Journale Lucy Fricke’s Töchter: A Translation Road Trip

LISTEN CAREFULLY

By Isabelle Liber, translated by Sinéad Crowe


What do you hear?

00:14

Here I want to focus on tone because it’s an aspect of translation that I particularly enjoy working on. As I was writing the first lines of this article, I wondered what I should call this aural quality of a text: its music? Musicality? Voice? For several reasons, I’ve opted for tonalité: tone.

After I’ve read a book, and before I start translating it, I try to find the author’s voice. I mean this literally: I go to readings or listen to recordings. And this brings us pretty close to the definition of tonalité  in the dictionary Trésor de la langue française informatisé:

tonalité and voice, page from the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales.

(“B. Totality of a number of noises, particularly those produced by the voice.”)

I once even asked an author to record a short passage from her text for me 1

Pauses, breaths, intonation – the voice is like a compass. It helps you find your bearings in the author’s universe and guides you on your way towards the translation. Every time I listen to an author reading their text, it feels like a revelation, like opening a door into the world of the novel.

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Lucy Fricke reads an extract from Töchter at the 2018 HAM.LIT Festival.

The above excerpt from one of Lucy Fricke’s readings brings out the text’s seriousness and the slightly brittle character of the language. But the author’s voice also lends the words a very animated, dense quality. The jumble of images and moods gives her listeners a jolt and makes them laugh – and I sense that there is something liberating about this laughter.

So what does this mean for my translation? It means I must avoid any fussiness or linguistic flourishes and pay attention to the rhythm. In my mind’s eye, I see an arrow carved out of wood: raw, energetic and fast, zipping through the air. And … bullseye!

Sometimes audiobooks open the door to the tone of a novel. But when an actor reads a text, the effect is very different. As I listen, my focus shifts from who wrote the text to what’s in the text. A reading recorded for an audiobook reveals the rhythm, the tonal atmosphere beyond the printed words. And if I’m having problems interpreting a passage, sometimes listening to the audiobook can give me clarity or at least point me in the right direction

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Extract from the Töchter audiobook, read by Sabine Arnhold (Lübbe Audio)

One of the reasons I like the word “tonalité” so much is that it can also refer to colours:

é and colour, page from the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales.

(II. “In the domain of colours. A. – Totality of a combination of colours (…) – Figuratively. Overall impression; characteristic colouration.)

So what colour would Töchter be? There are plenty of examples of incongruous book covers out there, but the colour scheme on the cover of the German edition of Töchter captures the tone pretty well. Reflecting the novel’s dynamism and vibrancy, the bright reddish orange jars with the green tones to almost comical effect. Meanwhile, the sober dark green of the landscape and the muted sienna-coloured road hint at the book’s moments of gravity and power.

Whether it’s audible or visible, whether it takes the form of an earworm or an afterimage – I want to convey this tone in the French version, to share this experience with French-speaking readers. Only when I’ve finished the translation can I assess what the Trésor de la langue française informatisé refers to as the “impression d’ensemble” (overall impression). To check that I’ve found the right tone, I read parts of my translation aloud and listen to their music. Needless to say, this music must closely resemble to that of the original, but it must harmonise in its own right too. The greatest compliment I’ve ever received from a publisher was when they asked whether I was a musician!

If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering what the strange sounds are in the audio file at the start of this article. As our theme here is tones, sounds and music, I wanted to give you a little aural puzzle. So, what passage in the novel do these sounds come from? Have you figured it out yet? You’ll find the answer here. 

If you want to find out more about this theme, make your way to this pit stop MUSICA!

 

Drive On.

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