Digging down to Bedrock

Abstract

Adopting a largely autoethnographical approach, this study seeks to explore some of the challenges posed by cultural specificity in the translation of literary works by Indigenous authors, focusing specifically on New Zealand writer Patricia Grace. Examples are drawn from personal experience in co-translating her novels into French, and thereby seeking to meet the needs of readers in metropolitan France as well as the francophone Pacific. The study starts with the concept that literary translation is a highly subjective activity, and that decisions are made on the basis of an understanding of ways in which layers of cultural references may be analysed in order to determine the best choices. The analysis concludes, however, that in Grace’s work these “layers” overlap or are woven tightly together in a manner that reflects an essentially Māori worldview, in which wholeness and connectedness are paramount. Translation decisions must therefore be made with an awareness of that wholeness. Examining the detailed “texture” of this process can thus be highly informative not only of the translator’s individual habitus, but also of the author’s.