Translating class in Jonathan Coe

ABSTRACT

This 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Jonathan Coe
• translation
• contemporary British novel
• French literary scene
• class
• Britishness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Du-monde-entier, accessed 2 June 2015.

2. See bibliography for details.

3. Jonathan Coe’s novels in chronological order, followed by their translations, all published by Penguin in the United Kingdom and Gallimard in France: An Accidental Woman (1987), La femme de hasard (Coe 2006a); A Touch of Love (1989), Une touche d’amour (2002); The Dwarves of Death (1990), Les nains de la mort (Coe 2001b); What a Carve Up! (1994), Testament à l’anglaise (1995); The House of Sleep (1997), La Maison du sommeil (1998); The Rotters’ Club (Coe 2001a), Bienvenue au club (2002); The Closed Circle (Coe 2004a), Le Cercle fermé (Coe 2006b); The Rain before it Falls (2007), La pluie avant qu’elle tombe (2008); The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (Coe 2010a), La vie privée de Monsieur Sim (Coe 2011); Expo 58 (Coe 2013g), Expo 58 (Coe 2014) and Number Eleven (Coe 2015).

4. The first for The House of Sleep, published in France in as La Maison du Sommeil (Gallimard, 1998), and the second for What a Carve Up!, published in France as Testament à l’Anglaise (Coe 1995).

5. In quotations the novels shall from now on be referred to in abbreviation as A Touch of Love (TL); Une Touche d’amour (TA); The Dwarves of Death (DD); Les Nains de la mort (NM); What a Carve Up! (WCU); Testament à l’anglaise (TA); The House of Sleep (HS); La Maison du sommeil (MDS); The Rotters’ Club (RC); Bienvenue au club (BC); The Closed Circle (CC); Le Cercle fermé (CF); The Rain before it Falls (Rain); La Pluie avant qu’elle tombe (Pluie); The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (MS); La Vie très privée de M. Sim (MS); Expo 58 (E58).

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Notes on contributors

Helena Chadderton

Dr Helena Chadderton is Lecturer in French at the University of Hull. Her monograph Marie Darrieussecq’s Textual Worlds: Self, Society, Language came out with Peter Lang’s Modern French Identities series in 2012. She works on engagement in the contemporary French novel and is currently co-editing with Angela Kimyongür a book entitled Engagement in 21st Century French & Francophone Culture: Countering Crises, to be published with UWP in 2017. Her second current project is on the transnational exchange (France–UK) of contemporary writers.