Creative Processes in the Two French Translations of "Sirens"
- Creative Processes in the Two French Translations of "Sirens"
When it comes to literary translation, creativity is a paradoxical notion, because it begs the question of originality in an activity that constantly toes the line between faithfulness to the source text and creation in the target language. Construed as inventiveness, resourcefulness, and the expression of artistry, however, creativity is also an essential asset when translating books as stylistically and linguistically dense as Joyce's Ulysses.1 Ulysses was twice translated into French: the first was published in 1929, done by Auguste Morel, Stuart Gilbert, and Valery Larbaud, and famously approved by Joyce himself; the second, in 2004, was also the result of a collaborative effort as eight translators worked under the supervision of Joycean scholar Jacques Aubert.2 Using the published versions of the French texts alongside their genetic archives, this essay aims to sketch the creative processes involved in the translation of "Sirens"—an episode in which "language is teased, twisted, inverted, perverted"3 so as to "[redirect] our focus to [its] surface,"4 and which thus perfectly illustrates the perennial conundrum as to whether to prioritize form or content in the act of translation.
Creativity is a necessity: translators need to be resourceful enough to convey Joyce's own experiments in the target language. The translators' insight is required by the source text while they try to remain as faithful as possible to the original form and content. Tiphaine Samoyault, who was in charge of translating the episode for the 2004 text, says that, out of the four episodes she translated, "Sirens" was by far the most challenging: "The eleventh episode as a whole raises an endless number of translation issues, as any research apparently yielding satisfying results on one page may crumble a few pages further when the same sound suggests a new meaning and the inclusion of the new meaning seems necessary."5 Indeed, in cases in which Joyce plays with the signifier and the signified, word order is jumbled, or curtailed words overflow. Also the amount of repetition on which the overall style of the episode relies, where language "circles back on itself,"6 makes its translation akin to writing under constraint.7 Such phenomena can be illustrated by the leitmotiv of the horn, which first appears in Lenehan's direct speech and is subsequently recycled in narrative sentences (the words and characters in bold highlight the phenomena under study):
Got the horn or what?
(U 11.432)
Il a la canne ou quoi?
(Ulysse 301) [End Page 141]
Il a le vit en feu ou quoi?
(Ulysse2 444)
Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the?
(U 11.1240)
Chasseur avec son cor. Cann. Avez-vous la?
(Ulysse 327)
Le chasseur avec sa corne. Vite vit. Avez-vous le?
(Ulysse2 479)
Horn. Who had the? Heehaw. Shesaw.
(U 11.1254-55)
La canne. Qui avait la. Ill'avait. Ellelevit.
(Ulysse 327)
Vit. Qui avait le? Luivit. Ellevit.
(Ulysse2 479)
In 1929, Morel used an equivalent expression in terms of meaning ("avoir la canne"), but the translator was then faced with a difficulty when tackling the second occurrence of "horn." He resorted to the word "cor"—a literal translation that works within the context of the fragment. The words "canne" and "cor" are easily understandable by an average French reader, but the sound sequence and the relationship between the different elements are lost: apart from the repetition of the /k/ sound, nothing seems to link "cor" and "cann" in this version.
In 2004, Samoyault's choice to translate "got the horn" as "il a le vit en feu" is equally explicit, but she relies on the older word "vit" ("penis"), which is now seldom used except in poetry or bawdy songs. Moreover, the repetition required for the term's second occurrence does not work: "horn" is translated as "corne" (denoting an animal's horn and the musical instrument); Samoyault compensates by adding the adverb "vite" ("fast"), which conveys a sense of urgency, linking the two instances as the first occurrence commented on during Blazes Boylan's hurried exit. Her resourcefulness, however, really shines in the third instance when dealing...
