Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational optic

37 etymological connection being the apparent reason. Nevertheless, this example poses

questions of the utility of a discussion of approximation to the source text is particularly necessary or even a productive endeavor.

Despite the significant differences between the English and French translations, their obvious similarities cannot be ignored. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud presents us with a more traditional narrative form, with more distanced narrator obliterating much of the interiority of Solstad’s original narration. Add to this, Coursaud makes use of a more literary language registry through the employment of traditional narrative verbal forms. There are as many similarities as there are differences between the two: not only do they present heterogeneous products, the relationship between them is itself heterogeneous. What remains to explore is if this heterogeneity extends to Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational enterprise.

38 registry might be one of the decisive reasons for changing the registry in Genanse og

verdighet.

Coursaud discusses his practice in more detail in a radio interview with NRK from 2014. Among other things, he opens up about the need to deploy different translational strategies when working on different writers, especially when they are as varied as Saabye Christensen and Erlend Loe (Straume 2014). However, while Coursaud agrees to the

statement that his job is to render the literary works as “same as possible” (Straume 2014, my translation),²⁶ he also talks of “understanding a voice” (Straume 2014, my translation),²⁷ and translating that voice into “what it would have been, had it originally been in French”

(Straume 2014, my translation).²⁸ On the one hand, he insinuates the possibility for one-to-one equivalency; on the other, he proposes a strategy of alteration. What the two statements have in common, is the belief in equivalency.

While he holds back on commentaries on his specific translation projects, comments on particular authors notwithstanding, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud does provide us with

something of a hint on his view on literature and translation. He talks quite a bit about the beauty of literature, the emotional aspects of literary devices, techniques, and constellations (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008 and Straume 2014). Coursaud seems to have somewhat of a romantic view on literature; writing is a question of beauty, and human identity shines

through, according to the French translator. While he does discuss the difficulty of translating one passage or another, or a specific style or author, he never approaches an argument about the impossibility of translation. Coursaud seems to firmly believe that every voice has an equivalent in the receiving situation, a voice that can capture the source text’s values of tone and significance; at least, it would seem to be the opinion he expresses in these interviews.

The one who is tasked with finding these equivalences is him, the translator.

These interviews fall somewhat short of the foundation provided by Sverre Lyngstad, who illustrated his own translational strategies in “Translator’s Trap: Knut Hamsun’s Hunger in English.” Nevertheless, the interviews help us form a picture of the translator behind the French version, and he does share significant similarities with his Norwegian compatriot.

They both seem to insist on the possibility of equivalency in translation. Lyngstad illustrated this through his schematic substitutions of Robert Bly and Mary Chavelita Dunne’s choices

26 Original quote: “så samme som mulig” (Straume 2014).

27 Original quote: “å forstå en stemme” (Straume 2014).

28 Original quote: “finne den franske stemmen som de ville ha, hvis de hadde skrevet direkte på fransk”

(Straume 2014).

39 on a lexicographical level. The motivation for these substitutions was their correctness. In the case of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, he admits to his belief in equivalency, as he explains his belief that his job is to find the replacing voice in French. Neither of these translators confirms to traditional categories, as the close reading showed.

The best way to fully map out the French translator’s habits, traits, and optics would obviously be to examine his entire career. Just as was the case with Lyngstad, this would be impossible. As I did before, I have restricted the analysis to a handful of examples, which can at least point to some correlating elements. In Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational corpus we find another novel by Dag Solstad, Ellevte roman, bok atten. This translation was preceded by the 2008 English translation by Sverre Lyngstad and could have been the primary research object if it was not for Genanse og verdighet’s broader international

reception. The French translation was published by Swiss publishing house Les Éditions Noir Sur Blanc’s collection Notabilia in 2018.²⁹ Could Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Onzième roman, livre dix-huit be informative for my research?

Already on the second page of the novel, we find an example of the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif, “eût été” (Solstad 2018, 18), the same one we saw in Honte et dignité.

However, on the following page, we find a more drastic example of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s adaptive approach. In Dag Solstad’s original, we find the following passage:

Faren døde i september. Hun reiste hjem, til begravelsen, og arveoppgjøret, og kom tilbake til Oslo etter ei uke. Hun levde som før, en måneds tid. Men så bestemte hun seg for å flytte tilbake til Kongsberg […]. Egentlig hadde det passet godt om hun dro nå, til Kongsberg, og ut av hans liv, uten å etterlate seg noe annet i hans bevissthet, enn minnet om litt stjålen lykke. (Solstad 1992, 6–7)

Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendering of this passage into French is done as follows:

Le père mourut en septembre. Elle regagna sa ville natale, rentra assister à l’enterrement et s’occuper de la succession, puis retourna à Oslo une semaine plus tard. Elle poursuivit sa vie d’avant, un mois durant. Or, du jour au lendemain, elle décida de revenir vivre définitivement dans sa ville natale de Kongsberg […]. Au fond, cela tombait bien qu’elle s’en aille, qu’elle parte à Kongsberg et s’éclipse sa vie, sans rien laisser dans sa conscience sinon le souvenir d’un semblant de bonheur subtilisé. (Solstad 2018, 19–20)

29 There are several similarities between Noir sur Blanc’s Notabilia and Les Allusifs. The former’s catalog has a consistent visual design language used on all their novels in the Notabilia collection (Les Éditions Noir sur Blanc 2020). Furthermore, their ambition is to translate “short novels, open to the international, with singular texts and strong voices” (Robitaille 2012, my translation). Both publishing houses were pioneered by Brigitte Bouchard (Robitaille 2012).

40 The are several similarities between this passage and the various excerpts I studied in Honte et dignité; Jean-Baptiste Coursaud is definitely employing a strategy of adaptation in

Onzième roman, livre dix-huit. The pattern of punctuation is altered, entire grammatical clauses are added, and some expansions on the source text are taking place, such as the additional reference to Turid Lammers’ birthplace and return to her hometown Kongsberg.

However, what is especially pertinent in this passage is the abundance of the passé simple, as we saw in certain passages in Honte et dignité. Again, Coursaud demonstrates his penchant for a literary and formal language, preferring traditional literary styles over more modern ones. This is what the passé simple signifies, as well as the many variations on the subjonctif. Additionally, they impose the same distance between the narrator and the

narrative. This is not to say he exclusively uses such registries, ‘[a]u fond, cela tombait bien qu’elle s’en aille’ is a more modern variant including a conjugation in the subjonctif, but he definitely employs a majority of conjugations in conventional grammar, and does so in several different translations. Coursaud’s preference for conventional literary devices and language registries becomes all the more apparent through the comparative analysis of his translational enterprise.

The translation analyses correlate with the NRK interviews with Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, where the French translator describes both his view on literature and translation.

His romantic and sentimental views on literature stand out; he mentions the word beauty several times and links this to the novelist’s unique voice. The traditional literary style employed by the translator correlates with these views. We see this in Honte et dignité and in Onzième roman, livre dix-huit both. It should be considered that Solstad’s style in the latter is somewhat more traditional; however, this only begs the question of why they are so

stylistically similar in Coursaud’s translations, rendered in the same conservative French language. Why does Jean-Baptiste Coursaud translate them so similarly? The obvious answer would be that an agent with a signature style renders both of them, that a similar textual reconfiguration paradigm is being exerted on both novels.

That being said, Coursaud himself mentions the need for different translational strategies when approaching works of different authors. His style should vary when working on novels written in a completely different voice, to use Coursaud’s own terms. When he mentions how simplistic literary expressions are harder to translate, it is in the context of a specific author, Erlend Loe (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008). Loe’s style is indeed very different from Solstad’s, with short and simple sentences, humor, and satire being parts of his

trademark style. Comparing Coursaud’s approach to Solstad and his approach to Loe could

41 yield interesting results; how does the French translator approach Erlend Loe’s more

straightforward and simple style and language?

A quick glance at Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s 2006 translations of Erlend Loe’s Doppler (2004) and Volvo lastvagnar (2005) reveals some fascinating contrasts to his work on Solstad’s novels. Here, the French translator avoids the excessive use of the passé simple, recreating the simplicity and fluency much of the original work. The question is quite

apparent, Erlend Loe and Dag Solstad both rely on the same verbal tenses, and they both employ a distinctively colloquial tonality to their novels. Even though Loe writes shorter and simpler sentences, why does Solstad’s style more merit a return to traditional literary dogma?

While they are less dominant in the Erlend Loe translations, formal French

grammatical conventions are not entirely absent. In particular, uncommon verb tenses of the subjonctif can be found here as well. Some of these are the forced result of Coursaud starting phrases with certain French expressions, such as “pour peu que” (Loe 2006a, 19) or “à moins d’ailleurs que” (Loe 2006a, 19). In order to comply with the rules of French grammar it is mandatory to follow these particular expressions by a verb conjugated in the subjonctif, and the translator obliges; “pour peu que son espèce eût eu” (Loe 2006a, 19), “à moins d’ailleurs que j’aie lu” (Loe 2006a, 19). It is not merely the use of the subjonctif that conventionalizes the passage. As has been the case in virtually every example, the tenses are the issue here.

They belong to an elevated language registry that corresponds poorly to Loe’s style. The two examples here are, respectively, conjugated in the past perfect and past tense of the

subjonctif. While the present tense of the subjonctif is common, these past tenses are rarer due to the grammatical mode’s atemporal nature. Particularly the past perfect of the

subjonctif is rarely ever heard or seen in French except in traditional styles of literature. Had there been an equivalent to these grammatical tenses and mode in Norwegian, it is very doubtful that Erlend Loe would have made use of them, considering his informal style.

There are additional cases that are not explicable through adjectival and adverbial openings. “[C]ela eût entraîné” (Loe 2006a, 19) and “[i]l eût été faux” (Loe 2006a, 36) are examples of this from Doppler. In Volvo trucks we find similar examples: “ne le fût jamais”

(Loe 2006b, 13) and “elle l’eût immédiatement dédaigné” (Loe 2006b, 17). In Doppler we also find the formal and literary form of negation: “sans guère faire mine” (Loe 2006a, 46).

While Jean-Baptiste Coursaud seems to be semantically much closer to the tone of the source text in his translations of Erlend Loe, he is not more consistent in these than he was in

translating Solstad, at least not by a significant degree.

42 This inconsistency could serve as a further argument for the heterogeneity of

translated literature. Does this disprove any hypothesis based on Coursaud’s formalizing and conventionalizing of the translated language? Not necessarily, first evidenced by the presence of problematic verbal conjugations. Nevertheless, the degree varies considerably, making an argument of universals in translations somewhat unstable. Normalizing and standardizing have been theorized and even posited as universals for translation by Corpora translation studies academics (Laviosa 2013, 231–232), but such attempts at unifying theories are inept at explaining heterogeneity; they mainly rely on similarity. Additionally, it is useful to consider the particular translator’s background; Jean-Baptiste Coursaud himself mentions the simplistic nature of Loe’s style and how it presents difficulties for the translator.

Nevertheless, the French translator relies on complex literary devices in his rendering. These contradictory elements are made visible through the applied method of this analysis.

The reason for Coursaud’s conventionalizing would be difficult to discern. Without a doubt, French is a language with a particularly dogmatic literary tradition, complete with specific literary narrative tenses and grammatical variations not used in ordinary speech.

Additionally, there are many adherents of this literary language today, keeping this convention alive and well. However, French writers are writing within a French literary sphere, which includes these tenses and modes. The same cannot be said of Erlend Loe or Dag Solstad, who hail from a different tradition and system, and whose works are being transported to the French literary domain. Additionally, writers who apply these narrative verbal tenses tend to operate with conventional narrators, distanced from the story itself.

Could the Norwegian and French literary systems be incompatible to such a degree that Solstad and Loe are impossible to carry over accurately? This would be a challenging proposition to argue for, as it presupposes that there are no writers who have written in simplified French language. This is simply not true. From Émile Zola’s employment of more accurate informal dialog to Albert Camus’ novels written entirely in passé composé, the more commonplace and colloquial equivalent to the passé simple, there is a long and influential history of writers who have written in a simple variant of French. Why would Coursaud not utilize a style more reminiscent of Camus, for example? With his short phrases, colloquial language, and simple informal tenses, he seems like a perfect fit.

It would not be easy to find the sole explanation for the translated work’s

heterogeneous nature in the language alone. However, there are correlating elements found in the translator’s enterprise that suggests an individual application of the language. Given the degree of conventionalization seen in Solstad and the lesser, but not absent, tendency in Loe,

43 it is plausible that we are here dealing with specific translative actions from a single linguistic source. Coursaud is the translator of both, but they are not subject to universal law, something the differences exposed by the close reading and comparative analysis of his works shows.

What can be said to conclude the examination of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational optic? He seems to have a much more romanticized view of literature than Sverre Lyngstad’s more schematic approach. He mentions beauty and individual voices several times in the interviews with NRK, and he tattoos Norwegian literary quotes directly on his body. His creative license, to use Lyngstad’s vocabulary, coincides with a less

apparent Norwegian political influence; NORLA is not the sole financier of this project. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translation is much more adaptive than Lyngstad’s English version of the text, regarding lexicographical, semantic, and grammatical choices. It is not impossible that there exists a causal relationship between the translator’s creative liberty and the lesser influence from the novel’s source culture, although this would be difficult to conclude without resorting to speculation.

Nevertheless, these apparent creative differences do not distract from the obvious similarities between the two translators. Their similar view on translation and translative strategies become evident when Coursaud defines his job as searching for equivalent voices in the receiving situation. Yet, in the case of the Solstad translations, both tend to employ a more conservative and traditional registry, often endangering similar semantic shifts. Both translators, while they might not always correlate with each other, demonstrate similarities in various translations; the translators are relatively consistent in their respective approaches, although it is difficult to posit any universals between the two.

The close reading, linguistic analysis, and comparative method uncover the

heterogeneous nature of the research objects. The many facets of translated literature pose issues with many established translation studies theories, exposing theoretical blind spots.

The results show that the translations are as similar as they are different. Though they adhere to some near-identical conditions, such as tendencies towards conventionalization and equivalence-based translational strategies, the different degrees of liberty taken in

transmitting is still significant. Even though the translators themselves are vastly different, and the two translations were differently funded, the conventionalization mentioned above was evidenced in both the French and the English version. With the results of this analysis, it is time to revisit the premise of the thesis. What insights did a pragmatic, linguistic, and comparative reading of the novel and its translations ultimately provide?

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