The Angry Translator: A Psychosocial Reading of La Nuit by Elie Wiesel and its English VersionsStéphanie Engola
University of Yaounde I
engolaamougou@yahoo.frAbstract
In recent years, researchers have investigated the translated text as a social product which impacts readers and their view of other cultural groups. The commitment of the translator in the translation process has also proven to influence the final product. This paper examines the implication of the translator in the transformation of the source and target texts. Based on textual analysis, the paper analyses the social sharing of emotions through the process of rewriting by translators. It shows how it is used as a tool for personal self-expression and social communication. The corpus used is La Nuit by Elie Wiesel and two of its English versions. The results show that the psychosocial status of the translator afflicts their translation choices and the function of the translated text in the target society.
Keywords: translation, textual analysis, trauma, rewriting, emotions.Introduction
Simeoni (1998) has underlined the pivotal status of the translator’s habitus in the understanding of translators and interpreters’ impact on their products. In the same perspective, Gouanvic (2005) argues that it is part of the translator’s history and experience which trans-forms the product. His argument is supported by Toury and Even-Zohar’s (1990) polysystem theory whereby the loyalty of a translated work should be analysed based on extralinguistic factors or power relations inherent to social situations. In this regard, many literary works have been translated anew for various reasons. It needs to be refreshed to fit the readership. La Nuit by Elie Wiesel fits in these argumentative contexts. Its latest English version was published in 2006, forty-six years after the version proposed by Stella Rodway. Though the source text is the same, both versions have been marked by time, space and the power relationship. The peculiarity of this trilogy is that Marion Wiesel is an interpreter who also experienced life in concentration camps during the holocaust. At the same time, Rodway is an American translator whose knowledge of the holocaust is limited to historical narratives. This paper seeks to examine how translators contribute to sharing social emotions through rewriting and how it is used as a tool for personal growth, self-expression, and social communication, thanks to text analysis.a. The centrality of La Nuit in the sociology of translation
La Nuit was published during a critical period in the history of Europe. Elie Wiesel is a prominent author of the Holocaust literature, and his novel has been extensively analysed and commented on. His immersion in multiple cultures influenced his worldview and somehow affected his relationships with the societies he lived in. The publishing architecture of this literary work is worth analysing within the framework of translation as a sociological practice. La Nuit is the French translation of Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, a nine-hundred-page memoir written and published in 1956 in Buenos Aires. This French version was published by Les Editions de Minuit in 1958, a few years after the French writer François Mauriac convinced the Holocaust survivor to tell the world about his experience. The first English translation was done by Stella Rodway (Night), an American translator, and published in 1960 by Hill & Wang. A more recent translation was done by Marion Wiesel and published in 2006, still with Hill & Wang as publisher.Night is the story of the suffering and atrocities experienced by Wiesel’s family in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenland during World War II. Critics have contested the content of this literary work as being a true story (Seidman, 1996; Yeager, 2011). They considered it as the origin of the « Holocaust industry ». However, Wiesel kept fighting for the holocaust to be acknowledged by the world. By publishing the Yiddish version of La Nuit in Buenos Aires, Wiesel wants to achieve two objectives. The first is to reach the large Jewish community that took refuge in Argentina during the holocaust. The second is to expose the group of Nazi fugitives who settled in Argentina to escape the Nuremberg trial. Indeed, by 1946 over three hundred Nazi fugitives were living in Argentina, but in 1960, the Israeli Mossad captured many and returned them to Israel, where they would undergo trial, and many would be executed. Therefore, this setting can be considered strategic within the framework of publishing.
As far as the French version is concerned, it was first sent by François Mauriac, the French writer, to Jérôme Lindon in 1956. After having read the text, Lindon suggested the title Un a de mon enfance (One Year of my Childhood), and Wiesel would like the book to be published on April 11. This is to commemorate the liberation of Buchenwald. It is worth mentioning that Les Editions de Minuit was an illegal publishing house created in 1941 by Jean Bruller and Pierre de Lescure. The publishing house aimed to fight for the Liberation of France during the German occupation. Until the liberation of Paris, many activist manuscripts were published by authors who used nicknames such as Eluard, Aragon, Paulhan, Mauriac, Chamson, Maritan, Gide and Steinbeck. Les Editions de Minuit also published Premier Combat by Jean Moulin (1947), La Rose Blanche by Inge Scholl (1955), Un camp très ordinaire by Micheline Maurel (1957), and the rendition of L’Univers concentration by David Rousset (1965). The common theme among these publications is their commitment to liberation. Thus, for Wiesel, publishing La Nuit in 1958 in Les Editions de Minuit aimed to give a louder voice to the fight of the Jews in terms of liberation and claim for historical reparation. He published in France to encourage the French against the Nazis who invaded France at that time.
As the echoes of the one hundred- and seventy-eight-page book were positive in Europe, it drew the attention of Hill & Wang publishing house. This New York-based publishing company that was created in 1956 was interested in world history and politics. Arthur Wang acquired Wiesel's memoir in 1959 and got it published in 1960 in English. Stella Rodway, an American translator, did the translation. In 2006, a new translation was published by the same publisher. However, the translator was Marion Wiesel, wife to Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, a humanitarian activist and co-founder of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. The period between the publication of the two translations is long enough to raise questions with the readership. Was the first translation inaccurate? Is the new translation adapting to current events of the world? Or was Marion Wiesel uncomfortable with Rodway’s version? These questions inevitably lead to the analysis of the actors of the network.
b. Actors of the translation and publishing network
Seidman (1996) argues that in the course of translating Un di Velt Hot Geshvign into French, Wiesel replaced an angry survivor of the holocaust with one haunted by death. She also underlines that the Yiddish version was addressed to Jewish readers, whereas the French version was for a Christian readership that has nothing to do with anger. It is assumed that Wiesel’s cordiality to the French writer François Mauriac accounts for the difference between the French and the Yiddish versions. Although elements of anger were deleted in the French version, both English versions have used the French as source text (TT) to address an English-speaking audience: the after-war and the twenty-first-century readerships. Thus, the diversity of the readership implies a change in the motive.The motive is the historical situation which associates the reason for writing and the occasion of publication. As such, there can be as many motives as target texts for the same source text. As the main theme handled by Wiesel in his book is related to historical facts, the relationship between actors can be analysed from various perspectives. The Yiddish text is addressed to the Jewish community, the silent world. Indeed, the text is published in a socio-historical context that has forced members of the Jewish community to migrate to Argentina. Wiesel’s writing is the voice of silent people. The Yiddish, whose suffering relentlessly increases the feeling of guilt, has a regurgitated anger for the non-humanism of their persecutors and a dual trauma marked by mitigated feelings of anger and death. His writing reminds the Jewish people that victims are not the ones to hide. They should speak up and transfer the feeling of shame to their murderers, executors of humanity. They should cause the prosecutors to hide and atone. The feeling of guilt should be reversed, and the world should stop focusing on the victims, but mobilise for the executors to be judged and feel the shame of their inhuman thoughts and deeds. Thus, Wiesel takes a stand against the stereotyping of the Shoah’s literature. Victims are accused of being silent, as emphasised by Crespo (2015, 139): “Le silence semble contradictoire à l’écriture en général, pourtant il est indissociable de celle-ci; et c’est l’une des caractéristiques principales de la littérature de la Shoah” . This motive deviates from that of the French translational process. The latter is determined by the projections of Mauriac, Wiesel’s friend. Mauriac is the French novelist who encouraged Wiesel to extend his speech to the French setting. The French version addresses the French Christian community. The friendship between Mauriac and Wiesel is based on a shared perception of humanism. Indeed, Mauriac brought a philosophical approach to Wiesel’s thought and convinced him to translate his work from a Christian perspective. This led to the emergence of Wiesel’s philosophical arguments on humanism. However, anger is not central in Rodway’s English version of La Nuit. Her version targets the English-speaking community in the U.S.A. and probably Europe because it was published at a time when the American government was seeking to establish their leadership in the world as war causes "a paradigm shift in people's belief system" (Zhou and Liu 2011, 118).
From a literary perspective, the translator can exercise violence on the source text (ST) and indirectly on the target culture (TC). This can be done through an insidious marginalisation or overemphasis on the TC and establishes the bidirectional nature of violence in the translation process. Thus, Venuti posits that the violence wreaked by translation is partly inevitable, inherent in the translation process […] the freelance literary translator always exercises a choice concerning the degree and direction of the violence at work in any translating. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.
c. Textual analysis of both translations
a. Composition
The macrostructure of the source text and both target texts are different. It is important to underline that the ST has nine chapters, a preface and foreword by Mauriac and a dedication (In memory of my parents and of my little sister, Tzipora). Rodway’s translation presents a more explanatory macrostructure. In addition to the elements of the ST macrostructure, it is composed of another preface, the note of the translator, comment by Curt Leviant, Lothar Kahn and Alfred Alvarez and a biography of Elie Wiesel. A special note underlines that “this Edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. NO ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.”Apart from these elements, Marion’s version has an additional list of Wiesel’s works, and the Nobel Peace Acceptance Prize speech. It is also worth mentioning that her dedication is addressed to members of her family who also died in the genocide: “This new translation in memory of my grandparents, Abba, Sarah and Nachman, who also vanished into that night.” She, however, considers her text as a translation. From a theoretical perspective, this contradiction would renew the debate on defining translation.
b. Non-verbal Elements
As non-verbal elements, there is a striking difference between the choices of both translators. These differences relate to the use of italics, capitalisation and quotation marks. Indeed, words that pertain to the vocabulary of prison are maintained in the German language in both TTs. However, Marion alternates italics and non-italics within the same word. She draws the reader's attention to the treatment of the Jews in the camps. The typography of words like Blöckälteste gives much information on the intention of the translator and the severity of the action. Indeed, Marion does not specifically capitalise the äl inside the word. The umlaut is known to be specific to the German language. This shows the commitment of the translation to connect history with language.According to the foregrounding theory, “In the creative process of the work, the writer is a pursuit for the effect of expressing and the way of showing the main idea, they put words in an unconventional use to achieve their aim" (Chen & Zheng, 2015: 1655). In other words, the use of language deviations can be analysed as the artistic and aesthetic violation of conventional language. Marion uses capitalisation to express her emotions. Where the ST uses conventional writing, she breaches the rule to emphasise her double disagreement with the camps and the wrong projection of the suffering in the first English translation as illustrated in (1) and (2):
(1) ST : Première impression : c’était mieux que Birkenau.
Rodway: First impression: this was better than Birkenau.
Marion Wiesel: FIRST IMPRESSION: better than Birkenau.(2) ST: « Attention ! Danger de mort ».
Rodway: "Warning. The danger of death.”
Marion Wiesel: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH.According to Helms (1980, 177), punctuation is not merely a peripheral part of a text; it also influences the prosody and the ability of the writer to bring emotional meanings to life. In this sense, Trask (1997) states that the exclamation mark is used to express surprise, command, emphasis or strong emotion. In (1), the main character arrives at the new camp for the first time and compares it with the former one. The contrast is striking, although both locations are serving the same purpose. Marion strives to highlight strong feelings. Marion uses capitalisation when it comes to severe thoughts. Her translation insists on some historical facts she deems worth amplifying. In (2), capitalisation is associated with punctuation to emphasise the dangerousness of the area not to cross. Marion shares the fear of the character and keeps the suspense going in the mind of the reader, thanks to this combination. When comparing this scriptural choice to Rodway's translation, one can conclude that the latter rendered the aesthetics of fear with banality, regardless of the emphatic tone that is characterised by the exclamation mark.
In the same vein, the use of quotation marks can also be analysed in the foregrounding of Marion’s translation. Indeed, Baker (2011) identifies eight strategies to translate words in quotation marks in an ST. They are either 1) kept in the TT in quotation marks; 2) rendered by an existing equivalent word in the TL and without the quotation marks; 3) adapted to the target culture in quotation marks; 4) replaced by a loaned word with explanation; 5) translated by paraphrase using a related word; 6) translated by paraphrase using an unrelated word; 7) omitted not to distract the reader with lengthy explanation; 8) illustrated. However, in the case of Wiesel’s work, it is the translator who adds quotations as a discursive strategy:
(3) ST: J’entendais la voix de l’officiant s’élever, puissante et brisée à la fois, au milieu des larmes, des sanglots, des soupirs de toute l’assistance :
Rodway: I heard the voice of the officiant rising, powerful yet at the same time broken, amid the tears, sobs, the sighs of the whole congregation:
Marion Wiesel: I listened as the inmate's voice rose; it was powerful yet broken amid the weeping, the sobbing, the sighing of the entire "congregation":In (3), the French text refers to a crowd of people sharing the same chaotic fate. Rodway’s version renders it as the congregation. Marion uses quotation marks to distance herself as well as the reader from the connotative meaning of the word. She then draws the reader's attention to the fact that the crowd was not really a group of people who came together to worship a god. Even though they shared the same fate, they did not come together by their own will. They were deported in rugged ways and non-human means. Quotation marks, in this sense, bring up a literary reserve on the meaning of the word congregation. This component of the prosody plays a capital role in the interpretation of both English versions. She also uses quotation marks as a means to correct Rodway’s version in the following example:
(4) ST: Des jardinets çà et là. On nous conduisit vers un de ces "blocks".
Rodway: There were little gardens here and there. We were led to one of these prison blocks.
Marion Wiesel: Little gardens here and there. We were led toward one of those "blocks."All like the ST, Marion’s version brings back the quotation marks that Rodway rendered by an explanatory technique. According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945 (2009, 871), Buchenwald and Auschwitz were concentration and extermination camps with many blocks. Each block was set for a specific purpose, and they were either numbered or given a name. For example, there was a Gammelblock (2009, 879), a barracks surrounded with barbed wire, where debilitated prisoners were isolated without any care or sustenance […] Block One housed the camp clerk and, beginning in 1943, a brothel. Although all blocks were locations to keep prisoners, all of them were not prisons. There were some sets for extermination. Prisoners were particularly brought here to be killed in the holocaust. Other blocks were serving for concentration, where prisoners were kept while waiting to be transferred elsewhere. In this respect, Rodway’s version seems to overinterpret the nature of the block by using the explanatory technique. At the same time, Marion carefully maintains the vagueness of the nature of these locations, thanks to quotation marks.
c. Lexis
The lexis of Nuit is made up of borrowed words, many of which are core borrowings. These are loanwords that replace existing words in a language. Haspelmath (2009: 48) purports that speakers adopt such new words in order to be associated with the prestige of the donor language. This suggests that core borrowings are a linguistic method to enrich a language. From a literary perspective, core borrowing may not constitute a mere linguistic method. They are used as symbolic values as they are not the result of language contact.In Marion’s version, words such as Blöckälteste, Appelplatz, Oberkapo, Pipel, and Lagerkapo are lexicons pertaining to the semantic scope of the organisation of camps. The translator chooses to keep them in the German language. This process of borrowing semantic items suggests that the target text bears the stigma of historical memory. She imposes core borrowed words in the text as instruments to hammer out the Nazi presence in terms of the unprecedented violence. That violence particularises a group whose barbarity is impossible to share in any other culture. As a result, no language is able to materialise these attributes.
Unlike Marion, Rodway domesticates the same lexicons: the head of the block, assistant of the head of the camp, assembly point, chief kapo, the Protégé of the kapo and camp kapo. The technique of literal translation suggests the absence of emotional content. In the sense of Wei Lu and Hong Fang (2012, 743) consider that this type of translation follows closely both the form and intended meaning of SL. In other words, Rodway's choices were appropriate in a purely traditional sense of translation. However, Marion adopted a more strategic stand that could remind the reader of the fact that the camps were a German peculiarity. Marion's version is also characterised by lexical accuracy in (5):
(5) ST: J’entendais la voix de l’officiant s’élever, puissante et brisée à la fois, au milieu des larmes, des sanglots, des soupirs de toute l’assistance :
Rodway: I heard the voice of the officiant rising, powerful yet at the same time broken, amid the tears, sobs, the sighs of the whole congregation:
Marion Wiesel: I listened as the inmate's voice rose; it was powerful yet broken amid the weeping, the sobbing, the sighing of the entire "congregation":In the ST, Wiesel uses the word “officiant” to refer to a prisoner whose task was to lead the prayer sessions. The first English version abruptly imports the same semantic item that, in the opinion of Marion, does not reflect the underlying idea of comradeship in jail. Indeed, the officiant was not only assigned the task of a priest among prisoners, as suggested by Rodway's translation. They were also sharing the same conditions with other prisoners. They were given the same treatment and exposed to the same punishments. However, they were sharing the same feelings of sadness, disappointment, loneliness, hunger for freedom, fear and terror with other prisoners. So, they were fate inmates assigned to cold spiritual tasks in the eyes of the Nazis. However, their faith made them more courageous than other prisoners whose hopes of eventual salvation were fading with time. Marion's translation reframes the semantic field of imprisonment and suffering and correlates it with the commonality of fate.
The use of prepositions also marks Marion's obsession with linguistic reparation of Wiesel's historical testimony. The French preposition à, which simultaneously expresses a location at a precise area and a location in a city, a state, a country or beyond, is used differently in English. Both ideas of precise location and location in an area are expressed by at and in, respectively. However, the locations should be well known by the user. Having been a victim of the holocaust, Marion seems to be better aware of the locations referred to by Wiesel. Alternatively, she has an exhaustive culture of the Holocaust literature, as shown in (6):
(6) ST: Vous êtes à Auschwitz. Et Auschwitz n’est pas une maison de convalescence. C’est un camp de concentration.
Rodway: You are at Auschwitz. Moreover, Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp.
Marion Wiesel: You are in Auschwitz. Moreover, Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp.(7) ST: Dans l’air, cette odeur de chair brûlée. Il devait être minuit. Nous étions arrivés. À Birkenau.
Rodway: In the air that smell of burning flesh. It must have been about midnight. We arrived -at Birkenau, the reception centre for Auschwitz.
Marion Wiesel: The smell of burning flesh was in the air. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived in Birkenau.In (6), Marion clearly adjusts the rationale of location by correlating the preposition to Auschwitz and Birkenau, whereas Rodway opts for at. This adjustment highlights Marion’s objection to Rodway’s understanding of the architecture of the camps. According to the Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Jewish inmates were transferred to Auschwitz to be exterminated; they went through that camp to reach other camps like Buchenwald. Both camps comprised many subcamps. Auschwitz was particularly famous because it had about forty-five subcamps among which Birkenau. Marion’s objection to Rodway’s choice for In Birkenau in (7) may look groundless if considering that Birkenau is a specific location within Auschwitz.
Furthermore, Rodway’s translation is cautious. The technique of explanation is used to add more precision about the status of Birkenau in relation to Auschwitz as being a reception centre for Auschwitz. This justifies the collocation of the preposition with Birkenau. However, by correlating in and Birkenau, Marion implicitly considers that location as a camp rather than a subcamp of Auschwitz, which the encyclopedia confirms. It is worth mentioning that the subcamp of Birkenau was also split into youth camps, such as the Gypsy family camp (2009, 985). So, the message conveyed by Marion in (7) pinpoints the accurate meaning of the ST.
The deliberate use of code-switching and capitalisation also expresses anger, nostalgia and hope. Marion thinks that when the circumstances involve abuse, non-human treatment and death, the German language is appropriate, like in the following example:
(8) ST: Mais à peine eut-on marché quelques instants qu’on aperçut les barbelés d’un autre camp. Une porte en fer avec, au-dessus, cette inscription : “Le travail, c’est la liberté !” Auschwitz
Rodway: But we had been marching for only a few moments when we saw the barbed wire of another camp. An iron door with this inscription over it: “Work is liberty!” Auschwitz.
Marion Wiesel: But no sooner had we taken a few more steps than we saw the barbed wire of another camp. This one had an iron gate with the overhead inscription: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Work makes you free. Auschwitz.The reader is exposed to the Nazi horror through the German language. Marion's translation is an attempt to draw the reader's attention to life in the concentration camps. The ST and Rodway's translation refers to liberty as the result of an effort, a price to be paid to escape coercion and oppression, hence the reference to 'liberty' as opposed to freedom. This choice dismisses moral freedom. Marion simultaneously uses domestication and exotisation doubled with capitalisation to suggest a pause to the reader. She further provides the reader with the English translation of the sentence to highlight the seriousness of the German sentence in the history of the genocide.
Indeed, this expression was used for the first time by the German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach in his work Arbeit macht frei: Erzälung von Lorenz Diefenbach, published in 1873. This slogan was taken up and displayed at the entrance of several concentration camps, namely Auschwitz, where Jews were deported. When considering this context in conjunction with the nature of the concentration camps, another interpretation can be formulated. Prisoners were taken to camps for forced labour until they died. The idea of any physical freedom is, therefore, not possible. The prisoner's freedom could only be achieved through death after a labour that exceeded human limits. This can, therefore, be considered as sarcasm addressed to the prisoners entering Auschwitz. From the moment they entered the camp, the Jews knew they would be subject to inhuman treatment until death. Marion's choice of translation sheds light on the sarcasm that mocks the philologist's thinking: work brings death, and if death frees, then the Jews will die because of work. Marion relies on techniques of capitalisation, the violation or semantic rewriting of the ST and literal translation to challenge the encyclopaedic knowledge of the reader. Consciously or not, the reader is confronted with the obligation to take an interest not only in the life but also in the death of the prisoners.
Furthermore, the presence of Marion in the target narrative is characterised by her use of writing and translation techniques. They impose a rigorous reading discipline on the reader. This presence can be felt in (9) where she speaks for the author when she uses the pronoun I:
(9) ST: Au centre se tenait le docteur Mengele, ce fameux docteur Mengele (officier S.S. typique, visage cruel, non dépourvu d’intelligence, monocle), une baguette de chef d’orchestre à la main, au milieu d’autres officiers.
Rodway: In the middle stood the notorious Dr. Mengele (a typical SS officer: a cruel face, but not devoid of intelligence, and wearing a monocle); a conductor’s baton in his hand, he was standing among the other officers.
Marion Wiesel: Standing in the middle of it was, though I did not know it then, Dr. Mengele, the notorious Dr. Mengele. He looked like the typical SS officer: a cruel, though non-unintelligent, face, complete with a monocle.In narratology, the personal pronoun I can be assimilated to the author (Monte, 2003). I can refer to the speaker, who is a natural component of the discourse. However, the narrative of the ST needs to be clarified about who the speaker is. Added to that, Wiesel's text has never been proven to be a true story. As a matter of fact, it needs to be clarified whether Wiesel is the main character of his narrative. By using lyricism as a domestication technique, Marion goes a step further to highlight a presence in the translation. It is unclear whether the I refers to Wiesel as the author of the ST or to Marion as another victim of the holocaust. The intentionality of the ambiguity shows an inclusive narration whereby the translator creates confusion about the identity of the speaker. There are also instances where the translator clearly claims her presence in the target text, as shown in (10):
(10) ST: Et prends aussi cette cuillère. Ne les vends pas. Vite, Allos, prends ce que je te donne ! L’héritage…
Rodway: And take this spoon as well. Could you not sell them? Quickly Go on. Take what I am giving you!" The inheritance.
Marion Wiesel: Also, take this spoon. Could you not sell it? Quickly! Go ahead, take what I am giving you!" My inheritance…Whereas the French text uses a determiner in front of the noun heritage to refer to the symbolic tools of survival the father gives to the son, Marion personalises it by using the possessive pronoun. She intends to highlight the preciousness of a spoon within a carceral context. Indeed, the scarcity of food in the concentration camp and the short time provided to prisoners to feed themselves were enough reasons to take good care of the tools they had to access food. Each prisoner had their spoons as a survival weapon. The symbiotic relationship between the prisoner and the tool reflects the inescapable need to feed oneself in order to remain alive. In this view, the father, who acknowledges his physical weakness and foresees death, gives his spoon to the son. This symbolises a transfer of power and blessings. He transfers all he possesses as proof of love while putting a particular accent on how he perceives the tool: a heritage. Marion reiterates the possession to correlate the perception of the tool by the father and the meaning it should be given after he dies. She chooses not to use the article because all prisoners have spoons. The spoon the father handed over to the child is his property with which he had an emotional relationship and not just an instrument that all other prisoners also possessed.
D. Direct and Indirect Speech
Pinker (1994) is supportive of the argument that language helps us to shape events in other people's brains with an acute precision. In this vein, direct and indirect speeches are part of language items that indicate the intentions of speakers towards their readership or receptors. Based on a study carried out in 2013 on the categories of speeches and their influence on mental representations, Eerland, Engelen, and Zwaan (2013: 1) posit that "indirect speech is thought to be description-like, whereas direct speech is considered to be more depiction-like". While the first category of speech focuses on what is said, the second rather strives to create a mental representation of the situation that is described. Their study uses occurrences of direct speech in the third person. They conclude that direct speech calls for more engagement of readers in terms of mental representations and is more vivid. An insight into Marion's use of indirect speech may be representative of a counter-argument to Eerland, Engelen and Zwaan's conclusions. The use of speech can enhance the presence of the translator in the target narrative. In this perspective, Marion opts for indirect speech, whereas the ST is in direct speech. Thus, the reader needs clarification as to who is actually speaking. In (11), the author quotes the character. Rodway renders the character's speech as such. However, Marion deliberately omits them. It becomes impossible for the reader to dissociate the character's thoughts from that of the narrator. Instead of using the traditional approach of making the speech indirect, she personates her speech by impersonating the author through a lyrical process. Not only does she delete the suprasegmental markers of direct speech, but she superimposes herself to the author as if they are the same person, speaker and narrator. The personal pronoun I confusedly plunges the reader into a literary dilemma:(11) ST: À cause de mon pied endolori, à chaque pas, un frisson me secouait. « Encore quelques mètres, pensais-je, encore quelques mètres et ce sera fini. Je tomberai. Une petite flamme rouge…un coup de feu… » La mort m’enveloppait jusqu’à m’étouffer. Elle collait à moi. Je sentais que j’aurais pu la toucher.
Rodway: Because of my painful foot, a shudder went through me at each step. “A few more yards,” I thought. “A few more yards, and that will be the end. I shall fall A spurt of red flame. A shot.” Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt that I could touch it.
Marion Wiesel: My foot was aching; I shivered with every step. Just a few more meters and it will be over. I will fall. A small red flame…A shot…Death enveloped me; it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it.It is also important to underline that Marion uses the first personal pronoun with verbs of the same thematic ground: to shiver and to feel that correlate with human senses. The indirect speech is rather depiction-like because the mental representation engages the reader. This example suggests that Marion purposely mingled her feelings and voice with that of the author. Her omnipresence in the author's discourse is synonymous with a trauma that is either unconsciously shared and transferred or deliberately inflicted to intensify the idea of suffering. The reader shivers with her as she uses gradation over five sentences: aching, shivering, will be over, red flame, shot, death, suffocated. The severity of the situation goes from simple pain to shivering and ends up with suffocation caused by the sensation of weakening and ends with death.
Conclusion
From the point of view of the sociology of translation, Elie Wiesel's literary work has evolved in a complex context. The French text was written by Wiesel himself as a self-translation process of the Yiddish text. Rodway’s English version was published in the early 60s and Marion’s version is said to be a corrected English version. Textual analysis was used to highlight the emotional involvement of Marion Wiesel. The translator intended to reframe historical facts, strong feelings and trauma that were supposedly poorly rendered by Rodway’s version. Constituents of space, time and motives led to internal revisiting of features like speech, lexis, sentence structure, composition and non-verbal components to incur the reparation of the author and the translator’s memories.Works Cited
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