Guéhenno in Gehenna. The English and German Translations of La nausée

Abstract

Research on Sartre’s international transfer and reception must take into account the fact that his works were subject to all sorts of adaptation. In the case of La nausee, English and German translations were produced only in 1949. Both translations show certain marks of this epoch, for instance, in the reluctance to use colloquial or even vulgar words and phrases. The German version in particular reveals difficulties with philosophical terminology, which is partly due to the wish not to swamp audiences with foreign vocabulary. Both the English and American publishers of the novel were dedicated to Modernism and the literary avant-garde; at the same time they were trying to reach a wider reading public. Thus, the early translators Heinrich Wallfisch and—to a lesser degree—Lloyd Alexander show a bias toward “nationalising” the text by exchanging foreign names, book titles, tramway stations, and so on with equivalents taken from their own cultures. Readers had to wait until 1965 for a reliable and stylistically adequate English version, and until 1981 for a German translation worthy of that name. Contrary to the early translators, Robert Baldick and Uli Aumuller stand for expertise and professional translation. What makes the study of the translations interesting (apart from questions of evaluation, the reconstruction of the role of mediators, and historical contexts) is the comparison of the use of ambiguous figures of speech and philosophical terms that are open to interpretation and reveal the vast potential of meaning in a stylistically complex text such as La nausee.