shy and sensitive woman, managed to overcome her
first impression, which was, according to Diane de Margerie, one of distrust. 29
27
Like in the slang words “dégueulasse”, “pétasse”, “bidasse” or “godasses.”
28
Lewis. Edith Wharton: A Biography 97.
29
Margerie, Diane (de). Edith Wharton, lecture d’une vie (Paris: Flammarion, 2000) 166.
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A few years later, during the winter of 1906 the Whartons settled in Paris.
Edith's novel The House of Mirth had just been a great success in the United States30,
and it found an enthusiastic readership in the Faubourg Saint Germain. At that time,
she had become a recognised writer, therefore the translation of her best-seller was an
important matter. She asked Bourget to find a translator. He recommended his young
friend Charles Du Bos, who intended to enter a literary career but did not know at the
time what turn it would take. Lewis reports that “Du Bos [was] an able young man, a
friend of André Gide and a follower of Paul Bourget’s, but a person hampered by
indecisiveness and periods of sometimes imaginary ill health.”31 In her
autobiography, Wharton wrote that in the course of the work Charles du Bos became
one of her closest friends.32 As it had happened with Minnie Bourget, Edith
considered Du Bos as a friend before he did. In the memoir he wrote for Percy
Lubbock after Edith's death, he revealed that he had been quite impressed by her at
the beginning, until he noticed that her apparent sureness was hidden shyness.33
Although he belonged to her “inner circle”, he felt that he experienced only one
moment of real intimacy during the thirty years of their friendship. 34
Charles Du Bos' translation of The House of Mirth was first serialised in 1906
as “La Demeure de liesse” in La revue de Paris, and it was later published as a book
in 1908 at Plon Nourrit et Cie under the title Chez les heureux du monde, with a
foreword by Paul Bourget. Its front page explicitly says “Traduction de M. Charles
du Bos” and “Préface de M. Paul Bourget de l'Académie Française.” It was unusual
at that time to mention the translator's name on the front page, and it still is. Still, in
1908 Wharton was an unknown American writer in France, and by the time the book
was released, Du Bos had become a rather well-known literary critic, which explains
this particularity. Paul Bourget, whose prose is now out of fashion, was at the time
one of the most famous French novelists. His foreword was a strong commercial
argument.
30
140 000 copies were sold in the first year of publication.
31
32
33
Lubbock, Percy. Portrait of Edith Wharton (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1947) 95.
34
Lubbock. Portrait of Edith Wharton 92.
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The book was a success, and it led to more translations. In her autobiography,
Wharton reports that:
The success of the book was so great that translations of my short stories (I had as
yet written but two novels) were in great demand in the principal French reviews,
and to this I owe an interesting glimpse of the Parisian life of letters.35
As she had done before with “The Muse's Tragedy”, Wharton found the translators
among her friends, and she took an active part in the process of translation. Comtesse
Jane d’Oilliamson, who had become her friend in Cannes twenty years before under
her maiden name Princesse Jane de Polignac, and who was part of the small group of
girlfriends who had introduced her into the Faubourg Saint Germain old nobility,
became her regular translator. On March 16th 1908, Edith wrote to Sara Norton:
An old friend of mine, Jane d’Oilliamson […] has already translated admirably 3
stories of mine for the Revue des 2 Mondes, so I know the work will be well done;
[…] I wish you could know my friend Jane d’O. She was the Princesse Jane de
Polignac, & she & I were girls together in Cannes 23 years ago, & have taken things
up just where we left them. […] She is a delightful, admirable creature, & you & she
would understand & appreciate each other.36
Jane d’Oilliamson translated four short stories which appeared in various French
periodicals, and later in 1909 in the volume called Les Metteurs en scène.37 The same
book included short stories translated by other acquaintances as Alfred de Saint
André,38 whom Wharton had met in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Lewis describes
him as:
The most regular and for Edith the most entertaining new member of her French
circle, […] a man with no visible achievements, no vocation, and for that matter no
very large income. but he had astonishing staying power as a friend and was
inveterately good company. Saint André was a great gourmet […]. For Edith and for
others, he was an unfailingly dependable guide to delightful but little known haunts
in Paris.39
He became a member of her Parisian inner circle, and their friendship lasted for the
rest of their lives.
35
36
Wharton to Sara Norton in Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 137.
Countess Jane d'Oilliamson (under the pseudonym Jeanne Chalançon) translated “Souls Belated” as
37
“Lendemain,” “The Confessional” as “Le Confessionnal,” “The Reckoning” as “L'Echéance” and
“The Verdict” as “Le Verdict.”
38
He translated “The Hermit and the Wild Woman” as “L'Ermite et la femme sauvage.”
39
Lewis. Edith Wharton: A Biography 196-7.
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After the publication of the book Les Metteurs en scène in 1909, it seems that
Wharton did not want to continue working with Mme d'Oilliamson as translator.
Claudine Lesage reports that their professional relations grew more and more tense.40
Wharton's journal show many afternoons of common work over a cup of tea. She had
to postpone a drive to Montfort l'Amaury with her lover Morton Fullerton because
Mme d'Oilliamson had called to suggest a long afternoon and evening of work on the
translation of “The Reckoning”. She was disappointed on the verge of desperation,
writes Lewis.41 We can suggest two explanations for their growing misunderstanding:
it seems that Wharton considered Mme d'Oilliamson’s style too artificial; in a letter
that she sent her friend Léon Bélugou from a trip to Lake Maggiore, she ridiculed her
translator’s pompous expressions.42 Mme d'Oilliamson, who had been her friend
since their teens, was probably not as impressed by Edith as the rest of the Parisian
circle and she might not have accepted Edith's corrections of her translations.
Moreover, Edith was having at the time a secret love affair with Morton Fullerton,
and the frequent translation sessions with Mme d'Oilliamson might have disarranged
her plans.
In August 1910, while Mme d’Oilliamson had started working on the
translation of the short story “The Letters,” Wharton decided to ask her friend Léon
Bélugou (who was also Fullerton’s intimate friend and knew about the romance) to
write the translation instead.43 Very pleased with his first pages, she wrote:
Je suis ravie de ces premières pages, tout simplement ! C’est mieux qu’une
adaptation, c’est ma nouvelle même, et écrite en quelle jolie langue ! comment avezvous pu faire ces 5 pages si rapidement et si bien ?
The short story was almost simultaneously published in English in Century
Magazine (in August 1910) and in French in La Revue des deux mondes (in
September 1910.) In spite of Bélugou’s efficiency, Edith did not ask him to translate
any more texts. The reason could be that after the beginning of 1911, his work as a
40
Lesage, Claudine. Postface to Les Metteurs en scène 32.
41
Wharton to Bélugou, September 6th 1910. She writes: “en nous serrant autour de l'âtre (comme dirait
42
Chalançon).” Lettres à l’ami français 60. (Chalançon is the penname Mme d'Oilliamson used for her
translations.)
43
Wharton. Lettres à l’ami français 56.
- 18 -
mining engineer led him to spend most of his time in very distant countries such as
Ceylon, Indochina, China and Japan.
When the short novel Ethan Frome was serialised from August to October
1911 in Scribner’s Magazine, Wharton asked her friend Du Bos to undertake the
translation, hoping that it would be as successful as the one he had produced for The
House of Mirth five years earlier. This was not the case: the translation was
lamentable; on March 14th 1912, she wrote to her friend Bernard Berenson that she
had had “The translation of Ethan Frome to reprendre d’un bout à l’autre with the
dear, devoted but not–precisely–hustling Charlie Du Bos” which meant that she had
to revise it thoroughly with Du Bos.44 Her reputation of untranslatability dates from
that period. In a letter to Bélugou, she reported that Mme d’Oilliamson, probably
upset for not having been chosen to translate the novella, told her:
Of course you are very difficult to translate. As one of your intimate friends said to
me the other day: “Comment peut-on traduire Mrs Wharton ? Elle voudrait que l’on
traduise ses idées et elle ne daigne pas les exprimer.”45
The intimate friend (underlined by Wharton in her letter) was probably Du Bos
himself, which reveals a rather rough collaboration between author and translator. By
that time, Du Bos had become a recognised literary critic, and he had many
professional engagements. Moreover, he suffered from procrastination, and he
considered translation a painful work. Some allusions in his Journal seem to indicate
that he did not write the translations himself, but that the work was done by an
assistant, and that he only corrected it. The French translation of Ethan Frome was
serialised from January to March 1912 in the Revue de Paris under the name “Sous la
neige” and published as a book the same year, but its translation remained unsigned.
Later, André Gide told Wharton that he was sorry that he had not made the
translation himself.
In 1917, Wharton thought of Gide for the translation of Summer, but he
declined. Again, she asked Du Bos, and again, she was displeased with the
translation. She wrote to Gide on August 10th, 1917: “Je corrige les épreuves de la
44
Wharton to Berenson, in Lewis, R[ichard] W[arrington] B[aldwin] and Nancy Lewis, eds. The
Letters of Edith Wharton (New York: Scribner’s:1988) 268.
45
Wharton to Bélugou, 30th April 1912. Lettres à l’ami français, 78.
- 19 -
traduction de mon petit roman, qui doit paraître le mois prochain dans La Revue de
Paris. La traduction est lamentable.”46 The unsigned translation was published in
1918 under the title Plein Eté. After World War I, Du Bos had become the head of a
collection of foreign literature for Plon. He had a busy job supervising a team of
translators, and he was more than ever suffering from procrastination. On 7th
November 1923, he wrote in his bilingual Journal:
Funds have been invested, translations paid for in advance, not a few friends entirely
depend upon my remaining at my post. Le sort en est jeté : je serai jusqu’au terme le
martyr de la traduction (This is my fate: until the end, I shall be the martyr of
translation.) – looked up to as an oracle on the one, perhaps the only subject that I
loathe.47
It took him years, and many painful translation sessions with Edith at her home in
Pavillon Colombe to complete the translation of The Reef in 1922, which was to be
their last professional collaboration.
In the meantime, Wharton had written her masterpiece The Age of Innocence.
All her biographers are prolix about the circumstances of its French translation.
Lewis writes that
Mme Taillandier, the sister of Edith’s old friend André Chevrillon and the wife of a
diplomat, had been beguiled by Edith Wharton into translating The Age of
Innocence into French–the result, Au Temps de l’innocence, was a most satis/factory
rendering–and she spent many days and evenings at the Pavillon Colombe.48
Benstock is more precise; she reports that:
In 1921, [Wharton] rejected a translation of The Age of Innocence just as it was
about to appear in the Revue des deux mondes–thereby forcing the magazine to fill
its pages with another work. She wrote to Madeleine St.-René Taillandier, sister of
André Chevrillon (former editor of the Revue de Paris) to ask if she knew anyone
who could rework the material into acceptable French. Mme Taillandier accepted
the assignment, aided by her daughter Mariane,49 who had translated John
Galsworthy’s The Man of Property.50
Diane de Margerie gives approximately the same information in her preface to the
1987 edition of the French translation. The three biographers have a unique source of
46
Wharton to Gide, in Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 396.
47
Du Bos, Charles. Journal 1920–1925 (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 2003) 460.
Lewis. Edith Wharton: A Biography 448-449.
49
The original spelling was “Marianne”, but Mademoiselle Taillandier asked her relatives to spell it
48
“Mariane.” (Confidence of her daughter, Ms Noémi Hepp, whom we met for this essay.)
50
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information: Percy Lubbock’s Portrait of Edith Wharton, the much-discussed
biography written after her death and based upon the reminiscences of some of her
friends, among them Charles Du Bos51 and Mme Madeleine Saint-René Taillandier.52
In her memoir, Mme Taillandier explained that she had met Mrs Wharton through
the Bourgets who had been intimate friends of her husband and herself for a very
long time. Madeleine and Edith had been simple acquaintances for a few years, when
one day, after her return to France (Mme Taillandier’s husband was a diplomat), she
received a letter from Hyères in which “Mrs Wharton informed her ‘chère Madame’
that she was not satisfied with a translation of The Age of Innocence intended for the
Revue des deux mondes: did [she] happen to know ‘a person’ who would undertake
to revise and correct the work and put it into good French style?”53
This testimony, written almost twenty years after the events, leaves a few
questions unanswered. First, Mme Taillandier cannot possibly have translated The
Age of Innocence in 1921: her translation was published in La Revue des deux
mondes in 1920 under the title “Au Temps de l’innocence”, on the same year as in
the United States. Secondly, Mrs Wharton was too cautious about the quality of her
translations to let a translator complete the translation of a whole novel in a way that
would not suit her. Thirdly, why should she have chosen in 1920 another translator
than her friend Du Bos, who supervised the translation of Summer in 1918 and The
Reef in 1922? Our hypothesis is that she did as usual: she asked Du Bos to do the
translation, which meant that he would have the draft done by one of his assistants,
and that he would make the corrections together with his friend Edith. The letters that
she received from René Doumic, Director of the Revue des deux mondes, show that
he wished a simultaneous publication in France and in the United States54, which
meant that the French translation would have to be very quickly done. Therefore,
Wharton could not rely on Du Bos for the corrections, because the translation would
not have been ready on time. This is why she had in hand a literal translation,
probably made by Du Bos’ assistant (who could be Yva Fernandez, regularly
mentioned in his Journal) and she needed someone to work on it with her. She chose
- 21 -
Mme Taillandier and her daughter Marianne, because she knew that she could trust
them: Mme Taillandier had published a few historical essays, in which she showed a
perfect command of the French language, and a rather old-fashioned style, which
might have pleased Wharton because it resembled her own. In a letter written on
December 12th, 1920 to her friend Bernard Berenson, she described Mme
Taillandier’s latest book as “A really striking, brilliant yet impartial book on Mme de
Maintenon55, by my friend (Taine’s grand-niece) Mme St René Taillandier.”56 Being
the famous historian’s grand-niece was important for Edith Wharton, because she
had been an admirer of his works since before she came to France. In her memoir,
she wrote that “All the Taine nephews and nieces inherited the great man’s English
culture, spoke the language fluently, and were thoroughly versed in English
literature.”57 Mme Taillandier was also the sister of André Chevrillon, who had been
Edith’s friend since she had settled in the Faubourg Saint Germain, and was “the first
literary critic in France.”58 Marianne Taillandier, Madeleine’s daughter, was at the
time a successful young writer: she had received the 1918 Grand Prix du Roman de
l’Académie Française for her novel Histoire de Gotton Connixloo, published by Plon
under the penname Camille Mayran. She was also the author of a much-admired
translation of Galsworthy’s The Man of Property.
As she had done before with all her translators, Wharton supervised the
translation, spending many afternoons and evenings with Mme Taillandier and her
daughter in Pavillon Colombe. This is how they became good friends, but Au Temps
de l’innocence remained their only professional collaboration.
In 1924, Paul Alfassa, a friend of Du Bos and Gide, translated A Son at the
Front as Un Fils au Front. Louis Gillet, a literary critic and art specialist at the Revue
des deux mondes, who had become Edith’s friend in her maturity, translated The
Mother’s Recompense as Le Bilan in 1927 and The Children as Leurs Enfants in
1929. Benstock writes that “of the French translations of Wharton’s writings, his
55
Taillandier (Saint René), Madeleine. Madame de Maintenon Préface de Paul Bourget (Paris:
Hachette 1920)
56
Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 434.
57
58
Letter Wharton to Sara Norton, March 16th 1908. Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 136.
- 22 -
received the greatest praise.”59 At the time of her death, on August 14th 1937, only
eight out of Wharton’s eighty-five short stories had been translated into French, as
well as eight out of her nineteen novels.
IV.
Wharton’s French Translations after her Death in 1937
Between 1937 and 1986, only two of Wharton’s works were translated into
French. Suzanne Mayoux translated The Custom of the Country in 1964 as Les
Beaux mariages; Wharton had chosen one of her close friends, Count Robert
d’Humières to translate the novel in 1914, but he was killed in the war, and the
translation remained unfinished because his wife wanted every correction of his work
indicated by a footnote. Ethan Frome, badly translated in 1912 by Du Bos as Sous la
neige, was retranslated in 1967 by Pierre Leyris under the title Ethan Frome. During
those fifty years, Edith Wharton, who had been so popular in France, was nearly
forgotten.
Since the eighties, Wharton’s works have made an impressive come-back into
the French bookshops and libraries. Over twenty-five years, eight volumes of short
stories have been published in French, and some short stories like “The Lady’s
Maid’s Bell” have undergone two successive translations.60 Some of her latest and
least appreciated novels have been translated for the first time like Hudson River
Bracketed61 and The Gods Arrive.62 The supposedly bad Du Bos translation of The
Reef has been retranslated in 1986 by Sabine Porte as L’Ecueil. Each publication was
greeted by the critics as an authentic literary event. In an unsigned article published
in Le Monde on May 31st 1991, a critic remarked that the “great” Edith Wharton had
had more than fifteen editions or re-editions in the last ten years, and he predicted
that she would be more famous during the 21st century than during the 20th. He
59
60
Translated in 1989 by Florence Levy-Paolini as “La Cloche de la femme de chambre” in Le
Triomphe de la nuit and retranslated in 2005 by Jean Pavans as “La Sonnette de Madame” in Preuve
d’amour.
61
Written in 1929 and translated in 1996 by Jean Pavans as Sur les rives de l’Hudson.
62
Written in 1932 and translated in 1999 by Jean Pavans as Les Dieux arrivent.
- 23 -
regretted that her works were too often disfigured by dusty and obsolete
translations.63 Still, nobody has yet dared to revise or retranslate the “canonic”
translations that Wharton controlled and approved: Du Bos’ Chez les heureux du
monde and Mme Taillandier’s Au Temps de l’innocence. Is it because they have not
aged, or because they have become mythical? Amazingly, now that only the literature
specialists remember Charles Du Bos, the current edition of Chez les heureux du
monde still mentions “Traduit par Charles Du Bos” and its dust jacket still praises his
excellent translation!
V.
Why Translation was Important for Edith Wharton
After the success of The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton realised all that the
translation of her works could bring her. In her memoir, she admitted that she had
been accepted in the inner circle of the Faubourg Saint Germain because she “had
written a successful novel, a translation of which had recently appeared, with a
flattering introduction by Bourget.”64 Being recognised as a writer meant meeting
interesting people, writers like André Gide, André Maurois and Jean Cocteau, poets
like Comtesse Anna de Noailles and Paul Valéry, painters like Jacques Emile
Blanche, critics like André Chevrillon65, philosophers like Henri Bergson. Her
literary success also opened for her the doors of the Parisian salons like Comtesse
Rosa de Fitz James’. As a member of a wealthy American family, she did not need to
write best-sellers to make a living, but she soon realised that the intellectual
communion she found in Paris had grown vital for her. In France, she gained
recognition through her translations; therefore, finding a good translator became her
priority.
Still, a closer look at the circumstances of the translation of her works allows
us to say that there was something even more important than the literary abilities of
63
“La perversité des mères” unsigned article published by Le Monde (May 31st 1991).
64
Wharton, A Backward Glance 261.
65
André Chevrillon was the great-nephew of Hippolyte Taine, the famous French historian, whom
Wharton so admired.
- 24 -
her translators: the quality of the relation that she had with her translator during the
many work sessions. For Edith Wharton, since the very beginning, translation had
always been a matter of friendship. Minnie Bourget’s translation of “The Muse’s
Tragedy” was roughly done, and surely Edith knew it, but she loved the hours that
she spent with her friend, whom she called “the exquisite and soft Minnie.”66 She
enjoyed the translation sessions with Jane d’Oilliamson, whom she described as “a
delightful, admirable creature.”67 Du Bos’ translations of Ethan Frome, Summer and
The Reef were so bad that she spent days correcting them. Why did she not fire him?
Probably because he was a very bright young man, highly intelligent and cultivated,
and because Edith enjoyed working with him. During their “translation sessions,” no
doubt that she found “the kind of human communion that [she] had longed for.”68
And her last translator, Louis Gillet, became so intimate that she left the instruction
that he should be one of her pallbearers.69 Altogether, from the first to the very last,
Wharton systematically chose her translators within the inner circle of her friends.
We can also consider Wharton’s intensive collaboration with her French
translators as an attempt to keep a strict control on her works. All her biographers
have pointed out her active correspondence with the editors of her books, as well as
with the periodicals who serialised her works. The letters she sent them reveal that
she was extremely concerned with all risks of manipulation: she corrected every
missing comma in the proofs and she always refused all the cuts asked by the editors.
This behaviour seems to be quite exceptional: most writers could not afford to be as
inflexible as Wharton who once wrote to her editor: “You know of course that I do
not ‘live by my pen.’”70 At the beginning of the 20th century, foreign contemporary
authors were rarely translated into French: Wharton herself explained the success of
her novel The House of Mirth in France by the fact that “few modern English and
66
67
(l’exquise et douce Minnie) in Wharton. “Souvenirs du Bourget d'Outre-Mer.” 267.
Wharton to Sara Norton in Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 137.
68
69
In a letter to Mrs. Royal Tyler on May 23rd 1936, she wrote: “If it seems feasible, I should like to
have as pall-bearers: Royal Tyler, Kenneth Clark, John Hugh Smith, Gaillard Lapsley, Robert Norton,
Mr A. Boccon-Gibod, Mr Louis Metman, Mr Louis Gillet.” Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 595.
70
Wharton to Richard Watson Gilder (March 18, 1903) in Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 82.
- 25 -
American novels had as yet been translated.”71 It was even less common for an author
to supervise the work of his (her) translator, first because few authors were bilingual,
and secondly because they lived far away from each other. Edith Wharton, who was
almost perfectly bilingual and an expatriate, was a double exception, and a innovator.
Today, it has become less unusual for an author to control the translation of his (her)
works, the extreme position being Milan Kundera’s who double-checked himself the
translations of all his works written in Czech and later published all his books with a
note saying: “Entirely reviewed by the author, having the same value of authenticity
as the Czech text.”72
VI.
Wharton's Conceptions about Translation
It is difficult to know precisely Wharton's conceptions about translation,
because she did not write any essay about the subject, and her autobiography does not
contain any explicit statement. Still, we know that she was very much interested in
the theoretical problems of translation: Lewis reports that [in 1923] "Edith found
herself, over lunch at Pontigny, in the company / of André Gide, du Bos,
Schlumberger, André Maurois, and Lytton Stachey. They spent the time talking about
the difficult art of translation.”73 Benstock confirms this particular interest for
translation: “Du Bos later recalled that Edith enjoyed to the utmost all the problems
involved in translation, [and] took the greatest interest in the process.”74 In his
Journal, he revealed that Edith considered translation an enjoyable occupation:
When I compare notes with others, with friends some of whom I respect and love as
my better, with people of the quality of Gide, Edith, Maurois, etc. I always witness
that they consider the labour of translation as distinctly exhilarating, as the most
satisfying mental gymnastics.75
71
72
Milan Kundera is a Czech author born in 1929 who now lives in Paris. In his essay Testaments
trahis (Testaments Betrayed) published in 1994, he settles up with translators because he believes that
he is one of their victims.
73
Lewis, R. W. B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. 255-6.
74
Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. 420.
75
Du Bos, Charles. Journal 1920-1925. 460.
- 26 -
Edith Wharton collaborated actively in every French translation of her works,
but she never translated any on her own. Therefore we cannot consider her
translations as self-translations, like Nabokov’s or Beckett’s, who were bilingual and
who translated their own works. Actually, she thought that her French was not as
idiomatic as she wished; therefore she always chose to work with translators who
were supposed to have an excellent command of the French language. When she
congratulated her friend Bélugou for his translation of “The Letters”, she insisted on
the beauty of the language he had used. In her collaboration with her translators, her
task was to explain exactly what she had meant when she wrote the novel or the short
story, and the translator’s task was to put it into “good French style”, as she wrote to
Mme Taillandier.76 She always made the last corrections.
During her literary career, she did a few translations herself, being fluent in
English, French and German from a very early age. In 1902, she was commissioned
by the actress Mrs. Campbell to translate Hermann Sudermann’s play Es lebe das
Leben from German into English. In her translator’s note, she wrote that
Herr Sudermann’s dialogue is more concise that of many other German dramatists;
yet in translation his sentences and speeches need to be divided and recast: to
preserve the spirit, the letter must be modified. This is true not only of the
construction of his dialogue but also of his forms of expression. […] where they
seemed to obscure his meaning to English readers some adaptation has been
necessary.77
Clearly, she believed that a translated text must read like an original, and therefore
that a translation must adapt to the target language. Confronted to the famous
dilemma of the translator in which “he will either stay too close to the original, at the
cost of taste and the language of his nation, or he will adhere too closely to the
characteristics peculiar to his nation, at the cost of the original,”78 Edith Wharton
undoubtedly chose the second solution. Mme Taillandier confirms her target oriented
approach in the memoir she wrote for Percy Lubbock:
76
77
Lubbock. Portrait of Edith Wharton 149.
Wharton, Edith. “Translator’s Note to The Joy of Living.” in Wegener, Frederick. The Uncollected
Critical Writings of Edith Wharton. (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1996) 235.
78
Von Humboldt's letter to A.W. Schlegel, dated July 23, 1796, cited by Berman, Antoine in
L’Epreuve de l’étranger. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)
- 27 -
We began by translating, book in hand, closely following the text, with odd and
often absurd results; then, closing the book and forgetting that there had ever been a
text in English, we / set about re-writing our own version. So only, as it seemed to
me, through French on French, is real French to be reached at last.79
In her memoir A Backward Glance, Wharton expressed herself on the
translation of culture: about Sudermann’s play Es lebe das Leben, she wrote that
“after reading the play, [she] did not see how a tragedy based on the German “point
of honour” in duelling, a convention which had so long since vanished from our
customs, could be intelligible to English or American audiences.”80 She made the
same remark about her novel The Custom of the Country: “I had had many offers to
translate this book, but had always refused, as I thought it almost impossible to make
a tale so intensely American intelligible to French readers.”81 Clearly, for her, culture
represented an obstacle to translation.
Wharton even thought that a background based on an unknown culture was an
obstacle to literature on the whole: in a letter to Sally Norton, she criticised her
choice of eighteenth-century Italy as the background of her novel The Valley of
Decision; she wrote: “Undoubtedly there is / too much explanation, too much history
&c, for the proper perspective of the novel; […] the period (in Italy) is one so
unfamiliar to the reader that it was difficult to take for granted that he would fill out
his background for himself.”82 Twenty years later, she was in the same state of mind:
when she wrote The Age of Innocence, she secretly agreed with her friend Walter
Berry when he told her: “Yes; it’s good. But of course you and I are the only people
who will ever read it. We are the last people who can remember New York and
Newport as they were then, and nobody else will be interested.”83 Clearly, she
believed that the strength of her novels was the story, and not the backgrounds.
79
Lubbock. Portrait of Edith Wharton 150-151.
81
82
Wharton to Sally Norton dated February 13th 1902 in Lewis. The Letters of Edith Wharton 56-57.
80
83
- 28 -
Part 2: The French Translation of The Age of Innocence: A
Case Study
- 29 -
We chose to study in detail the French translation of The Age of Innocence
because this novel played a very special role in Edith Wharton’s literary career.
When it was first published in 1920 in the United States, it quickly became a bestseller, and it owed her the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Its French translation, Au
Temps de l’innocence, was a great success when it was serialised in the Revue des
deux mondes in 1920 as well as when Plon Nourrit published it in 1921. It played an
important role in Wharton’s come-back when Flammarion reprinted it in 1985: its
success gave the start to numerous new translations of Wharton’s works. The
phenomenon was amplified by the tremendous success of Martin Scorsese’s movie
based upon the novel in 1993, making definitely Le Temps de l’innocence Wharton’s
most popular novel among French readers. Our first step was to find a translation
assessment method in order to evaluate the translation.
I.
The Theoretical Problems of Translation Assessment
In a time when nations exchange more and more information and ideas across
borders, communication has become impossible without translation. Therefore,
translation quality assessment has become more and more efficient in the fields of
economic, industrial, juridical and scientific interests. On the contrary, very little has
been published in the field of literary translation, despite its increasing importance
throughout the planet. The reason might be that it is much easier to evaluate the
translation of a scientific article than to judge the translation of a novel or a poem.
What is a good translation, and how should one translate? This question has
been debated since the beginning of translation. Cicero (106-43 BC), who translated
many Greek works into Latin had a “sense for sense” approach to translation. On the
contrary, Pliny the Younger (AD 62-113) tended towards “word for word”
translation. Jerome (342-420), like Cicero, was a representative of the “sense for
sense” method, for secular texts, but he defended literal translation whenever a highly
authoritative text such as the Bible was at issue. Boëthius (480-524) adopted
Jerome's literal translation position with respect to the works of renowned
philosophers such as Aristotle. Later, during the Renaissance (14th to 16th centuries,)
- 30 -
the translators went back to Cicero’s principles and produced the very free
translations known under the name “Belles Infidèles.” During the 19th century, the
German Romantics rejected the assimilating theories and advocated a more literal
translation that would keep the foreignness of the original text.
The difficulty of making a choice between free and literal translation has been
perfectly summarised by Von Humboldt in a letter to A.W. Schlegel, dated July 23,
1796:
All translation seems to me simply an attempt to solve an impossible task. Every
translator is doomed to be done in by one of two stumbling blocks: he will either
stay too close to the original, at the cost of taste and the language of his nation, or he
will adhere too closely to the characteristics peculiar to his nation, at the cost of the
original. The medium between the two is not only difficult, but downright
impossible.
Today, the two theories of translation are still in competition. In the source-oriented
approach, advocated by Berman, the predominant purpose is to express as exactly as
possible the full force and meaning of every word and turn of phrase in the original.
In the target-oriented approach, advocated by Nida, the predominant purpose is to
produce a result that does not read like a translation at all, but with the same ease as
in its native rendering. Obviously, the criteria of translation assessment will depend
on whether the person who does the assessment has a target-oriented or a sourceoriented approach; therefore there are few complete studies that give objective
criteria for the evaluation of literary translations.
For our study, we adopted the approach developed by Katharina Reiss in her
best-seller Translation Criticism – The Potentials and Limitations,84 which is one of
the rare works that handle the subject. She believes that “a typology of texts to be
translated is the first step toward determining the literary, linguistic and pragmatic
categories which provide the points of reference by which a particular translation is
to be evaluated.”85 Only then can the target text be compared to the source text. Reiss
concedes that “awkward and artificial expressions in the target language can certainly
be identified without reference to the original text,”86 but she believes very strongly
in a step by step comparison between the two texts: “No critique without a
84
Reiss, Katharina. Translation Criticism – The Potentials and Limitations. Manchester: St Jerome
publishing, 2000.
85
Reiss. Translation Criticism – The Potentials and Limitations xii.
86
Reiss. Translation Criticism – The Potentials and Limitations 11.
- 31 -
comparison with the original!”87 She also demands that when a translation is
negatively criticised, there should always be a proposed remedy. Considering the
eternal debate between “literal” and “free” translation, Reiss rejects a rigid either/or
approach as being neither objective nor practical. She considers that it is the nature of
the text that determines the translation method. Still, like many seminal translation
theorists, she believes that in a normal translation, “the purpose is to transfer the text
of the original into a second language without abridgement, expansion or any
particular spin, representing the source text with corresponding text in the target
language.”88
II.
The Analysis of the French Translation of The Age of
Innocence: Our Approach
Following Katharina Reiss’ method, our first step was to determine to what
typology of texts The Age of Innocence belongs. Reiss distinguishes three dominant
functions: “the depictive function is emphasised in content-focused texts, the
expressive function emphasising form-focused texts, and the persuasive function
emphasising appeal-focused texts.”89 At the time of its first publication, The Age of
Innocence was advertised with an emphasis on the story, a unhappy and passionate
love affair between an eligible young man, Newland Archer, and the beautiful
Countess Olenska, in the rigidly conventional society of New York at the end of the
19th century. The many advertisements paid by Wharton’s editor Appleton insisted on
the character of Ellen Olenska. One article entitled “Was She Justified In Seeking A
Divorce?” very seriously discussed her destiny as if she were a real person:
Why was this American girl forced to leave her brutal Polish husband? Why did
Ellen, Countess Alenska90, return to New York, seeking to forget? Whispers came
all too soon that she had been compromised in the artistic continental society from
which she had fled.91
87
88
89
90
A typographical mistake made by the 1920 newspaper.
- 32 -
Today, The Age of Innocence is mostly praised for the old New York
atmosphere. Diane de Margerie, in her preface the French translation, insists on the
cultural value of the novel:
91
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Image ID
Number 1014274.
- 33 -
[Edith Wharton] voyage à rebours, grâce à l’imaginaire, vers cette Amérique
d’autrefois, avec ses robes fraîchement arrivées de chez Worth, mais aussi ses
rituels tout-puissants et ses critères implacables. Le snobisme des origines, la
nécessité d’une fortune, les prestiges de la beauté et l’artifice d’un code de
l’honneur souvent hypocrite rejettent hors du sein de la communauté tout être qui
prétend avoir ses propres lois pour sortir de la norme.92
Wharton, who had been admonished in 1902 by her friend Henry James to “do New
York,”93 was very careful about the cultural details she put in her novel. As she had
been living in France for more than ten years when she wrote it, she sent her sister in
law Minnie Jones to search the back files of the New York Tribune in order to collect
details about the operas and theatre plays performed in the mid-1870s. Apart from the
words of the Rector at Newland and May’s wedding, no incoherence has ever been
found in the novel.94
To determine, according to Reiss’ method, to which text-type The Age of
Innocence belongs, we did not need to decide whether the plot or the background of
the novel was its main interest: both hypotheses identified it definitely as a contentfocused text. At this level, writes Reiss,
an important component of its translation method has been determined. Contentfocused texts require invariance in transfer of their content. The critic must above all
ascertain whether their content and information is fully represented in the target
language.95
Therefore we chose to systematically compare the content and information of the
source and the target texts.
III.
Methods
Our first intention was to study the current French translation of The Age of
Innocence. Three different editions were available:
92
Margerie, Diane (de). Préface. Le Temps de l’innocence. By Edith Wharton. (Paris: Flammarion,
1987) 9.
93
Letter from Henry James to Edith Wharton on 17th August 1902 cited by Benstock in No Gifts from
Chance 125.
94
In the first edition of her novel, the clergyman invokes the opening words of the burial service:
“Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God…” a mistake hastily removed in the second printing.
95
- 34 -
 A hardcover version first published by Flammarion in 1985 in the collection
“Bibliothèque Anglaise” directed by Diane de Margerie and François-Xavier
Jaujard under the title Le Temps de l’innocence. Preface by Diane de Margerie.
The cover mentioned “roman traduit de l’anglais” without the name of the
translator.
 A quality paperback published by GF Flammarion in 1987 under the same title.
Preface, chronology and bibliography by Diane de Margerie. The front page
mentioned “Présentation et traduction de Diane de Margerie”, while the back
page mentioned “Texte intégral.”
 A cheap paperback published by J’ai lu in 1987 under the same title without any
preface. The front page of the 1994 reprint was illustrated with a photograph from
Scorsese’s movie.
We compared the three editions and realised that they contained the same translation.
In her preface to the Flammarion and GF Flammarion editions, Diane de Margerie
reveals that the translation was made by Mme Taillandier:
- 35 -
Dans son Portrait d’Edith Wharton, Percy Lubbock nous éclaire sur l’origine de la
traduction que nous donnons ici […]. Comme elle n’était pas entièrement satisfaite
de la première version française du roman, Edith Wharton fit appel en 1921 à Mme
Saint René Taillandier qui accepta de la mettre au point avec sa fille, traductrice
remarquée de Galsworthy.
Therefore the subtitle “Traduction de Diane de Margerie” on the front page of the GF
Flammarion is a mistake of the editor, which reveals how little interest some editors
take in the translators. Consequently, there is only one French translation of The Age
of Innocence, done by Mme Taillandier and her daughter, under the supervision of
Edith Wharton herself in 1920.
A. Quantitative Methods
As we had decided to follow Reiss’ approach to systematically compare the
content of both the source and the target texts, we needed a table of correspondence
between the two books, in order to easily go from one to the other. Therefore we
picked up the numbers of the pages of the 34 chapters in both texts, (The Age of
Innocence in the Penguin Popular Classics edition96 and Le Temps de l’innocence in
the J’ai lu edition97) and built a table of contents in which we found a title for each
chapter: see Appendix 2 page 81. We soon realised some incoherence in the size of
some corresponding chapters, as for example chapter 33 that consists of 17 pages in
the source-text and only 8 pages in the target-text, while chapter 1 consists of 8 pages
in both texts. This irregularity led us to systematically compare the length of the
chapters, with the help of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. We first compared the
number of pages of each corresponding chapter, and Excel allowed us to express (in
%) the ratio of the number of pages of the target text divided by the number of pages
of the source text. We noticed that the first three chapters had a 100% ratio, and that
the following chapters had very various ratios, some as high as 117% (chapter 4,
Engagements visits) and some as low as 57% (chapter 31, Secret meetings) and 47%
(chapter 33, Farewell dinner.)
We decided to compare the number of words of the chapters in both texts,
because the comparison of the number of pages did not seem to give enough
96
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence (London: Penguin, 1996)
97
Wharton, Edith. Le Temps de l’innocence (Paris: J’ai lu, 1987)
- 36 -
precision: in the source text each chapter was beginning on a new page, therefore it
contained some incomplete pages, whereas the target text had continuous chapters,
therefore it contained only full pages. Our aim was to count the number of words of
each chapter with the help of the linguistic functions of the software Microsoft Word:
Comptage des mots et des lignes contenus dans un document
Dans le menu Outils, cliquez sur Statistiques.
Note Vous pouvez également visualiser le nombre de mots et de lignes d'un
document en cliquant sur Propriétés dans le menu Fichier, puis sur l'onglet Statistiques.
We found the electronic text of The Age of Innocence on the Gutenberg website98; as no electronic version of Le Temps de l’innocence was available, we had to
use OCR (optical character recognition) to obtain the electronic target text. We soon
realised that it is a long and tedious operation; therefore, we sampled one page to
obtain the average number of words and we calculated the number of words of each
chapter. We wrote our results in the following table:
Number of pages
Chapter
Number of words
The Age of
Le Temps
Target text / The Age of
Le Temps
Target text /
Innocence
de
Source text Innocence
de
Source text
(Penguin) l'innocence
98
1
8
(GF)
8
100%
2401
(GF)
2324
97%
2
7
7
100%
1982
2170
109%
3
8
8
100%
2215
2362
107%
4
6
7
117%
1732
1948
112%
5
10
11
110%
2851
3243
114%
6
9
8
89%
2594
2472
95%
7
7
8
114%
1959
2247
115%
8
9
8
89%
2437
2482
102%
9
14
13
93%
3962
4002
101%
10
11
11
100%
3070
3368
110%
11
9
8
89%
2493
2442
98%
12
13
13
100%
3616
4012
111%
http://www.gutenberg.net
- 37 -
Number of pages
Chapter
Number of words
The Age of
Le Temps
Target text / The Age of
Le Temps
Target text /
Innocence
de
Source text Innocence
de
Source text
13
8
(GF)
7
88%
2166
(GF)
2030
94%
14
8
7
88%
2322
1926
83%
15
12
10
83%
3374
3086
91%
16
11
10
91%
3181
3056
96%
17
12
10
83%
3178
3046
96%
18
14
14
100%
3805
4394
115%
19
13
11
85%
3578
3238
90%
20
13
10
77%
3793
2976
78%
21
15
12
80%
4378
3650
83%
22
10
7
70%
2806
1980
71%
23
11
8
73%
3195
2362
74%
24
7
6
86%
1757
1588
90%
25
10
8
80%
2879
2242
78%
26
13
10
77%
3563
3006
84%
27
8
5
63%
2342
1486
63%
28
8
5
63%
2210
1486
67%
29
8
8
100%
2262
2280
101%
30
11
7
64%
3169
2040
64%
31
14
8
57%
3810
2372
62%
32
10
8
80%
2863
2272
79%
33
17
8
47%
4939
2282
46%
34
18
14
78%
5494
4294
78%
362
303
84%
90 164
88%
Total
102 376
Our results confirmed the phenomenon observed with the page comparison:
the first three chapter contain roughly the same number of words in the source and in
the target texts, whereas chapters 31 and 33 are seriously abridged. The fourth
chapter, which seemed lengthened by 117% in the “number of pages” comparison
and represents only 112% of the source text in the “number of words” comparison, is
not an isolated case: about ten other paragraphs show a moderate lengthening
- 38 -
(between 101 and 115% of the source text.) This was not a surprise: it is well
accepted among professional translator that a translation from English into French
contains more words than the source text. The phenomenon is called etoffement or
lengthening out, and it occurs more frequently in English-to-French translation than
in French-to-English translation, as French is more analytical and less concise than
English.
The disappearance of 10 to more than 50% of the words of the source text
was more of a surprise. A closer comparison of the two texts confirmed our intuition:
the current French translation of The Age of Innocence, although it claims to be a
“texte intégral”, contains numerous cuts, especially towards the end of the book. A
closer look into the two other available editions (Flammarion and GF Flammarion)
revealed the same cuts. This discovery led us to go back to the first editions; “Au
Temps de l’innocence” had been published from November 15th, 1920 until February
1st, 1921 in La Revue des deux mondes (six instalments) as well as in 1921 as a book
published under the same title by Plon Nourrit. We first compared the modern French
translation with the text published in La Revue des deux mondes. We found the same
cuts and we realised that there had been a slight revision between the 1920 and the
modern translation. Then, we were lucky enough to be able to buy an original copy of
Au Temps de l’innocence (published by Plon Nourrit in 1921) from a rare and out of
print bookseller found on the Internet.99 We discovered that it did not show the same
cuts as the Revue des deux mondes publication; therefore, we were sure that the
translator was not responsible for the cuts.
A closer look into Wharton’s professional correspondence showed us that
René Doumic, director of La Revue des deux mondes, had asked her to allow some
cuts, because the novel was longer than the ones he usually published:
Je me demande seulement si, pour le complet succès que vous devez rencontrer
auprès du public français, vous n’auriez pas avantage tantôt à faire certaines
coupures, tantôt à resserrer certains passages. Le roman tel que vous me l’avez
remis, dépassera sensiblement les dimensions habituelles de nos romans. Mais il va
sans dire que je m’en remets à vous.100
99
http://www.livre-rare-book.com/
Doumic to Wharton, 27 September, 1920. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
100
Book and Manuscript Library.
- 39 -
Did Wharton accept the cuts? She was very strongly against having her works
cut, as the following examples show. In 1907, as the French translation of her novel
The House of Mirth was being read by the director of the magazine Le Temps, she
wrote to Morton Fullerton:
”--but, as it is improbable that they will be willing to receive the volume “en
feuilleton” without “coupures,” & as we are / unwilling to make them, I should like
very much to know if there is any chance of being admitted in the Revue de Paris
within the next six or seven months.101
The same problem occurred with The Age of Innocence and the Pictorial
Review. Benstock reports that Wharton protested against the cuts the Pictorial wanted
to make to save space for illustrations and advertisements for detergents and home
cleaning products: “I cannot consent to / have my work treated as prose by the
yard.”102 Therefore, we cannot imagine Edith Wharton consenting to cuts in the
French translation of the same novel. La Revue des deux mondes probably made the
cuts without her consent.
Why did they make them, and how did they work? To find an explanation, we
counted the number of pages of the six instalments and we compared the results to
the source text. We noticed that the first instalment (chapters 1 to 7) had a reduction
of 76% in spite of the fact that it contains roughly the same number of words as the
source text, as shown above. Therefore, a 76% reduction of the number of pages
corresponds to an actual ratio of 100%, because an average page in La Revue des
deux mondes contains more words than an average page in the Penguin edition. This
result allowed us to calculate an actual ratio, which revealed an increasing degree of
reduction from the first instalment (chapters 1 to 7, no significant cuts) to the last one
(chapters 30 to 34, actual ratio: 64%.) It seems that La Revue des deux mondes
started to publish “Au Temps de l’innocence” without any cuts, and that they
gradually made more and more, as the following table shows:
101
Wharton to Fullerton, (spring 1907) in Lewis. Letters of Edith Wharton 111-112.
102
Benstock, No Gifts from Chance 361-362.
- 40 -
“Au Temps de l'innocence” (La Revue
des deux mondes)
The Age of
Innocence
(Penguin)
Target text / Actual ratio
Source text
number of
pages
Part
Chapters
Number of
pages
Number of
pages
1
2
3
4
5
6
1 to 7
8 to 11
12 to 16
17 to 21
22 to 29
30 to 34
42
31
35
42
41
34
55
43
52
68
75
70
76%
72%
67%
62%
55%
49%
100%
94%
88%
81%
72%
64%
225
363
62%
81%
Total
These results compelled us to study three different texts, in order to be able to judge
the current French translation of Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence:
 First, Mme St René Taillandier’s translation, as it appears in the Plon Nourrit
publication in 1921. Chronologically, it is the first translation of the novel.
 Secondly, the Revue des deux mondes text, which is an adaptation of the former,
with numerous cuts.
 Thirdly, the modern translation of The Age of Innocence, which is a revision of
the Revue des deux mondes adaptation.
B. Qualitative Methods
As The Age of Innocence is a rather long novel (365 pages in the Penguin
edition) we could not make a systematic assessment of the whole text. Therefore, we
used samples of the text in order to decide in which direction we would make our
enquiries. We realised that the first obstacle to translation assessment is a practical
one: the two texts belong to two different books, and one has constantly to move
from one to the other. We solved that problem in copying the two electronic versions
of the texts on one single page, which enabled us to study them simultaneously, as
shown on the following page.
- 41 -
I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson
was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote
metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House
which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the
great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to
reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the
sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and
inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York
was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung
to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent
acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing
of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what
the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally
brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the
slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family
landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe" To come
to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of
arriving as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had
the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to
democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in
the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's
own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one
of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have
discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even
more quickly than they want to get to it.
I.
Un soir de janvier 187., Christine Nilsson chantait la
Marguerite de Faust à l'Académie de Musique de New York.
Il était déjà question de construire - bien au loin dans la ville,
plus haut même que la Quarantième Rue -, un nouvel Opéra, rival en
richesses et en splendeur de ceux des grandes capitales européennes.
Cependant, le monde élégant se plaisait encore à se rassembler, chaque
hiver, dans les loges rouges et or quelque peu défraîchies de
l'accueillante et vieille Académie. Les sentimentaux y restaient attachés
à cause des souvenirs du passé, les musiciens à cause de son excellente
acoustique - une réussite toujours hasardeuse -, et les traditionalistes y
tenaient parce que, petite et incommode, elle éloignait, de ce fait même,
les nouveaux riches dont New York commençait à sentir à la fois
l'attraction et le danger.
La rentrée de Mme Nilsson avait réuni ce que la presse
quotidienne désignait déjà comme un brillant auditoire. Par les rues
glissantes de verglas, les uns gagnaient l'Opéra dans leur coupé, les
autres dans le spacieux landau familial, d'autres enfin dans les coupés
«Brown », plus modestes, mais plus commodes. Venir à l'Opéra dans
un coupé « Brown» était presque aussi honorable que d'y arriver dans
sa voiture privée; et au départ on y gagnait de pouvoir grimper dans le
premier « Brown» de la file - avec une plaisante allusion à ses principes
démocratiques -, sans attendre de voir luire sous le portique le nez
rougi de froid de son cocher. Ç'avait été le coup de génie de Brown, le
fameux loueur de voitures, d'avoir compris que les Américains sont
encore plus pressés de quitter leurs divertissements que de s'y rendre.
In this example, the English text (Penguin edition) is on the left column and
the Plon Nourrit version (Au Temps de l’innocence) is on the right column. This
presentation enabled us to compare the source and the target texts, as demanded by
Katharina Reiss’ approach, much more easily than with two books. We compared
them according to the principles developed above: we examined the abridgements,
the expansions and all the particular spins, and we also studied the quality of the
target language.
The presentation of both the source text and the target text on the same page
had another advantage: it gave us an immediate view of the cuts when the two texts
had different lengths.
Working on electronic texts was also very convenient to search the
occurrences of particular words, which seemed important in the novel, as for
example “foreign” or “unpleasant,” using the Microsoft Word tools:
Recherche de texte
Démonstration
1
Dans le menu Edition, cliquez sur Rechercher.
2
Dans la zone Rechercher, tapez le texte à rechercher.
3
Cliquez sur Suivant.
Remarque Pour annuler la recherche en cours, appuyez sur ECHAP.
We also used the electronic dictionary included in the software, which helped
us pick out the rare or obsolete words like for example the word “canvas-back” that
is found in no other American fiction than Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence.
When the text contains a word that does not belong to Word’s dictionary, it is
automatically underlined in red, which makes it noticeable.
Vérification automatique de l'orthographe en cours de frappe
1
Dans le menu Outils, cliquez sur Options, puis sur l'onglet
Grammaire et orthographe.
En cours de frappe, Word utilise des traits ondulés rouges pour signaler les
éventuelles fautes d'orthographe.
IV.
The Plon Nourrit Translation
We started our analysis with the Plon Nourrit text, because although it was
published a few months after the Revue des deux mondes text, it is the original
French translation, written by Mme Taillandier, together with her daughter Marianne,
and controlled by Wharton herself. We worked in two moves: first we systematically
collected all abridgements, expansions and particular spins, as well as the words or
phrases of the target text that drew our attention, in order to get a general overview of
all the actual shifts. Then, we chose the themes that appeared the most relevant and
we searched the whole text in order to discover the translator’s strategies.
A. Extensive Analysis of the First Chapter
The Age of Innocence (Penguin)
type
Au Temps de l'innocence (Plon Nourrit)
Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust (p.1) explicitation Christine Nilsson chantait la Marguerite de
Faust (p.1)
the "new people" (p.1)
the cold-and-gin congested nose (p.1)
the great livery-stableman's (p.2)
where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking (p.2)
explicitation les nouveaux riches (p.1)
omission
le nez rougi de froid (p.1)
explicitation de Brown, le fameux loueur de voitures
(p.2)
tense
où Mrs. Archer permettait qu'on fumât (p.2)
in metropolises it was "not the thing" to
arrive early at the opera (p.2)
addition
New York n'était pas une de ces villes de
second rang où l'on arrive à l'heure à
l'Opéra (p.2)
the other conventions on which his life was
moulded (p.3)
meaning
que toutes les autres conventions sur
lesquelles sa vie était fondée (p.2)
her daughter, Mrs. Welland (p.3)
meaning
sa nièce, Mrs. Welland (p.3)
matrons (p.3)
meaning
matrones (p.3)
a warm pink (p.3)
register
un incarnat plus vif (p.3)
He drew a breath of satisfied vanity (p.4)
omission
Il poussa un soupir satisfait (p.3)
Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than
the roses (p.4)
omission
des pensées gigantesques (p.4)
for fashionable clergymen (p.4)
omission
pour leurs pasteurs (p.4)
made by female parishioners (p.4)
addition
que les vieilles filles brodent (p.4)
Mr. Luther Burbank's (p.4)
explicitation du célèbre horticulteur Luther Burbank
(p.4)
of his designs (p.4)
omission
(p.4)
persuasively (p.4)
omission
(p.4)
type
her absorbed young face (p.4)
meaning
le joli visage pensif (p.4)
a thrill of possessorship (p.4)
omission
un frémissement (p.4)
her abysmal purity (p.5)
addition
la pureté profonde de la jeune fille (p.4)
May Welland had let him guess that she explicitation May Welland lui avait permis de deviner
"cared" (New York's consecrated phrase of
ses sentiments (p.4)
maiden avowal) (p.5)
and the march from Lohengrin (p.5)
explicitation Marche nuptiale de Lohengrin (p.4)
the married lady whose charms had held his
fancy through two mildly agitated years
(p.5)
omission
cette autre femme dont les charmes avaient
retenu son caprice pendant deux années
(p.5)
and to sustain itself in a harsh world (p.5)
omission
et comment le maintenir en équilibre (p.5)
all
the
carefully-brushed,
whitewaistcoated,
buttonhole-flowered
gentlemen (p.5)
omission
tous ces messieurs, giletés de blanc, aux
boutonnières fleuries (p.5)
and turned their opera-glasses critically on
the circle of ladies (p.6)
omission
et lorgnant en amateur les femmes (p.5)
he had probably read more (p.6)
omission
Il avait plus lu (p.5)
any other man of the number (p.6)
explicitation la plupart des hommes de son clan (p.5)
Singly they betrayed their inferiority (p.6)
addition
Isolément, ceux-ci trahissaient
médiocrité intellectuelle (p.5)
old Mrs. Mingott's (p.7)
omission
Mrs. Mingott (p.6)
discussing with Mrs. Welland the propriety
of taking the latter's place in the front righthand corner (p.7)
meaning
refusant du geste la place que Mrs. Welland
voulait lui céder à droite de la loge (p.6)
Mrs. Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, who was installed in the opposite
corner (p.7)
omission
Mrs. Lovell Mingott (p.6)
handsome Bob Spicer (p.8)
meaning
l'élégant Bob Spicer (p.7)
who had been
audiences (p.8)
delighting
leur
thronged implicitation qui faisait les délices de New York, (p.7)
in the old Opera-house on the Battery (p.8)
omission
(p.7)
while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed back
Lawrence Lefferts's opera-glass (p.8)
omission
(p.7)
B. The Different Types of Shifts
Our extensive collection of all the shifts of the first chapter revealed the
following categories103:
103
The vocabulary used in this chapter belongs to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.
1) Omission
We called omissions the elements that completely disappear in the target text,
as for example when the reference to the “old Opera-house on the Battery” (p.8)
simply disappears in the target text (p.7.) This example led us to systematically
examine the translation of the geographical names.
We also noticed some omissions concerning Newland Archer’s character: in
the target text he draws “a breath of satisfied vanity” and he has a “thrill of
possessorship” (p.4) when he looks at his beloved, that are translated into “un soupir
satisfait” and “un frémissement.” These examples gave us the impression that the
translator somewhat erased Archer’s ambiguity. This example led us to analyse the
characters of the novel.
1) Implicitation
Implicitation is the technique of making implicit in the target text information
that is explicit in the source text, as for example when the opera singer “who had
been delighting thronged audiences” (p.8) “faisait les délices de New York” (p.7.)
Contrary to an omission, the idea is translated, but there still is a loss of information.
This example led us to examine the loss of details that do not change the general
sense of the story, but that Wharton had used to make the backgrounds of her novel
more real, thanks to the research made by her sister in law Minnie Jones in New
York. In particular, we decided to examine the translation of the cultural elements.
2) Addition
We called additions all the information that appears in the target text and that
is absent from the source text. Some additions are made necessary by the grammar of
the French language which translates into “son” the English pronouns “his” and
“her”. For that reason, “her abysmal purity” (p.5) is translated into “la pureté
profonde de la jeune fille” (p.4.) In other cases, the information is introduced by the
translator, as for example when the “female parishioners” (p.4) become “les vieilles
filles” (p.4.)
3) Explicitation
Explicitation is the technique of making explicit in the target text information
that is implicit in the source text, as for example when “the march from Lohengrin”
(p.5) becomes “la marche nuptiale de Lohengrin” (p.4.) As the composer of
Lohengrin (Richard Wagner) is German, there is no reason for such explicitation. If
he had been American, and unknown to the French reader, the explicitation could
have been useful. Two other examples of explicitation concern proper names: Brown,
the livery-stableman (p.2) and Luther Burbank, the horticulturist (p.4.) They made us
decide to systematically study the translation of proper names in the novel.
We noticed a particular type of explicitation: the transformation of the many
euphemisms present in The Age of Innocence into plain explanations. In our
approach, we did not consider the euphemisms as part of the style of Wharton (in
content-oriented texts the translation assessment is not supposed to consider the
style,) but we considered them as content, because they are part of the “old New
York” atmosphere. For example, the expression “the ‘new people’” is translated into
“les nouveaux riches.” The shift is double: first, Wharton’s quotation marks
disappear, and secondly the euphemism is explicated. This example led us to study
the translation of Wharton’s euphemisms, as well as the transcription of the
numerous quotation marks that she used to draw attention on a particular expression;
it also drew our attention on the translation of the information related to money and
luxury.
4) Meaning
We put in this category all the cases where the translation was different from
the original, and could be classified neither as implicitation, nor as explicitation as
for example when Mrs Welland is called Catherine’s daughter (p.3) in the source text
and her “nièce” (p.3) in the target text. This obvious mistake is not due to the
translation, but to Edith Wharton herself. She wrote The Age of Innocence very
quickly, and she did many corrections after the first American publication. Once Au
Temps de l’innocence had been published, it was too late for any correction.
In some other cases, the translator changed the meaning of the source text for
reasons other than mistakes, as for example when “handsome Bob Spicer” (p.8)
becomes “l’élégant Bob Spicer.” Further in the novel, we found other shifts where
sensuality was translated into elegance. Therefore, we studied the translation of
sensuality and intimacy in the whole novel.
We also put in this category the words which sense has changed between
1920 and today as for example “matrons” (p.3) which is translated into “matrones”
(p.3). In English the word means “an older married woman”104 whereas in French it
had the same sense in the 1920s105 but it has nowadays the sense of “femme
corpulente aux manières vulgaires.”106
2) Register
In the translation of “a warm pink” (p.3) into “un incarnat plus vif” (p.3), the
English adjective “pink” is translated into the French “incarnat” which, contrary to
pink, does not belong to the everyday lexicon; consequently, this shift elevates the
register. We also noticed that the verbal tenses of the translation have the same
effect, as for example when “where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking” (p.2) is translated
into “où Mrs. Archer permettait que l’on fumât.” These examples led us to
systematically examine the shifts of register.
Our extensive collection of all the shifts found in the first chapter of Au
Temps de l’innocence helped us to decide in which direction we would work on the
entire novel. We settled to deepen our analysis on the following themes: the
translation of names (places and people), the particular themes of money, sensuality
and the description of the characters, and the language of the target text according to
its register, the use of quotation marks and the accuracy of the lexicon.
C. The Geographical Names
Most names of places appear either untranslated (as New York for example),
or under their French equivalent (the Fifth Avenue becoming “la Cinquième
avenue.”) Here, we examined the exceptions.
104
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 790.
105
Petit Larousse illustré. (Paris: Larousse, 1924)
106
Le Petit Larousse illustré. (Paris: Larousse Bordas, 1998) 637.
type
a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been implicitation une séduisante danseuse espagnole, qui
delighting thronged audiences in the old
faisait les délices de New York (p.7)
Opera-house on the Battery (p.8)
He knew, of course, that whatever man
dared (within Fifth Avenue’s limits) that
old Mrs. Manson Mingott […] would
dare. (p.10)
omission
Archer n’ignorait pourtant pas que Mrs
Manson Mingott […] avait l’habitude de
pousser son audace jusqu’aux dernières
limites. (p.9)
in spite of having been only Catherine
Spicer of Staten Island (p.10)
omission
Et cependant, elle n’était que Catherine
Spicer (p.9)
one had a “droit de cité” (as Mr. Sillerton
Jackson, who had frequented the Tuileries,
called it) (p.17)
omission
c’était avoir « droit de cité » (comme disait
Mr Sillerton Jackson) (p.15)
warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.
(p.18)
omission
de croquettes réchauffées. (p.16)
Mrs. Archer […] lived with her son and implicitation Mrs Archer […] habitait avec son fils et sa
daughter in West Twenty-eighth Street.
fille dans la Vingt-huitième rue. (p.27)
(p.31)
the van der Luydens, direct descendants of implicitation les van der Luyden, descendants directs du
the first Dutch governor of Manhattan
premier gouverneur hollandais de New
(p.47)
York (p.41)
The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs
of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish
kinsfolk, the Trevennas, had always
remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs.
van der Luyden had more than once paid
long visits to the present head of the house
of Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrey, at
his country-seat in Cornwall and at St.
Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace
had frequently announced his intention of
some day returning their visit (p.48)
meaning
meaning
omission
Les liens de famille entre les Dagonnet et
les du Lac, et leurs aristocratiques parents
gallois, étaient toujours restés étroits et
cordiaux. Mr et Mrs van der Luyden
avaient séjourné plus d’une fois chez le
duc de Saint-Austrey, chef de la famille,
dans sa propriété du pays de Galles, et le
duc avait souvent manifesté l’intention de
leur rendre visite. (p.41)
the Duke of St. Austrey arrives next week implicitation
on the Russia. (p.54)
le duc de Saint-Austrey arrive la semaine
prochaine à New York. (p.47)
Before taking him down to Maryland implicitation
(p.54)
Avant de l’emmener à Trevenna (p.47)
Newland Archer […] placed himself with
his best man on the chancel steps of Grace
Church. (p.179)
omission
Newland Archer […] avait pris place, avec
son premier garçon d’honneur sur les
marches du chœur. (p.148)
The next morning, when Archer got out of
the Fall River train, he emerged upon a
steaming Boston. (p.230)
omission
Le lendemain matin, Archer, au sortir du
train, se trouva dans la bouilloire d’un
Boston caniculaire. (p.185)
and should take the Fall River boat that
night and go on to New York (p.230)
omission
il regagnerait New York (p.185)
He turned away and hurried across Union
Square (p.286)
omission
Il traversa rapidement le square (p.227)
conveyed him luxuriously to the
Pennsylvania terminus in Jersey City.
(p.287)
omission
fut transporté confortablement à Jersey
City. (p.227)
Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in
his library in East Thirty-ninth Street.
(p.347)
type
omission
Dans sa maison de la Trente-neuvième
rue, Newland Archer était assis devant la
table à écrire de sa bibliothèque. (p.277)
Considering the translation of geographical names, the translator’s strategy is
very simple: all the shifts are either implicitation or omission, which is the highest
degree of implicitation. It seems that she thought that a French reader would not
understand the geographical references. Still, her strategy is not logical: she
translated literally “she gets [her gloxinias] from Kew” (p.18) into “je crois qu’elle
les fait venir de Kew” (p.16.) The French reader did probably not know Kew gardens
any better than Union Square (p.286) or Grace Church (p.179.) Moreover, these
geographical names are part of the “old New York” atmosphere which is the core of
the novel. When Wharton mentions that Catherine comes from Staten Island (p.10),
she means that she does not belong to an old New York family; therefore we propose
the following translation: “Et cependant, elle n’était que Catherine Spicer de Staten
Island.” More generally, we believe that all the geographical names should be
translated literally, in order to avoid a loss of cultural references. They could be
explicated in footnotes when they have a connotation unknown of the French reader.
We also found some mistakes in the translation of geographical names. They
are probably due to the last correction made by Wharton as for example “Cornwall”
(p.48) is translated into “le Pays de Galles” (p.41) instead of “Cornouailles.” These
mistakes should be systematically corrected.
D. The Proper Names
Most proper names are untranslated, which is the normal standard in literary
translation. Still, we noticed some shifts in their translation:
page
the young enquirer, a candid Thorley implicitation
(p.13)
un tout jeune homme (p.11)
young Thorley (p.13)
le tout jeune homme (p.12)
Vandie Newland (p.15)
implicitation
meaning
Regie Newland (p.13)
The Beauforts' house was one of the few
in New York that possessed a ball-room (it
antedated even Mrs. Manson Mingott's
and the Headly Chiverses') (p.16)
omission
La maison des Beaufort était une des rares
habitations de New York qui possédassent
une salle de bal.
Mrs. Archer writing out the menus on
Tiffany’s thickest gilt-edged bristol.
(p.331)
omission
Mrs Archer avait fini d’écrire les menus.
(p.264)
the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver
baskets (p.331)
omission
les coupes d’argent ajourées, remplies de
bonbons. (p.264)
The names of some characters are simply omitted, like “young Thorley” (p.13) who
becomes a generic “tout jeune homme” (p.12.) Here again, the translator’s strategy is
incoherent: The Age of Innocence contains dozens of proper names. Why omit this
one and not the others? We believe that all the proper names should be kept in the
French translation. Other proper names do not belong to actual characters, but they
are cultural references like “Tiffany’s thickest gilt-edged bristol” (p.331) which is
completely omitted. As they are part of the “old New York” backgrounds, they
should appear in the translation. We propose “ Mrs Archer avait fini d’écrire les
menus sur le plus épais bristol à tranche dorée de chez Tiffany.”
Here again, we noticed a mistake probably due to Wharton’s last corrections:
“Vandie Newland” (p.15) becomes “Reggie Newland” (p.13.) This mistake should be
corrected.
E. Money and Luxury
The backgrounds of The Age of Innocence is obviously money and luxury, but
the translation somewhat erases the most prominent signs of wealth and affluence:
type
the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire
(p.27)
omission
la bague de fiançailles, un gros saphir
(p23)
“Very handsome,” she added, returning
the jewel; “very liberal. In my time a
cameo set in pearls was thought
sufficient.”(p.27)
meaning
Très distinguée ! dit-elle, c’est un beau
bijou ! De mon temps, on se serait
contenté d’un camée, entouré de perles.
(p.23)
Mr. Jackson […] lit his cigar with perfect
confidence (it was Newland who bought
them) (p.39)
meaning
Il alluma le cigare sans défiance ; c’était
Newland qui pourvoyait ces cigares. (p.35)
type
Then there had been the pleasurable
excitement of choosing a showy grey
stepper for May's brougham (the Wellands
had given the carriage), (p.206)
omission
Puis il s’était intéressé au choix d’un
brillant steppeur gris, destiné au coupé de
May. (p.168)
It was expected that well-off young
couples in New York should do a good
deal of informal entertaining, (p.330)
meaning
Ces réceptions intimes étaient dans la
coutume de New York pour les jeunes
ménages élégants, (p.263)
Mrs. Archer ran thoughtfully over the list,
checking off each name with her sharp
gold pen. (p.331)
omission
Mrs Archer parcourait attentivement la
liste des invités rayant chaque nom de sa
fine plume. (p.264)
It seems that the translator transformed money into elegance; “liberal” (p.27)
becomes “distinguée” (p.23) and “the well-off couples” (p.330) become “les jeunes
ménages élégants.” We tried to find an explanation for theses shifts; Wharton knew
that many Europeans believed the American to be too concerned with money. In the
tribute that she wrote for her friend Bourget, she regretted the false impression that
her friend had about the Americans:
Mais je me rends compte aussi qu’il n’a pas échappé à l’erreur commune à presque
tous les sociologues venus de la vieille Europe pour étudier les mœurs américaines.
Pour Bourget, comme pour tous les autres Européens, l’Amérique du Nord c’était
surtout, avant tout, le pays des dollars.107
Edith Wharton had certainly been bitter about her friend’s reaction: she introduced
her book French Ways and their Meaning with that particular reminiscence. She
wrote that “some years before the war, a French journalist108 [had] produced a
‘thoughtful book’ on the United States. Of course he [had] laid great stress on our
universal hustle for the dollar. To do that is to follow the line of least resistance about
America.”109 Mme Taillandier, who was Minnie and Paul Bourget’s intimate friend,
knew certainly about Wharton’s rancour. She might have unconsciously removed the
references to money, to avoid upsetting Edith Wharton.
107
Wharton, Edith. “Souvenirs du Bourget d’Outremer.” (Paris: La Revue Hebdomadaire, June 20th,
1936) 271.
108
Paul Bourget, who wrote a series of articles published in two volumes called Outremer.
109
Wharton, Edith. French Ways and their Meaning (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1919.
Rpt. Lennox, Mass.: Edith Wharton Restoration and Lee, Mass.: Berkshire House Publishers, 1997) 3.
A translation cannot transform the ideas of the author. We suggest that “very
liberal” should be translated as “c’est très généreux,” and “well-off” into “aisés.” We
also suggest that all the references to money or luxury should be faithfully translated.
F. Sensuality and Intimacy
The Age of Innocence does not contain many references to sensuality or
intimacy, but it seems that the translation has erased most of them:
type
handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's father (p.8)
meaning
l’élégant Bob Spicer, le père de la vieille
Mrs Mingott.
he drew his betrothed into the middle of
the ball-room floor and put his arm about
her waist. (p.21)
omission
il entraîna sa fiancée au milieu de la salle.
(p.18)
The dance over, the two, as became an implicitation
affianced couple, wandered into the
conservatory; (p.21)
La danse terminée, tous deux se dirigèrent,
comme il convenait à des fiancés, vers le
jardin d’hiver, (p.19)
To the general relief the Countess Olenska implicitation
was not present in her grandmother's
drawing-room during the visit of the
betrothed couple. (p.26)
A la satisfaction générale, la comtesse
Olenska n’avait pas assisté à la visite des
fiancés. (p.23)
but the way her dress (which had no
tucker) sloped away from her thin
shoulders shocked and troubled him. He
hated to think of May Welland's being
exposed to the influence of a young
woman so careless of the dictates of Taste.
(p.12)
omission
mais la manière dont le velours libre de
son corsage glissait de ses fines épaules le
choquait et le troublait. La pensée de May
Welland exposée à l’influence d’une jeune
femme si insouciante du bon goût lui était
insupportable. (p.11)
rather handsome head, but eyes with a lot
of lashes (p.13)
meaning
Une tête plutôt distinguée, du reste. (p.11)
omission
The streets near the station were full of the
smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit
and a shirt- sleeved populace moved
through them with the intimate abandon of
boarders going down the passage to the
bathroom. (p.230)
omission
Les rues aux alentours de la gare
exhalaient une odeur de fruits pourris, de
bière et de café. La populace, dans le
débraillement d’été, y circulait avec
l'abandon de citadins vaincus par la
chaleur. (p.217)
It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to
Mrs. Welland, a great event for a young
couple to give their first big dinner.
(p.330)
meaning
Comme Mrs Archer le disait en souriant à
Mrs Welland, c’était un événement pour
un jeune ménage de donner son premier
grand dîner. (p.263)
[…] that to all of them he and Madame
Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme
sense peculiar to "foreign" vocabularies.
(p.338)
omission
[…] que pour tout ce monde Mme Olenska
et lui étaient amants. (p.270)
It seems that the translator has wanted the reader to believe that May and Archer did
not form a real couple: the word “couple” disappears twice (p.21 and 26) and on page
330 it is translated as “ménage”, which insists on the material aspect of the marriage,
and removes the intimacy. We suggest that the English word “couple” should be
translated as the French “couple”, which is its exact equivalent. Other details that
express intimacy completely disappear, as “[Archer’s] arm around [May’s] waist”
(p.21) and Ellen’s dress “which had no tucker” (p.12.) We suggest that they should
be translated, as well as all the similar references that are omitted, because they are
part of the atmosphere of the novel, that translation must not alter.
We tried to explain this phenomenon. Most of Edith Wharton’s friends, and
among them Mme Taillandier, were impressed by her self-control. In her memoir for
Percy Lubbock, she wrote:
Le dirai-je ? Chez Edith Wharton, la perfection de l’élégance la plus élégante […]
me causait quelquefois quand j’y étais trop sensible, une impression de froid. […]
Dans cette perfection de tenue, il y avait quelque chose de trop impassible, jamais je
ne l’entendis exprimer une impression de tristesse, mais je n’entendis pas non plus
le son du rire.110
Mme Taillandier, impressed by Edith Wharton’s self-control, might have
unconsciously transferred it into her translation.
G. The Characters
As we pointed out above, it seems that the translation is less ambiguous than
the original about the character’s psychology:
He [Archer] drew a breath of satisfied
vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.
(p.4)
110
type
omission
Il poussa un soupir satisfait, et se retourna
vers la scène. (p.3)
Saint René Taillandier, Madeleine. Typed reminiscences about Edith Wharton (draft) Private
collection of Ms Noemi Hepp, daughter of Marianne Taillandier and granddaughter of Mme
Madeleine Taillandier.
type
And he contemplated her absorbed young
face with a thrill of possessorship in which
pride in his own masculine initiation was
mingled with a tender reverence for her
abysmal purity. (p.4)
omission
Et il contempla le joli visage pensif avec
un frémissement où l’orgueil de son
initiation masculine se mêlait à un tendre
respect our la pureté profonde de la jeune
fille. (p.4)
They [Mrs and Miss Archer] preferred
those about peasant life, because of the
descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter
sentiments, though in general they liked
novels about people in society, whose
motives
and
habits
were
more
comprehensible, (p.31)
meaning
[Mrs and Miss Archer] lisaient les romans
d’Ouida, dont elles goûtaient l’atmosphere
italienne et la description des paysans,
quoiqu’en général elles préférassent les
romans mondains où il s’agissait de « gens
comme il faut ». (p.27)
Beaufort was understood to have said that
he supposed all his wife's friends had
maids who saw to it that they were
properly coiffees when they left home.
(p.19)
addition
Beaufort passait pour avoir dit de son air
méprisant que toutes les amies de sa
femme
avaient
certainement
des
caméristes capables de veiller à ce qu’elles
fussent correctement coiffées avant de
sortir. (p.16)
The translator seems to having wanted to make the “good” characters better than they
actually are, and to worsen the “bad” characters. For example Archer’s vanity
disappears (p.4: two occurrences), and Mrs and Miss Archer’s ignorance about
literature is omitted (p.31.) At the same time, Beaufort, who is the novel’s “black
sheep” is blackened by the translator: “[he] was understood to have said” is translated
as “ Beaufort passait pour avoir dit de son air méprisant.” We suggest to remove “de
son air méprisant” which is a creation of the translator. Concerning the characters,
the translator’s dualism is contrary to the novel’s ambiguity, which should be
restored through a more literal translation.
H. The Register
The Age of Innocence contains many dialogues in which the author has used
colloquial expressions. We collected some of them, and we realised that the
translation had often replaced the colloquialisms with more formal speech:
page
page
“Know each other? Fiddlesticks!”
27
– Se connaître ? Quelle plaisanterie !
24
“Of course, I know; yes. And I’m so glad.
But one doesn’t tell such things first in a
crowd.”
29
– Naturellement je sais… je vous félicite
et je vous excuse. On n’annonce pas ces
choses-là dans une foule.
25
page
page
“Especially after that silly business with
Mrs. Rushworth,”
34
« à cause de cette affaire absurde avec
Mrs Rushworth »
30
“I never heard of his having lifted a finger
to get his wife back.”
39
– Je n’ai jamais entendu dire qu’il ait fait
le moindre effort pour ravoir sa femme.
35
As he dropped into his armchair
40
Comme il se laissait choir dans son
fauteuil
35
“Got the ring all right?” whispered young
van der Luyden Newland.
180
– Vous avez la bague ? chuchota van der
Luyden Newland.
149
“Hullo, Medora! did the trotters do their
business? Forty minutes, eh?
211
– Eh bien Medora ! Vous voilà ! Les
trotteurs ont-ils bien marché ?
171
“Ol–ol–howjer spell it, anyhow?” asked
the tart young lady.
279
– O – ol – ol. Comment ça s’écrit-il ?
demanda la voix aigre de la jeune
télégraphiste.
221
“Queer, those fellows who are always
wanting to set things right.”
341
– Ils sont étonnants, ces moralistes !
273
“I say, old chap: do you mind just letting
it be understood that I’m dining with you
at the club tomorrow night? Thanks so
much, you old brick! Goodnight.”
344
– Dis-moi, mon vieux, veux-tu qu’il soit
entendu que je dîne avec toi au cercle
demain ? Ça va ? Merci. Bonsoir.
274
The translator has systematically removed all signs of orality, as for example the
contraction “ howjer spell it” (how do spell it p.279), translated as “Comment ça
s’écrit-il ?” (p.221), does not produce the same effect. We suggest the following
translation: “Comment qu’ça s’écrit ?”, nearer to what a young post office employee
would say. We found many examples where the translator had translated a common
English word by a formal French word: “silly” (p.34) is translated into “absurde”
(p.30). We suggest “stupide” or “ridicule.”
The dialogues pose another problem: in French, “you” can be translated as
“vous,” which is formal, and as “tu,” which is familiar. The translation is incoherent
on the subject: why should Larry Lefferts say “tu” to Archer (p.274) when his best
man would say “vous” to him? Therefore we suggest to translate “Got the ring all
right?” (p.180) as “T’as la bague ?” instead of the too formal “Vous avez la bague ?
” (p.149.)
Mme Taillandier, the translator, had a very personal opinion on the subject,
which she explained in her memoir:
Nous étions d’accord pour trouver que l’anglais a un style particulier : dans le
roman, généralement simple et familier ; un autre, très différent, dans la poésie ; un
autre, plus proche du français, c’est à dire du latin, dans la dissertation ou l’art
oratoire. Le roman, en particulier la traduction du language quotidien que tiennent
des personnages ordinaires supportent des flous, des à peu près, des idiotismes qui
seraient tout à fait déplacés en français.111
This position, apparently shared by Edith Wharton, explains why the
dialogues almost systematically elevate the register. It gives an impression of
stiffness between the characters, that does not belong to Wharton’s novel. Therefore
we suggest that the colloquialism of the dialogues should be restored in the French
translation.
The use of the “imparfait du subjonctif”, although correct, produces an
awkward phonic effect, especially in the “asse” forms. It also elevates the register,
because those forms belong to the past.
page
page
the young man was shocked that they
should reflect so unseemly a picture
14
Archer fut choqué qu’ils reflétassent […] 13-14
une image si peu respectueuse.
The Beaufort’s house was one of the few
in New York that possessed a ball-room.
16
La maison des Beaufort était une des
rares habitations de New York qui
possédassent une salle de bal.
14
He was definitely afraid that the Mingotts 19-20 Il appréhendait nettement que les Mingott
might be going too far; that, in fact, they
n’allassent trop loin, et que, par ordre de
might have Granny Mingott’s orders to
la grand’mère, n’amenassent au bal la
bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.
comtesse Olenska.
17
though in general they liked novels about
people in society
28
111
31
quoiqu’en général elles préférassent les
romans mondains
Saint René Taillandier, Madeleine. Typed reminiscences about Edith Wharton (draft) 7.
To translate “ The Beaufort’s house was one of the few in New York that possessed a
ball-room.” (p.16) as “La maison des Beaufort était une des rares habitations de New
York qui possédassent une salle de bal” definitely creates a shift: the English
sentence belongs to the standard register whereas the French is very formal, even old
fashioned. A faithful translation should not modify the register, therefore the
awkward “imparfait du subjonctif” should logically be removed. Still, we do not
suggest to replace them with the more modern “présent du subjonctif,” because they
belong to Edith Wharton’s style when she wrote in French, they give the translation
her “personal touch.”
I. The Quotation Marks
Edith Wharton used them to draw attention to a word that she used for special
effect such as irony. Often they report spoken language and create a complicity
between narrator and reader. Their suppression increases the formality of the
narration:
type
the “new people” whom New York was omission and les nouveaux riches dont New York
beginning to dread and yet be drawn to explicitation commençait à sentir à la fois l’attraction et
(p.1)
le danger. (p.1)
It was only that afternoon that May omission and C’était seulement dans cette même aprèsWelland had let him guess that she "cared" explicitation midi que May Welland lui avait permis de
(New York's consecrated phrase of maiden
deviner ses sentiments, (p.4)
avowal), (p.5)
he had been "helped" to leave England by
the international banking-house in which
he had been employed; (p.18)
omission
il avait dû quitter l’Angleterre avec la
connivence secrète de la banque dont il
faisait partie ; (p.16)
on a day of such glaring sunlight, and at
the "shopping hour," (p.26)
omission
par un soleil resplendissant et à l’heure
mondaine, (p.23)
Mr. Welland, who was behaving "very omission and Mr Welland – qui se montrait très
handsomely," (p.69)
explicitation généreux, (p.59)
Mrs. Rushworth was "that kind of
woman"; foolish, vain, clandestine by
nature, (p.94)
omission
Mrs Rushworth était de la catégorie des
femmes un peu sottes, frivoles, éprises de
mystère (p.82)
aunts and other elderly female relatives,
who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that
when "such things happened" it was
undoubtedly foolish of the man, but
somehow always criminal of the woman.
(p.95)
omission
Les dames d’âge que connaissait Archer
considéraient toute femme qui aimait hors
de la sagesse comme nécessairement
intrigante ou sans scrupules, et l’homme
comme un pauvre être sans défense entre
ses griffes. (p.83)
Moreover, he was as illiterate as old Mrs.
Mingott, and considered "fellows who
wrote" as the mere paid purveyors of rich
men's pleasures; (p.101)
type
omission
De plus, aussi peu cultivé que Mrs
Mingott, il considérait les écrivains
comme des pourvoyeurs salariés, préposés
au plaisir des riches (p.87)
We suggest that the quotation marks should be kept as often as possible in the
translation. When Wharton wrote “on a day of such glaring sunlight, and at the
‘shopping hour,’” (p.26) she did not mean that the elegant people were buying their
groceries at the market, but that they went out to be seen. We suggest to keep the idea
of using an expression with the quotation marks to indicate that it is used in a
figurative sense; we suggest “par un soleil resplendissant et à ‘l’heure d’affluence’”
instead of “par un soleil resplendissant et à l’heure mondaine,” (p.23.)
The suppression of the quotation marks also remove the euphemisms: when
“May Welland had let him guess that she ‘cared’ (New York's consecrated phrase of
maiden avowal),” (p.5) is translated as “ May Welland lui avait permis de deviner ses
sentiments” (p.4), we feel that the old New York atmosphere is not completely
rendered. We suggest the following translation: “May Welland lui avait laissé
deviner qu’il ‘comptait’ pour elle (l’expression consacrée à New York pour les aveux
des jeunes filles.)” We also suggest that all euphemisms should be translated into
French with an equivalent that keeps the euphemistic idea.
J. The Accuracy of the Lexicon
We noticed in the target text a rather large number of words which seemed
inaccurate, even in the 1920s:
type
[Mrs. Manson Mingott] had associated
familiarly with Papists (p.11)
inaccuracy
[Mrs.
Manson
Mingott]
fraya
familièrement avec des catholiques
ultramontains (p.10)
They never quote you when they talk
about its being her duty to go home
(p.304)
inaccuracy
C’est qu’ils ne prononcent jamais ton nom
quand ils ressassent leur antienne au sujet
du retour d’Ellen chez Olenski (p.243)
“The lady was out, sir,” he suddenly heard
a waiter’s voice at his elbow; (p.231)
inaccuracy
- La dame était sortie, monsieur, lui dit
soudain un valet de pied. (p.186)
We suggest to translate the word “Papists” (an offensive word for a Roman Catholic,
used by some Protestants)112 as its French equivalent “papistes,” which has the same
pejorative sense. We would translate “talk” as “parlent” instead of the obsolete
“ressassent leur antienne”, and we would translate “waiter” as “serveur.” We suppose
that Mme Taillandier, who was a specialist in historical essays about the 17th and 18th
centuries, did not realise that she sometimes used an obsolete vocabulary.
These three cases are only a sample of many lexical inaccuracies. In the
translation of content-focused text, according to Reiss, “the linguistic form of the
translation [must] be adapted without reservation to the idiom of the target
language.” Therefore we suggest that the inaccurate lexicon should be replaced by
modern French words.
K. Assessment
As we chose to adopt Reiss’ approach, our assessment will follow her
standards, in which a good translation must avoid any abridgement, expansion or any
particular spin, and represent the source text with a corresponding text in the target
language. In the case of a content focused-text as The Age of Innocence the content
and information must be fully represented in the target text, and the idiom of the
target language must be absolutely accurate. This is not the case in Mme
Taillandier’s translation; we have noticed many abridgements, especially in the
translation of geographical names, proper names and cultural elements. We have also
noticed some expansions, in which the translator introduced some elements that were
absent in the source text. The spins were numerous: the references to money
disappeared, as well as the rare elements of intimacy present in the novel. The
characters have become less ambiguous than Wharton had represented them. As for
the quality of the idiom of the target language, we noticed that the translation had
slightly elevated the register, and sometimes used obsolete words. For all these
reasons, we can affirm that the Plon Nourrit translation is not altogether a satisfactory
translation. In particular, it is clear that it has been written without a particular
112
Oxford Advanced Learner’s 917.
strategy in mind, with no particular principles. This is not a surprise: in her memoir,
Mme Taillandier explained that her daughter Marianne and herself took the different
chapters in turn:
Ma fille et moi prenions chacune un chapitre, revoyions, réécrivions, chacune lisait
à l’autre ce qu’elle avait fait, on remettait l’ouvrage sur le métier, et au printemps,
Edith Wharton nous invita toutes deux à Montmorency pour mettre avec elle le
travail au dernier point. 113
We are not surprised either that there are many shifts between the source text and the
target text, because the translator did not compare her translation to the English text
in the last part of her work:
Nous prîmes une méthode qui amusait beaucoup Mrs Wharton, traduire une
première fois, le livre en main, en suivant de près le texte, le résultat était parfois
singulier même cocasse, ensuite fermer le livre anglais et réécrire en oubliant qu’il y
eut jamais un texte en cette langue.
We feel that the translator missed a last move: the comparison between her
translation and the source text.
113
Saint René Taillandier, Madeleine. Typed reminiscences about Edith Wharton (draft) 6.
V.
The Revue des Deux Mondes Adaptation
We decided to analyse the Revue des deux mondes text because it does the
link between the Plon Nourrit text and the modern editions.
A. Methods
To study the Revue des deux mondes text, we compared it to the Plon Nourrit
translation, with the help of Microsoft Word computer tools:
Comparaison de deux copies d'un document
1
Ouvrez l'exemplaire du document qui a été révisé.
2
Dans le menu Outils, pointez sur Suivi des modifications, puis cliquez sur Comparer des
documents.
3
Recherchez le nom du document original et cliquez dessus, ou bien tapez son nom dans la
zone Nom de fichier.
4
Cliquez sur Ouvrir.
We had a closer look at chapter 33, which is the most abridged one (the number of
words of the target text is only 46% of the source text.) We obtained a document on
which the differences appear in a red font, the additions being underlined and the
omissions crossed out, as in the following example:114
Comme Mrs Archer, le disait en souriant à Mrs Welland, c’était un événement pour
un jeune ménage de donner son premier grand dîner.
Les Newland Archer, depuis qu’ils s’étaient installés chez eux, recevaient
constamment souvent dans l’intimité. Archer aimait avoir trois ou quatre amis à dîner, et
May les accueillait avec l’empressement épanoui dont sa mère lui avait donné l’exemple.
Son mari se demandait si d’elle même elle aurait jamais invité personne ; mais depuis
longtemps, il avait renoncé à dégager la personnalité de May du moule de la tradition et de
l’éducation. Ces réceptions intimes étaient dans la coutume de New-York pour les jeunes
ménages élégants, et une Welland mariée à un Archer était doublement tenue de s’y prêter.
Mais un Un grand dîner, avec un chef d’extra, deux valets de pied prêtés pour la
circonstance, un sorbet à la romaine, des roses de chez Henderson, des menus dorés sur
tranche, était une bien autre affaire. « C’était le sorbet, disait Mrs Archer, qui faisait toute
la différence ; » du moment qu’il y avait un sorbet, il fallait qu’il y eût aussi deux services,
des canards canvas-back ou du terrapin, deux plats sucrés, un froid et un chaud, le grand
décolleté, et des invités d’importance de marque.
114
Page 263 for the Plon Nourrit text and page 620 for the Revue des deux mondes text.
C’était toujours intéressant de voir un jeune ménage lancer pour la première fois
ses invitations à la troisième personne : même les gens les plus blasés et les plus
recherchés s’y refusaient rarement. On admettait pourtant que c’était un triomphe que les
van der Luyden, à la requête de May, eussent retardé leur départ pour assister au dîner
d’adieux donné à la comtesse Olenska.
L’après-midi du grand jour, Archer, revenu tard de son bureau, trouva les deux
belles-mères assises dans le salon de May. Mrs Archer avait fini d’écrire les menus, et
commençait à préparer des cartes portant les noms des invités. Mrs Welland présidait à la
disposition des palmiers et des grandes lampes à pied. May, dirent-elles, était occupée à
faire placer au centre de la table le buisson de roses Jacqueminot et de capillaires, et, entre
les candélabres, les coupes d’argent ajourées, remplies de bonbons. Sur le piano se
dressait un grand panier d’orchidées que Mr. van der Luyden avait envoyées de
Skuytercliff ; tout était à la hauteur d’un événement aussi considérable.
Mrs Archer parcourait attentivement la liste des invités, rayant chaque nom de sa
fine plume.
– Henry van der Luyden, Louisa, les Lovell Mingott, les Regie Chivers, Lawrence
Lefferts et Gertrude, – oui, May a eu raison de les inviter – les Selfridge Merry, Sillerton
Jackson, Vandie Newland et sa femme. Comme le temps passe ! Il me semble que c’était
hier que Vandie qu’il était ton garçon d’honneur, Newland. Et la comtesse Olenska. Voilà,
je crois que c’est tout.
Mrs Welland s’adressa à son gendre.
– On ne pourra pas dire, Newland, que vous et May, ne faites pas à Ellen un beau
départ !
– Mon Dieu, dit Mrs Archer, May veut que sa cousine puisse dire dise en Europe
que nous ne sommes pas tout à fait des barbares. Elle a raison.
– Je suis sûre qu’Ellen vous en saura gré. Elle restera sur une impression
charmante… Les veilles de départ sont généralement si tristes, continua gaiement Mrs
Welland.
Comme Archer se retournait vers la porte, sa belle-mère l’appela.
– Donnez un coup d’œil à la table, je vous en prie Newland, et veillez à ce que May
ne se fatigue pas. Mais il affecta de ne pas entendre et monta rapidement à sa bibliothèque.
L’aspect de la pièce le frappa comme un visage étranger : tout avait été mis en ordre et
préparé pour les fumeurs.
– Après tout, pensa-t-il, ce n’est pas pour longtemps ; et il passa dans son cabinet de
toilette.
The document obtained with the computer tool helped us to visualise all the
cuts made by the Revue des deux mondes. Then we compared it to the source text.115
B. Results
This is a sample of the source text in which we have crossed out the parts that
correspond to the Revue des deux mondes cuts:
115
Wharton, The Age of Innocence 330.
It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to Mrs. Welland, a great event for a young couple to
give their first big dinner.
The Newland Archers, since they had set up their household, had received a good deal of
company in an informal way. Archer was fond of having three or four friends to dine, and May
welcomed them with the beaming readiness of which her mother had set her the example in conjugal
affairs. Her husband questioned whether, if left to herself, she would ever have asked any one to the
house; but he had long given up trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which tradition
and training had moulded her. It was expected that well-off young couples in New York should do a
good deal of informal entertaining, and a Welland married to an Archer was doubly pledged to the
tradition.
But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses
from Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different affair, and not to be lightly
undertaken. As Mrs. Archer remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by
its manifold implications--since it signified either canvas-backs or terrapin, two soups, a hot and a
cold sweet, full decolletage with short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.
It was always an interesting occasion when a young pair launched their first invitations in the
third person, and their summons was seldom refused even by the seasoned and sought-after. Still, it
was admittedly a triumph that the van der Luydens, at May's request, should have stayed over in
order to be present at her farewell dinner for the Countess Olenska.
The two mothers-in-law sat in May's drawing-room on the afternoon of the great day, Mrs.
Archer writing out the menus on Tiffany's thickest gilt-edged bristol, while Mrs. Welland
superintended the placing of the palms and standard lamps.
Archer, arriving late from his office, found them still there. Mrs. Archer had turned her
attention to the name-cards for the table, and Mrs. Welland was considering the effect of bringing
forward the large gilt sofa, so that another "corner" might be created between the piano and the
window.
May, they told him, was in the dining-room inspecting the mound of Jacqueminot roses and
maidenhair in the centre of the long table, and the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork
silver baskets between the candelabra. On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr. van
der Luyden had had sent from Skuytercliff. Everything was, in short, as it should be on the approach
of so considerable an event.
Mrs. Archer ran thoughtfully over the list, checking off each name with her sharp gold pen.
"Henry van der Luyden--Louisa--the Lovell Mingotts --the Reggie Chiverses--Lawrence
Lefferts and Gertrude--(yes, I suppose May was right to have them)--the Selfridge Merrys, Sillerton
Jackson, Van Newland and his wife. (How time passes! It seems only yesterday that he was your
best man, Newland)--and Countess Olenska--yes, I think that's all. . . ."
Mrs. Welland surveyed her son-in-law affectionately. "No one can say, Newland, that you
and May are not giving Ellen a handsome send-off."
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Archer, "I understand May's wanting her cousin to tell people abroad
that we're not quite barbarians."
"I'm sure Ellen will appreciate it. She was to arrive this morning, I believe. It will make a
most charming last impression. The evening before sailing is usually so dreary," Mrs. Welland
cheerfully continued.
Archer turned toward the door, and his mother-in- law called to him: "Do go in and have a
peep at the table. And don't let May tire herself too much." But he affected not to hear, and sprang
up the stairs to his library. The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed into a polite
grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly "tidied," and prepared, by a judicious
distribution of ash-trays and cedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.
"Ah, well," he thought, "it's not for long--" and he went on to his dressing-room.
We tried to discover under what principles the abridgements had been made.
The editors sometimes adapt novels in order to make them shorter and more
readable. In that case, the novel cannot be sold under the denomination “unabridged”.
In our linguistics maîtrise research paper, we found out that the adapter who rewrites
the text usually leaves out most of the descriptions together with the cultural
references that are unknown to the reader, but he (she) keeps the plot unchanged. 116
Our analysis of the cuts made by the Revue des deux mondes in chapter 33 showed
that they did not follow these principles.
The 33rd chapter of The Age of Innocence is a key chapter: it contains the
climax of the novel, the farewell diner during which Archer and Ellen are torn from
each other by their families. At the beginning of the chapter, the reader is unsure of
what is going to happen. He (she) could guess that Archer intends to follow Ellen in
Paris, when Archer thinks: “Ah , well […] it’s not for long--” but it is only suggested
by the narrator. The reader could also guess that May might be pregnant, when her
mother Mrs. Welland tells Archer: “Don’t let May tire herself too much.” In the
Revue des deux mondes text, these two important keys are simply cut out, which
leaves the French reader completely unaware of the suspense subtly built up by the
narrator.
C. Assessment
Our analysis of the cuts made by the Revue des deux mondes showed that they
have not been made in order to remove secondary events or unimportant descriptions.
They have been made blindly, by someone who had probably only superficially read
the novel. Their only purpose was to shorten the novel for material reasons.
VI.
The Flammarion Adaptation
A. Methods
We compared the Revue des deux mondes text and the Flammarion text (the
only French translation of The Age of Innocence available nowadays,) with the help
of Microsoft Word computer tools, as explained above. Clearly, the Flammarion
116
Hugel, Véronique. “The Simplified Novel, a Case Study: The Fall of the House of Usher (Penguin
Readers)” (2004).
translation is a revision based upon the Revue des deux mondes adaptation, because
both texts have exactly the same cuts.
B. Results:
We realised that the modern French translation of The Age of Innocence is no
more than a simple revision of the Revue des deux mondes adaptation, where most of
the modifications concern the typography and the punctuation. Some obsolete words
have been removed, but the ones that we criticised in the lexicon chapter remain.
Moreover, the mistakes corrected by Edith Wharton in the American edition, that
remained in the Plon Nourrit edition, still remain in the modern editions. Besides, the
revision has replaced “les canards canvas-back” by ordinary “canards,” which erases
an important cultural element.
Au Temps de l’innocence
Type
Le Temps de l’innocence
(La Revue des deux mondes)
(Garnier Flammarion)
Les Newland Archer, depuis qu’ils
s’étaient installés chez eux, recevaient
souvent dans l’intimité. Mais un grand
dîner, avec un chef d’extra, deux valets de
pied prêtés pour la circonstance, un sorbet
à la romaine, des roses de chez
Henderson, des menus dorés sur tranche,
était une bien autre affaire. C’était le
sorbet, disait Mrs Archer, qui faisait toute
la différence ; du moment qu’il y avait un
sorbet, il fallait qu’il y eût aussi deux
services, des canards canvas-back ou du
terrapin, deux plats sucrés, un froid et un
chaud, le grand décolleté, et des invités de
marque. (p.620)
Les Newland Archer, depuis qu’ils
s’étaient installés chez eux, recevaient
souvent dans l’intimité. Mais un grand
dîner, avec un chef en extra, deux valets
de pied prêtés pour la circonstance, un
sorbet à la romaine, des roses de chez
Henderson, des menus dorés sur tranche,
était une autre affaire. C’était le sorbet,
disait Mrs Archer, qui faisait toute la
différence ; du moment qu’il y avait un
sorbet, il fallait qu’il y eût aussi deux
services, des canards ou du terrapin, deux
plats sucrés, un froid et un chaud, le grand
décolleté, et des invités de marque. (p.285)
[…] c’était un triomphe que les van der
Luyden, à la requête de May, eussent
retardé leur départ pour assister au dîner
d’adieux donné à la comtesse Olenska.
(p.620)
Dix jours s’étaient écoulés depuis que Mme
Olenska avait quitté New York. (p.621)
lexicon
omission
omission
lexicon
typography
[…] c’était un triomphe que les van der
Luyden, à la requête de May, eussent
retardé leur départ pour assister au dîner
d’adieux donné pour la comtesse Olenska.
(p.285)
Dix jours s’étaient écoulés depuis que
Mme Olenska avait quitté New York.
(p.286)
Au Temps de l’innocence
Type
Le Temps de l’innocence
(La Revue des deux mondes)
(Garnier Flammarion)
Il remarqua que cette main était dégantée,
et il se rappela comme il l’avait tenue sous
son regard, certain soir dans le petit salon
de la Vingt-troisième rue. (p.622)
typography
Il remarqua que cette main était dégantée,
et il se rappela comme il l’avait tenue sous
son regard, certain soir dans le petit salon
de la Vingt-Troisième Rue. (p.287)
omission
Son regard errait de l’une à l’autre de ces
figures placides et bien nourries, et dans
tous ces convives occupés à savourer les
canards il voyait comme une file de
conspirateurs muets, engagés dans le
même complot contre lui-même et la
femme pâle assise à sa droite. (p.288)
typography
Elle se leva de la place qu’elle occupait
auprès de Mme Olenska, et aussitôt Mrs
Van der Luyden invita celle-ci à venir
s’asseoir auprès d’elle. (p.288)
punctuation
Il vit une lueur de victoire dans les yeux de
sa femme et, pour la première fois, il
comprit qu’elle aussi le croyait l’amant de
Mme Olenska. (p.289)
Son regard errait de l’une à l’autre de ces
figures placides et bien nourries, et dans
tous ces convives occupés à savourer les
canards canvas-back il voyait comme une
file de conspirateurs muets, engagés dans
le même complot contre lui-même et la
femme pâle assise à sa droite. (p.622)
Elle se leva de la place qu’elle occupait
auprès de Mme Olenska, et aussitôt Mrs
van der Luyden invita celle-ci à venir
s’asseoir auprès d’elle. (p.623)
Il vit une lueur de victoire dans les yeux
de sa femme et, pour la première fois, il
comprit qu’elle aussi le croyait l’amant de
Mme Olenska… (p.623)
C. Assessment
Clearly, the modern translation of The Age of Innocence is not satisfactory. It
has visibly been revised without the source text, which explains that the editor
noticed neither the numerous cuts, nor the many inaccurate translations.
Conclusion:
Should The Age of Innocence be Retranslated?
The results of our assessment of the current French translation of The Age of
Innocence show that even an author as concerned with the integrity of her works as
Edith Wharton can be betrayed. First, she chose her translators among her best
friends, and she carefully supervised their work. Secondly, she systematically
corrected the proofs of her texts, even if it meant sending them over the ocean, as
shown in her large commercial correspondence. In particular, she checked very
carefully the galleys and the page-proofs of the Appleton edition of The Age of
Innocence; they bear two distinct kind of markings: the notations of the proof-reader
from the Appleton-Century Company (in green ink), and the last-minute alterations
of the text (in black ink) made by Wharton herself.117 She acted in the same way for
the French translation of the novel: her correspondence contains four letters that she
sent to René Doumic, director of La Revue des deux mondes in which she included
the corrected proofs of Au Temps de l’innocence.118 Despite all her efforts, the editor
made extensive cuts, and today, the French readers have only access to an incomplete
translation of The Age of Innocence, falsely advertised as a “texte intégral.”
Therefore, we believe that it is absolutely necessary to restore the integrity of
the text, by reintegrating the lost passages into a new edition. The question is: should
the first translation made by Mme Taillandier be reprinted as it is, or should the novel
be retranslated?
Retranslation generally concerns classics. In the past years, many works have
been retranslated with great editorial success, as for example Seamus Heaney's
Beowulf. The Irish Nobel laureate's verse translation (bilingual edition: English and
Anglo-Saxon) was on the New York Times fiction best-seller list for 10 weeks and
has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardback.119. When must a text be retranslated?
Retranslation is usually justified by the ageing of the former translations. Geoffrey
Wall considers that:
A good literary translation will probably last for thirty years. Within that time it will
begin to show its age, betray its origins. The dialogue will date first, because the
colloquial is essentially ephemeral. Then the translator’s unspoken cultural and
literary assumptions will slowly fade into view. Revealing, merely, a period piece.120
117
Cited by Joseph Candido in “Edith Wharton’s Final Alterations of The Age of Innocence.” Studies
in American Fiction 6-1 (1978):22.
118
Kept in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
119
Cited by Martin Arnold on http://www.laraza.com/print.php?nid=22887&origen=1
120
Wall, Geoffrey. “Flaubert’s Voice: Retranslating Madame Bovary” Palimpsestes 15 (2004): 93.
Our assessment of Mme Taillandier’s translation confirms Hall’s assumption: the
dialogues were the most unsatisfactory part of the translation. This remark opens
another question: were the dialogues originally unsatisfactory, or have they become
so because of the ineluctable ageing of all translations?
Contrary to Hall, Antoine Berman believes that some translations, which he
calls “les grandes traductions”, transcend their own historicity. He cites Luther’s
Bible, Schlegel’s translations of Shakespeare and Baudelaire’s translations of E. A.
Poe.121 These translations may contain some omissions, additions and even mistakes,
but they still last, because of their own literary qualities. They are the equivalent of
what we called the “mythical translations” in part I of this work. Charles Du Bos’
translation of The House of Mirth seemingly belongs to this type: its current edition
is still advertised as “l’excellente traduction de Charles Du Bos.” Contrary to Chez
les heureux du monde, Le Temps de l’innocence is presented as an anonymous
translation in the J’ai lu (paperback) edition, and the reader of the Flammarion
edition must read Diane de Margerie’s preface to learn that the translation was
written by Mme Taillandier. On the other hand, the American biographers of Edith
Wharton often mention Mme Taillandier as the author of the translation, probably
because she also wrote the memoir used by Percy Lubbock for his biography Portrait
of Edith Wharton.
The second part of our work shows that Mme Taillandier’s translation is not
altogether satisfactory according to today’s standards, but we cannot overlook the
fact that Edith Wharton approved it, and that she even collaborated on it.
Nevertheless, the purpose of the 1920 translation was essentially the story itself,
which Mme Taillandier faithfully translated, with neither omission, nor addition.
Today, the novel is praised for its “old New York” atmosphere and for its cultural
value, which the 1920 translation does not faithfully reproduce. Was Wharton
conscious of the exceptional cultural and historical value of her novels? She had
started to write novels with New York as a background after her friend Henry James
had admonished her to “Do New York!”122 In her memoir, she remembers that when
121
Cited in Gambier, Yves. “La retraduction, retour et détour.” Meta XXXIX, 3, (1994): 415.
122
Henry James, Letter to Edith Wharton, 17th August, 1902, in Henry James and Edith Wharton:
Letters 1900-1915, ed., Lyall H. Powers (London, 1990) 34.
her friend Walter Berry had finished reading the chapters of The Age of Innocence he
said: “Yes; it’s good. but of course you and I are the only people left who can
remember New York and Newport as they were then, and nobody else will be
interested.”123 She writes that she had secretly agreed with him as to the chances of
the book’s success. This shows that she was not aware of the cultural value of The
Age of Innocence, and it might explains why she did not insist on having the cultural
references of her novel scrupulously translated.
Still, Mme Taillandier’s translation has a unique flavour of the past, which
might be difficult to recreate by a modern translator. For all those reasons, we believe
that The Age of Innocence should not be retranslated ab nihilo, but only revised,
using Mme Taillandier’s translation as a basis. The revision should restore all the
cultural and historical richness of the original, and remove all the translator’s
additions, in order to offer to the French readers a version that will be entitled to call
itself “texte intégral.”
123
Wharton, A Backward Glance 369.
Bibliography
I.
General Bibliography
 Books
Grellet, Françoise. A Handbook of Literary Terms. Paris: Hachette Supérieur, 1996.
 Dictionaries
Le Petit Larousse Illustré. Paris: Larousse Bordas, 1998.
Oxford Advanced Learners. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Petit Larousse Illustré. Paris: Larousse, 1924.
 World Wide Web Sites
Altavista Search engine: <http://fr.altavista.com/>
Centre d’Etudes des Littératures Anciennes et Modernes (Université de HauteBretagne): <http://www.uhb.fr/labos/celam/albalat/Chapitre%203.doc>
Google Search engine: <http://www.google.fr>
Gutenberg website: <http://www.gutenberg.net/>
Merriam Webster Online: <http://www.m-w.com/>
II.
Translation Bibliography
 Books
Baker, Mona. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge,
1998.
Bassnett S. and Lefevere A. Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter,
1990.
Berman, Antoine. L’Epreuve de l’étranger. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.
Berman, Antoine.
La Traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain.
Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1999.
Berman, Antoine.
Pour une critique des traductions : John Donne.
Paris:
Gallimard, 1995.
Dancette, Jeanne. Parcours de traduction. Etude expérimentale du processus de
compréhension. Lille : Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1995.
Israël, Fortunato. Identité, altérité, équivalence ? La traduction comme relation.
Paris: Minard, 2002.
Nida, E.A. and Taber C. R. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: Brill,
1969.
Oustinoff, Michaël. Bilinguisme d’écriture et auto-traduction Julien Green, Samuel
Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov. Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003.
Peeters, Jean. La médiation de l’étranger. Une sociolinguistique de la traduction.
Arras: Artois Presses Université, 1999.
Reiss, Katharina. Translation Criticism–The Potentials & Limitations. Categories
and Criteria for Translation Quality Assessment.
Manchester: St. Jerome
Publishing, 2000.
Sardin-Damestoy, Pascale.
Samuel Beckett auto-traducteur ou l’art de
l’«empêchement». Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2002.
Steiner, Georges.
After Babel; Aspects of Language and Translation.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1975.
Toury, Gideon. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute
for poetics and semiotics, 1980.
Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference.
London : Routledge, 1998.
Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. London:
Routledge, 1995.
 Articles
Ballard, Michel. “La traduction du nom propre comme négociation.” Palimpsestes
11 (1998): 199-223.
Cordonnier, Jean-Louis. “Aspects culturels de la traduction : quelques notions clés.”
Meta XLVII, 1 (2002).
Gambier, Yves. “La retraduction, retour et détour.” Meta XXXIX, 3, 1994: 413-417.
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. “Ethos, éthique et traduction : vers une communauté de destin
dans les cultures.” TTR 14, 2 (2001): 31-47.
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. “Les enjeux de la traduction dans le champ littéraire : le
roman américain traduit dans l’espace culturel français au lendemain de la
seconde guerre mondiale.” Palimpsestes 11 (1998): 95-106.
Hall, Geoffrey. “Flaubert’s Voice : Retranslating Madame Bovary.” Palimpsestes
15 (2004): 93-98.
Hugel, Véronique. “The Simplified Novel, a Case Study: The Fall of the House of
Usher (Penguin Readers)” Research paper on corpus linguistics (maîtrise).
Université de Nancy 2, (2004).
Lederer, Marianne.
“Traduire le culturel : la problématique de l’explicitation.”
Palimpsestes 11 (1998): 161-171.
Mezei, Kathy.
“Translation: The Relationship Between Writer and Translator.”
Meta XXXIV, 2 (1989): 209-224.
Muller, Marie Sylvine. “Langue familière, parler populaire, particularisme régional
dans Saturday Night and Sunday Morning d’Alan Sillitoe et sa traduction
française.” Palimpsestes 10 (1997) 49-75.
Muller, Sylvine. “Le destin de l'oralité dickensienne dans les retraductions de Great
Expectations.” Palimpsestes 15 (2003): 69-92.
Pedro, Raquel (de.) “The Translatability of Texts: A Historical Overview.” Meta,
XLIV, 4, (1999)
Pergnier, Maurice. “Comment dénaturer une traduction.” Meta XXXV, 1 (1990):
219-225.
Richard, Jean-Pierre. “Traduire l’ignorance culturelle.” Palimpsestes 11 (1998):
151-160.
Sanders, Carol. “‘Pourquoi qu’on dit des choses et pas d’autres ?’ Translating
Queneau’s français parlé in Zazie dans le métro and Le Chiendent.”
Palimpsestes 10 (1997): 41-48.
Wall, Geoffrey. “Flaubert's Voice: Retranslating Madame Bovary.” Palimpsestes 15
(2003): 93-98.
Canadian Association for Translation Studies: <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/>
Palimpsestes: <http://www.palimpsestes.com/>
Translation Journal: <http://accurapid.com/journal/>
Why the classics are retranslated, by Martin Arnold:
<http://www.laraza.com/print.php?nid=22887&origen=1>
III.
Edith Wharton Bibliography
A. Works by Edith Wharton
 Books
A Backward Glance. New York: Appleton-Century, 1934. Rpt. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1998.
Au Temps de l’innocence. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1921.
Chez les Heureux du monde. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1908.
French Ways and their Meaning. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1919. Rpt.
Lennox, Mass.: Edith Wharton Restoration and Lee, Mass.: Berkshire House
Publishers, 1997.
Le Temps de l’innocence, Préface, bibliographie, chronologie par Diane de
Margerie. Paris: Flammarion GF, 1987.
Le Temps de l’innocence. Paris: J’ai lu, 1987.
Le Temps de l’innocence. Paris: Flammarion, 1985.
Les Metteurs en scène, Postface de Claudine Lesage. Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2001.
The Age of Innocence. New York: Appleton, 1920. Rpt. London: Penguin Popular
Classics, 1996.
 Articles
“Au Temps de l’innocence”. Paris: La Revue des deux Mondes, November 15th,
1920: 225-266; December 1st, 1920: 490-520; December 15th, 1920: 774-808;
January 1st, 1921: 106-147; January 15th, 1921: 384-424; February 1st, 1921:
603-636.
“Les Metteurs en scène”. Paris: La Revue des deux Mondes, October 1st, 1908: 692708.
“Souvenirs du Bourget d'Outre-Mer”. Paris: La Revue Hebdomadaire, June 20th,
1936: 266-286.
“Translator’s Note to The Joy of Living” in Wegener, Frederik. The Uncollected
Critical Writings. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996: 235.
 Correspondence
Correspondence in the Edith Wharton Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Lettres à l’ami français, Correspondance établie et présentée par Claudine Lesage.
Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2001.
The Letters of Edith Wharton. ed. R[ichard] W[arrington] B[aldwin] Lewis and
Nancy Lewis. New York: Scribner’s 1988.
B. Critical Works on Edith Wharton
 Books
Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1994.
Bird Wright, Sarah. Edith Wharton A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 1998.
Bourget, Paul. Préface. Chez les Heureux du monde. Par Edith Wharton. Paris:
Plon Nourrit & Cie, 1908.
Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton’s Inner Circle. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1994.
Lesage, Claudine. Postface. Les Metteurs en scène. By Edith Wharton. Paris:
Michel Houdiard, 2001.
Lesage, Claudine, ed.
Edith Wharton Lettres à l’ami français.
Paris: Michel
Houdiard, 2001.
Lewis, R[ichard] W[arrington] B[aldwin]. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1975. Rpt. New York: Fromm International
Publishing Corporation, 1985.
Lewis, R[ichard] W[arrington] B[aldwin] and Nancy Lewis, eds. The Letters of Edith
Wharton. New York: Scribner’s:1988.
Lubbock, Percy. Portrait of Edith Wharton. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1947.
Margerie, Diane (de). Edith Wharton, lecture d’une vie. Paris: Flammarion, 2000.
Margerie, Diane (de). Préface. Le Temps de l’innocence. By Edith Wharton. Paris:
Flammarion, 1987.
Powers, Lyall H., ed. Henry James and Edith Wharton. Letters: 1900-1915. New
York: Scribner's, 1990.
Wegener, Frederik.
The Uncollected Critical Writings.
University Press, 1996.
Princeton: Princeton
 Articles
“La perversité des mères.” Le Monde (31 May 1991) Available at
<http://www.alapage.com/mx/?tp=F&type=1&l_isbn=2715217064&donnee_a
ppel=GOOGL> (5 Dec. 2004).
Candido, Joseph. “Edith Wharton’s Final Alterations of The Age of Innocence.”
Studies in American Fiction 6-1 (1978): 21-31.
Foata, Anne. “Edith Wharton and the Faubourg Saint-Germain: the diary of the
Abbé Mugnier.” Available at
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Anne+Foata%22> (5
Dec. 2004).
 Manuscripts
Taillandier (Saint René), Madeleine. Typed reminiscences about Edith Wharton
gathered by Percy Lubbock for his Portrait of Edith Wharton (1946). Private
collection of Ms Noemi Hepp, granddaughter of Madame Taillandier.
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin:
<http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/wharton.html>
The Edith Wharton Collection at Indiana University:
<http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/whartoninv.html>
The Edith Wharton Collection at Yale University (Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript
Library):
<http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html>
The Edith Wharton Society: <http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org>
The Mount Estate: <http://www.edithwharton.org/>
C. Other Works
 Books
Bourget, Paul. Outre-mer. (2 volumes) Paris: Ed. Lemerre, 1895.
Du Bos, Charles. Journal 1920–1925. Nouvelle édition établie par Louis Mouton.
Paris: Buchet - Chastel, 2003.
Gide, André. Les Caves du Vatican. Paris: Gallimard, 1922.
Mayran, Camille (penname of Marianne Taillandier.) Dame en noir. Paris: Bernard
Grasset, 1937.
Taillandier (Saint René), Madeleine. La Princesse des Ursins. Paris: Hachette,
1926.
Taillandier (Saint René), Madeleine.
Bourget. Paris: Hachette, 1920.
Madame de Maintenon, Préface de Paul
Appendices
Appendix 1
The French Publications of Wharton's Works
12
Number of Publications
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 8 9 0 - 1 8 9 9 1 9 0 0 -1 9 0 9
1 9 1 0 - 1 9 1 9 1 9 2 0 - 1 9 2 9 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 9 1 9 4 0 - 1 9 4 9 1 9 5 0 - 1 9 5 9 1 9 60 - 1 9 6 9 1 9 7 0 - 1 9 7 9 1 9 8 0 - 1 9 8 9 1 9 9 0 - 1 9 9 9 20 0 0 - 2 00 5
Years
Original name
French name
Year of French
House of Mirth (The)
(Various short stories)
Ethan Frome
Fighting France: From Dunquerque to
Chez les heureux du monde
Metteurs en scène (Les)
Sous la neige
Voyage au front de Dunquerque à
publication
1906
1909
1912
1916
Belfort
Summer
Age of Innocence (The)
Reef (The)
A Son at the Front
Mother's Recompense (The)
Children (The)
Custom of the Country (The)
Ethan Frome (retranslation)
Madame de Treymes
Italian Villas and their Gardens
Reef (The) (retranslation)
Belfort
Plein été
Temps de l'innocence (Au)
Récif (Le)
Fils au front (Un)
Récompense d'une mère (La) or Le Bilan
Leurs Enfants
Beaux mariages (Les)
Ethan Frome
Madame de Treymes
Villas et jardins d'Italie
Ecueil (L')
Fièvre Romaine
1918
1920
1922
1924
1927
1929
1964
1969
1986
1986
1986
1988
Original name
French name
Old New York
Fruit of the Tree (The)
Buccaneers (The)
Summer (retranslation)
Backward Glance (A)
Hudson River Bracketed
In Morocco
Gods Arrive (The)
French Ways and Their Meaning
Vieux New York
Triomphe de la nuit (Le)
Fruit de l'arbre (Le)
Grain de grenade
Fils et autres nouvelles (Le)
Boucannières (Les)
Eté
Chemins parcourus (Les)
Sur les rives de l'Hudson
Voyage au Maroc
Dieux arrivent (Les)
Moeurs françaises et comment
Twilight Sleep
Glimpses of the Moon (The)
Xingu
(Correspondence)
Fast and Loose
Letters (The)
A Son at the Front (retranslation)
comprendre (Les)
New-Yorkaises (Les)
Splendeur des Lansing (La)
Xingu
Lettres à l'ami français
Affaire de charme (Une)
Libre et légère
Lettres (Les)
Entremetteurs et autres nouvelles (Les)
Fils sur le front (Un)
Preuve d'amour
Year of French
les
publication
1989
1989
1990
1990
1991
1994
1994
1995
1996
1996
1999
1999
2000
2000
2000
2001
2002
2003
2003
2004
2004
2005
Appendix 2
Chapter
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Source text (Penguin)
Title
At the opera
Archer meets Madame Olenska
The Beauforts' ball
Engagement visits
Diner with the Archers
New York rejects Ellen
The Van der Luydens
Diner with the Van der Luydens
Newland visits Ellen
Ellen's misbehaviour
Ellen should not divorce
At Ellen's home
At the theatre
Discussion with Ned Winsett
Archer visits Ellen at Skuytercliff
Archer at St. Augustine
Archer visits Mrs Manson Mingott
Archer meets Medora
The wedding
In London
Archery at the Beauforts'
Holiday at Newport
In Boston
A boat trip
The secretary
Thanksgiving
Beaufort's ruin
Catherine's stroke
Ellen returns
Newland needs more air
Secret meetings
Back to the opera
Farewell dinner
Twenty years later
Target text (J'ai lu)
Page
1
9
16
24
30
40
49
56
65
79
90
99
112
120
128
140
151
163
179
192
205
220
230
241
248
258
271
279
287
295
306
320
330
347
Title
A l'opéra
Rencontre à l'opéra
Bal chez Beaufort
Visites de fiançailles
Dîner chez Mrs Archer
New York snobe Ellen
Chez Van der Luyden
Dîner chez Van der Luyden
Visite chez Ellen
Ellen s'est mal conduite
Ellen ne doit pas divorcer
Chez Ellen
Au théâtre
Rencontre avec Ned Winsett
Archer va voir Ellen à Skuytercliff
Archer à Saint Augustin
Archer chez Mrs Manson Mingott
Archer rencontre Medora
Mariage
A Londres
Tir à l'arc chez Beaufort
Vacances à Newport
A Boston
Balade en bateau
Le secrétaire
Thanksgiving
Ruine de Beaufort
Catherine est malade
Ellen revient
Archer étouffe
Rencontres secrètes
A l'opéra en robe de mariée
Dîner d'adieux
Vingt ans après
Page
5
13
20
28
35
46
54
62
70
83
94
102
115
122
129
139
149
159
173
184
194
206
213
221
227
235
245
250
255
263
270
278
286
294

The French Translation of The Age of Innocence

Transcription

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