In his influential essay "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation," linguist and literary theorist Roman Jakobson concludes, "poetry is by definition untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible" (131). The surprising claim works to remind readers that creative expression finds value in particular forms and readers' experience of those forms. If changing an expression from one language to another necessarily changes its form, creative translation has to consider how different languages create different contexts for expression. Those differences require the movement of an idea—or, more accurately, a system of ideas—from one place to another.

In other words, Jakobson reminds us that translating a text is not about changing word for word from one language into another; it’s about motion, a dynamism within its own genre. A translator has an ethical obligation to preserve the structure of the source language (SL) as faithfully as possible, but not so much that it misrepresents the structure or meaning of the target language (TL). There must exist a balance of formal semantics and aesthetic features, keeping both words and sense in mind in addition to the target audience. Literary translations have a little more freedom than technical translations. However, they also struggle in the tug-of-war between where, and to what extent, their responsibilities, loyalties, and interests lie. They must transfer the feelings and cultural nuances, puns, humor, colloquialisms, even social implications of the SL, remaining truthful and honest to the original source, while also making it legible to the target audience.


Translating English to French

There may be several inescapable barriers in translating directly from English to French, including converting words from the Germanic roots of English to the Romance roots of French. Trying to replicate dialect is apparently one of the most difficult challenges for a translator (Berthele 588-613). There is the French hegemony of language, but nevertheless, it is often the case that translators in general have swayed from repetition, predominately in French, and from translating dialect directly. The dialect of the characters, especially with the use of repetition, is a prominent feature of Ernest Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in English, but is not as frequent in the French translation.


Michelle Herpe-Voslinsky: French Translator of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Around 1983, at the Salon du Livre de Paris (Paris Book Fair), Ms. Michelle Herpe-Voslinsky, the translator of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, met the publisher of Éditions Liana Levi, an independent publishing house founded in 1982. And in the late 1980s, that publishing house became acquainted with Ernest J. Gaines’ works thanks to Michel Fabre, author, specialist in American literature in Paris, professor emeritus at the Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, and the husband of Geneviève Fabre, one of Ms. Herpe-Voslinsky’s professors.

As a translator for Liana Levi, Ms. Herpe-Voslinsky first began work on A Gathering of Old Men (Colère en Louisiane), which was published in France in 1989 and already a television movie by German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff in 1987. She would go on to translate other books by Gaines including Catherine Carmier, A Long Day in November (Une longue journée de novembre), Of Love and Dust (D’amour et de poussière), Bloodline (Par la petite porte), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (Autobiographie de Miss Jane Pittman), In My Father’s House (Le nom du fils), A Lesson Before Dying (Dites-leur que je suis un homme), and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (L’homme qui fouettait les enfants). And in 1994, in honor of her translations of Gaines’ books, Ms. Herpe-Voslinsky received the Prix Maurice Edgar Coindreau, an award named after the French translator, literary critic, and presenter of major twentieth-century American writers to France.


French Translation of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

For Ms. Herpe-Voslinsky, one of the biggest challenges in the novel was indeed finding a way to translate the dialect, because, as she mentions in an online interview, the conversational use of words that may be natural for English-speaking writers to produce is not necessarily customary in French, especially in 1971 or 1989 (Herpe-Voslinsky). In French, the phrases tend to be longer, while the English is more flexible, something often difficult to carry across. She also noted that this hesitation of the French translation tradition was specifically due to postcolonial guilt; it was frowned upon to imitate native speech patterns. Instead of emulating the dialect, which might have been seen as offensive, she employed a more standard French syntax, peppered with rural language or that inspired by French from the Antilles, used for example by Caribbean author Patrick Chamoiseau. She did not want to dismiss the expectations of the French readership, but did want to retain Gaines’s voice and ideas and those of his characters. She aimed to remain in sync with the rhythm of the sentences, with the “music,” a term reminiscent of the musical influence of Ernest Gaines, which she also derived from author Colum McCann, whom she worked with on Fishing the Sloe-Black River: Stories (La Rivière de l’exil).

It is within the dialect of the novel where the most variations from English to French can be seen. The dialect Miss Jane and other black characters use is an authentic folkloric vernacular based on Southern, black, and Louisiana patterns.

Here are several examples where the French either offers variations of the same term or is more standard, rather than colloquial:  

The French version does follow the repetition found in the English version in several occurrences. However, it is not consistent with all accounts, and again swings, so to speak, more toward what is considered standard French: