Foreign Voices and the Troubles: Northern Irish Fiction in French, German and Spanish Translation

Abstract

This article focuses on the translations of two well-known Troubles novels, Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street and Colin Bateman’s Divorcing Jack. Emerging from and reflecting the violent conflict which has blighted Northern Ireland, these books are very difficult to translate. The translators not only face the challenge of transposing local voices and concepts into a different cultural environment, they also have to deal with the particularly dark Northern Irish humour generated by such conflict. Not every translator, of course, has the opportunity to experience Northern Irish society at first hand, and a lack of local knowledge is often evident in their work. Dwelling on a number of examples, I set out to analyse the choices made by the different translators and explain the reasons why they might have opted for a specific translation in order to carry a specific local discourse across.