Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be

By Ryan Bloom

For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” Nitty-gritty tense issues aside, the first sentence of “The Stranger” is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?

Stuart Gilbert, a British scholar and a friend of James Joyce, was the first person to attempt Camus’s “L’Étranger” in English. In 1946, Gilbert translated the book’s title as “The Outsider” and rendered the first line as “Mother died today.” Simple, succinct, and incorrect.

In 1982, both Joseph Laredo and Kate Griffith produced new translations of “L’Étranger,” each opting for Gilbert’s revised title, “The Stranger,” but preserving his first line. “Mother died today” remained, and it wasn’t until 1988 that the line saw a single word changed. It was then that American translator and poet Matthew Ward reverted “Mother” back to Maman. One word? What’s the big deal? A large part of how we view and – alongside the novel’s court—ultimately judge Meursault lies in our perception of his relationship with his mother. We condemn or set him free based not on the crime he commits but on our assessment of him as a person. Does he love his mother? Or is he cold toward her, uncaring, even?

First impressions matter, and, for forty-two years, the way that American readers were introduced to Meursault was through the detached formality of his statement: “Mother died today.” There is little warmth, little bond or closeness or love in “Mother,” which is a static, archetypal term, not the sort of thing we use for a living, breathing being with whom we have close relations. To do so would be like calling the family dog “Dog” or a husband “Husband.” The word forces us to see Meursault as distant from the woman who bore him.

What if the opening line had read, “Mommy died today”? How would we have seen Meursault then? Likely, our first impression would have been of a child speaking. Rather than being put off, we would have felt pity or sympathy. But this, too, would have presented an inaccurate view of Meursault. The truth is that neither of these translations – “Mother” or “Mommy” – ring true to the original. The French word maman hangs somewhere between the two extremes: it’s neither the cold and distant “mother” nor the overly childlike “mommy.” In English, “mom” might seem the closest fit for Camus’s sentence, but there’s still something off-putting and abrupt about the single-syllable word; the two-syllable maman has a touch of softness and warmth that is lost with “mom.”

So how is the English-language translator to avoid unnecessarily influencing the reader? It seems that Matthew Ward, the novel’s most recent translator, did the only logical thing: nothing. He left Camus’s word untouched, rendering the famous first line, “Maman died today.” It could be said that Ward introduces a new problem: now, right from the start, the American reader is faced with a foreign term, with a confusion not previously present. Ward’s translation is clever, though, and three reasons demonstrate why his is the best solution.

So if Matthew Ward finally corrected the mother problem, what exactly has he, and the other translators, gotten wrong? Writing of “The Stranger” ’s first line in the Guardian, Guy Dammann says, “Some openers are so prescient that they seem to burn a hole through the rest of the book, the semantic resonance recurring with the persistence of the first theme in Beethoven’s fifth symphony.”

The linguistic fluency of any good translator tells them that, syntactically, “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte,” is not the most fluid English sentence. So rather than the more literal translation, “Today, Mother has died,” we get, “Mother died today,” which is the smoother, more natural rendering. But the question is: In changing the sentence’s syntax, are we also changing its logic, its “mystical” deeper meaning?

The answer is a resounding oui!

Rendering the line as “Mother died today” completely neglects a specific ordering of ideas that offer insight into Meursault’s inner psyche. Throughout the course of the novel, the reader comes to see that Meursault is a character who, first and foremost, lives for the moment. He does not consciously dwell on the past; he does not worry about the future. What matters is today. The single most important factor of his being is right now.

The ordering of words in Camus’s first sentence is no accident: today is interrupted by Maman’s death. The sentence, the one we have yet to see correctly rendered in an English translation of “L’Étranger,” should read: “Today, Maman died.”

 

Задания

1. Проанализируйте и сравните несколько вариантов перевода. В каких из них средства перевода подобраны наилучшим образом?

2. Приходилось ли вам при переводе тех или иных элементов текста обращаться к книге А. Камю в её русском переводе?

 

Коль скоро высказывание может выражать не одно действие, а несколько (высказывание может быть полипредикативным), то действия эти (включая сюда, разумеется, состояние, явления и т.п.) в рамках высказывания получают некоторое временнóе соотношение. То есть эти действия могут быть слиты воедино (он вошёл, глядя на меня) или разделены, хотя будут относиться к одному временному промежутку (он вошёл и посмотрел на меня). В первом случая одно действие выступает как бы фоном для другого; такие же отношения имеют место и в рамках нескольких высказываний, но всякий раз эти действия относятся к одному периоду времени. Речь идёт, не о реальных действиях в мире, а об их представленности в языковых элементах высказывания [ТФГ 2011: 235–236].

Такие отношения выделяются в особую семантико-синтаксическую категорию – таксис, средства выражения которой не ограничиваются только, скажем, сложноподчинёнными конструкциями или конструкциями с причастием и деепричастием. Подумайте, какие ещё средства используются для выражения таксиса в русском языке и какие средства английского языка могут им соответствовать.

Таксис как соотношение нескольких действий никогда не существует отдельно, он всегда выражается совместно с другими семантическими категориями, составляя с ними смысл высказывания: с модальностью, условием, уступкой и т.п.

 

Упражнение 3. Выполните устный последовательный перевод или перевод с листа данных отрывков. Обратите внимание на то, какими средствами выражаются таксисные отношения при их наличии в высказываниях. Сравните несколько вариантов перевода.

 

(1) – Господи, ну как можно быть такой безмозглой! – в сердцах воскликнул Павел, – Ты и дня не протянешь без его помощи! – Но в то же время Павел почувствовал себя виноватым и через минуту попросил прощения за свои слова.

 

(2) Наша делегация направилась в Нью-Йорк на встречу с партнёрами, поставив перед собой цель продлить контракт на более выгодных для нас условиях, и твоя задача – не дать этой сделке сорваться.

 

(3) He wanted to convince everyone that he is right and only his opinion has the right to exist. That was completely out of the blue, she started to cry, to shout, and to blame him in all deathful sins. Later, he would understand – she acted on the spur of the moment, but it would be later… now let’s come back to that sunny winter morning on the 21 of February. “I never could understand her” – he concluded, but at the same time he felt guilty and offered an apology for his words.

 

(4) Он рассказал мне все детали, добавив, что потому торопился со мной связаться, чтобы предупредить об изменении даты командировки. Я понимал, что это очень серьёзная сделка, и чтобы всё прошло, как по маслу, нужно приложить немало усилий и прекрасно разбираться в данной сфере. Я внимательно выслушал его и теперь знаю, как вести себя на этой встрече.

 

(5) Меня удивили её выводы, я ей возражала – сказала, что совсем не разделяю её мнения. На что она никак не отреагировала, продолжала и дальше отстаивать свою точку зрения, говорить на повышенных тонах, и в конце концов не приняла никаких возражений и не ответила толком на вопросы.

 

(6) For his 12-hour shift he earns about $4, but even this tiny income is desperately needed. His father was killed when a bomb hit their house in Homs, leaving his mother paralyzed. His 15-year-old sister has been married off to a 50-year-old Syrian man, because his mother thinks this is the best chance she has of a normal life.

 

(7) Our delegation went to New York for meeting with our partners, setting a goal of enlarging our contract on more convenient conditions for us. At the very beginning I had a jaundiced view about this meeting, but still agreed to go. During the meeting, my boss said that our salaries are quite high and it would be absolutely comfortable for us to work with them for an idea, so to say. My boss always seems to be moving the goalposts, which makes it very difficult to know what he really wants.

 

(8) I once had a boss who was independently rich, and when I asked him for a raise, he turned me down, adding that he, too, had forsaken a raise that year. A surge of anger, resentment and sheer hatred welled up in me, and were it not that I needed the job, I would have gone for his throat. His unthinking and unthinkable attempt to make common cause with me brought to mind Anatole France’s observation that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

 

(9) Mindfulness meditation, the ancient and flourishing practice that increases awareness of random thoughts and redirects attention to the present moment, has been used to manage stress, depression and even chronic pain. Researchers in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have been studying the relationship between mindfulness and the tendency to let our minds drift away on “task-unrelated thoughts,” sought to find out. The higher the working memory, or an individual’s ability to keep in mind chunks of information and also use them, the better students tend to perform on reading comprehension tests.

 

(10) Во второй главе книги рассмотрены основные модели чтения для буквенных и иероглифических языков, сделаны некоторые выводы как в методологическом, так и в лингвистическом плане, и, в частности, определено общее и специфическое в рассмотренных моделях. К сожалению, это единственная часть данной работы, заслуживающая внимания, так как остальной материал требует дополнений и более глубокой проработки.

 

(11) In a recent paper, Heimann used Electroencephalography (EEG) to deepen our understanding of the role of visuo-motor cortices in handwriting categorization. In their experiment, Heimann asked individuals to observe Roman letters (belonging to the alphabet of the participant’s mother language), Chinese (unfamiliar) characters, and scribbles (judged by the participants as not being linguistic symbols).

 

(12) Jacob knew that if he did not pass the test twice, he would have to start over and repeat the entire gruelling curriculum. If he then failed the firearms test again, he would be dismissed from the academy altogether, quashing perhaps his best shot at an unlikely ascension from war-ravaged Sudan into the American middle class.

 

(13) He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945.

 

(14) Хоть он и убеждал Синтию миллион раз в том, что его с его бывшей женой больше ничего не связывает, было заметно, что, развернув письмо от Сары, он прочёл его несколько раз, улыбаясь и иногда глубоко вздыхая. Это заставило Синтию сгорать от ревности, она выбежала из комнаты, едва сдерживая слёзы.

 

 

УРОК ДВАДЦАТЬ ПЯТЫЙ

 

Продолжим, как и в предыдущем уроке, заниматься подбором так называемых лексических соответствий – слов, которые не являются прямыми словарными соответствиями, но при этом идеально подходят для перевода слова в данном контексте. И для этого вновь обратимся к публицистическим текстам.

Обратим также внимание на немаловажный нюанс, а именно: в тексте перевода средства выделения шрифта должны в точности соответствовать оригинальным. Особенно это касается научных текстов.

 

Упражнение 1. Переведите текст, тщательно подбирая каждое слово к контексту, стилю и прагматике текста.