Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article looks at the translation and reception in France of the contemporary British author Jonathan Coe. Coe’s work is four times more popular in France than in the United Kingdom and is particularly enjoyed for its treatment of contemporary social and political issues in a largely realist setting. Coe’s self-confessed writing project is to represent the plurality of British society as faithfully as possible. Through an analysis of the transposition of social class in the French translations of his novels, this article will reveal that a particular understanding of Britishness is created, which through use of standardisation and domestication of British specificity, in fact dilutes the markers of British social class. The consequences of this are both social, in its impact on French understanding of Britain, and cultural, in its impact on the consumption of the contemporary British novel in France.
Highlights
British fiction is hugely popular in France today and celebrated for its storytelling, its humour, and its treatment of the contemporary social and political world, all aspects which are commonly viewed to be in short supply in the contemporary French novel
Dans l'autre, chacun voit bien, le plus souvent, qu'il ne lui appartient pas et qu’il n'est pas concerné par lui. (2006) If French readers are turning to the British novel for their dose of social and political realism, and a snapshot of ‘ordinary people’ in Britain, how does the filter of French translation transpose that Britain?
The ubiquity and complexity of social class in Britain clearly presents a challenge in translation
Summary
Jonathan Coe came to the attention of the French reading public on the publication of What a Carve Up!, published in France as Testament à l’anglaise, in 1995. Coe already had three published novels to his name: An Accidental Woman (1987), A Touch of Love (1989) and The Dwarves of Death (1990): brief, sometimes funny, sometimes crushingly sad studies of the lives of young British people trying to make their way in a world which seems stubbornly turned against them. Coe is the receiver of two prestigious French literary prizes: the Prix Médicis Etranger in 1998 and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in 1996,4 as well as a holder of the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His sales figures are four times higher in France than in the UK (2010) and he has been described variously in the French press as: ‘Le plus brilliant romancier anglais’ (Amette, 2003); a ‘phénomène de la littérature anglaise’ (Simon); ‘l'un des plus brillants représentants de la littérature britannique’ (Lyon Plus); and ‘la valeur montante du roman anglais, le golden boy, le surdoué de la bande’ (Amette, 2006)
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