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ABSTRACT
The tensions between the strange (foreign) and the familiar (domestic), and the issue of finding a balance between them, are well known to translators. Taking crime fiction as an exemplary field, this study explores translation decisions as part of a continuum alongside authorial and even editorial strategies for the mediation of ‘national’ (understood as including local and/or regional) cultures. Taking examples from Icelandic and French crime writing, this analysis focuses on the role played by food in representing nations, and explores some of the differences between well- and lesser-known cuisines in respect of representing nations both in the original and in translation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Note that the present study deals only with translations from Icelandic and French into English.
2. For example, both June Wright and Gabrielle Lord for the former title, and Peter Corris for the latter. ‘A true queen of Swedish crime’: cover description by Mons Kallentoft, referring to Kristina Ohlsson (The Disappeared, 2013).
3. Curry is also associated with British culture, where it becomes a marker of the colonial past and immigrant populations (Ashley Citation2004, esp. 78–85).
4. It could be argued here, as the analysis that follows will show, that French food casts a much wider net, epitomising the value of classic cuisine in ways that other national food practices cannot match.
5. My choice here of a source language and culture of which I have almost no knowledge is deliberate, and designed to provide a contrast with the French examples that will follow. I should add, however, that I read the translations from Icelandic with a translator’s eye, looking for possible interventions (glosses, explanations) and noting the retention of any Icelandic terms, whether italicised or not.
6. We should not forget that for both the first novel in the series, Jar City (Indriđason 2000) and Kormákur’s film based on it (2006), the Icelandic takeaway dish, boiled sheep’s head (svið), is invariably commented on by reviewers.
7. Possibly an indirect reference to the Icelandic custom of serving a buffet of various cured meats (Þorramatur) through midwinter.
8. As indicated, lack of knowledge of the source language prevents identifying this as a translator’s in-text gloss or a term present in the original. Of all the food and drink items mentioned, only brennivín and hardfiskur are retained in (italicised) Icelandic.
9. Note that no italics are used here. The ‘cured shark’ (hákarl) is prepared by a long process of underground fermentation and drying, which makes the meat non-toxic to humans but more than a little malodorous.
10. It is clear from the description that this is a svartfugl or auk’s egg.
11. Although minimal information is given, these are likely to be ástarpungar, ‘love ball donuts’, another traditional Icelandic food.
12. Cronin’s analysis does not deal with other aspects of food, such as the affective dimension, a question to which we shall return.
13. Whether an author might already have in mind the foreign readership of an as yet non-existent translation is a moot point (see below).
14. This linguistic internationalism does not mean that foreign customers are adepts of the cuisine itself. Knowing is different from experiencing: a group of English tourists ‘delighted if somewhat overwhelmed by the assault on their tastebuds’ (2011 222) and Ingrid’s reactions to her first taste of calvados (74–75) illustrate the outsider effect already noted. It is perhaps worth noticing, too, that the reverse transfer of a term (English to French) may not have the same effect: Maigret’s ‘liver sandwich’ (Simenon Citation1940, 60) is noticeably less appealing than the ‘sandwich au foie gras’ that it scarcely resembles.
15. See Abrahamsen (Citation2008), particularly the readers’ comments that follow the main article.
16. See Peabody (Citation2016) for revelations about one publisher’s intervention in the translation process: ‘I’m aware that readers of international fiction often appreciate being transported to another country, to get a taste of the people, the geography, the culture, the subtle nuances that make a place and its inhabitants unique. So for that reason, I often ask authors to add more. Describe the snow, describe the sea, describe how one character dresses for the cold. What are they eating when they sit down for lunch? Put yourself in the position of a reader who has never been to your country, and give them atmosphere’ (Peabody Citation2016, emphases in the original). My thanks to Stewart King for bringing this blog to my attention.
17. There are even indications that contemporary translation practice may be moving away from selective retention of source language terms: The ‘crème au citron’ that features in a 1940 translation of The Madman of Bergerac (25) is in Ros Schwartz’s Citation2015 version for Penguin ‘lemon curd’ (24).
18. Emily Apter’s discussion of the untranslatable is based on loftier concepts drawn from philosophical texts (Citation2013, 3–4), but the affective untranslatable is much more widespread.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jean Anderson
Jean Anderson is Associate Professor of French at Victoria University of Wellington, where she founded the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation in 2007. Her most recent publications are in French and francophone contemporary and late nineteenth-century women’s writing, crime fiction, literary translation and television crime series. She has co-edited with Carolina Miranda and Barbara Pezzotti The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations (Continuum, 2012) and Serial Crime Fiction: Dying for More (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She has translated or co-translated the work of several Pacific writers, including Chantal Spitz and Moetai Brotherson (Tahiti) and Patricia Grace (New Zealand).