Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In Felicioli and Gagnol’s 2010 Oscar-nominated film Une vie de chat (English title: A Cat in Paris) Dino the cat lives two lives, by day with a little girl whose mother is a police officer, and by night with a burglar he follows across... more
In Felicioli and Gagnol’s 2010 Oscar-nominated film Une vie de chat (English title: A Cat in Paris) Dino the cat lives two lives, by day with a little girl whose mother is a police officer, and by night with a burglar he follows across the rooftops of Paris. Although the directors explicitly acknowledge only classic American noir influences,1 it is clear that in choosing these somewhat unorthodox routes, burglar and cat are connecting to a well-established French topos: crime and detection in the city of light are not limited to ground level,2 nor to the classic ‘underworld’. The concept of fleeing a crime scene or following a trail, so central to crime and mystery fiction, has been strongly associated historically with the rooftops of Paris: that was where, after all, Poe chose to set the mysterious events of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), in which the crime was committed by an orangutan swinging between buildings, leaving clues to be tracked and interpreted by Poe’s detective, Dupin.
Research Interests:
Jean Anderson’s chapter explores “the identity challenge resulting from dispossession” in the context of autobiographical and fictional texts by Lydia Flem, Helene Le Chatelier, Pierrette Fleutieux and Annie Ernaux. The transition from... more
Jean Anderson’s chapter explores “the identity challenge resulting from dispossession” in the context of autobiographical and fictional texts by Lydia Flem, Helene Le Chatelier, Pierrette Fleutieux and Annie Ernaux. The transition from family home to retirement home is part of many women’s lives as they outlive both their partners and their physical and/or mental capacity to lead independent lives. As memories of the past become paramount, a change in living conditions (“downsizing”) creates a tension between two opposing impulses, preserving and discarding. Anderson’s analysis demonstrates how material possessions act as “memory keepers” that become “a means of final communication, a ‘derniere adresse’ of considerable value in binding generations together through their mediated narratives.”
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
How can we capture and respond to stories from this ‘monde du zero’ [‘world of zero’] (Tirelli), a predominantly female domain? Drawing on a range of recent texts in French, this study examines way...
Research Interests:
Few of Malet’s more than forty crime novels have been translated. Much of the attraction of his work to a source readership lies in his playful use of language rather than in the twists and turns of plot: puns, running gags and jokes of... more
Few of Malet’s more than forty crime novels have been translated. Much of the attraction of his work to a source readership lies in his playful use of language rather than in the twists and turns of plot: puns, running gags and jokes of various types abound. Translating this humour poses challenges of three main types: linguistic (ie semantic), cultural and genre-related. Moulding the text to target reader expectations (of the ‘hardboiled’ subgenre) results in significant omissions, as does the treatment of culturally-embedded allusions, an important element in Malet’s writing. Following a brief
Research Interests:
Review(s) of: Performing Aotearoa: New Zealand Theatre and drama in an age of transition, edited by Marc Maufort and David O'Donnell. Brussels, New York, Oxford, etc: Peter Lang, 2008. 463 p. Price: 32.20 pounds / 57.93. ISBN... more
Review(s) of: Performing Aotearoa: New Zealand Theatre and drama in an age of transition, edited by Marc Maufort and David O'Donnell. Brussels, New York, Oxford, etc: Peter Lang, 2008. 463 p. Price: 32.20 pounds / 57.93. ISBN 9789052013596/9052013594.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Taking a broad approach to the concept of recycling, I refer to a range of works, from sculpture to film, street art and poetry, which depict issues of importance to Indigenous peoples faced with the (after) effects of colonisation. Does... more
Taking a broad approach to the concept of recycling, I refer to a range of works, from sculpture to film, street art and poetry, which depict issues of importance to Indigenous peoples faced with the (after) effects of colonisation. Does the use of repurposed materials and/or the knowledge that these objects are the work of Indigenous creators change the way we respond to these works, and if so, how?
Research Interests:
This is a translation of an extract from Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut’s 2009 crime novel, L’Esprit de la renarde (Spirit of the Vixen, Paris: Picquier Poche), the fifth of eight in the Mandarin Tân series of investigations carried out in... more
This is a translation of an extract from Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut’s 2009 crime novel, L’Esprit de la renarde (Spirit of the Vixen, Paris: Picquier Poche), the fifth of eight in the Mandarin Tân series of investigations carried out in 17th-century Vietnam (then called Dai Viêt). An introductory note assists in setting the scene and briefly outlining some of the translation challenges for the text, notably the range of names used in the original. These vary from the relatively exotic (Madame Liu) to the partly French (Madame Prune) and the fully French (Contemplation Retenue). A partir de la traduction vers l’anglais d’un extrait du polar historique de Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut, L’Esprit de la renarde (2009), le cinquième dans la série des huit romans qui suivent les aventures du Mandarin Tân dans le Viêt-Nam du XVIIe siècle, nous présentons ici quelques réflexions sur la traduction des noms propres. Nous expliquons d’abord le contexte narratif de l’extrait, pour ensuite considérer les défis pos...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT The tensions between the strange (foreign) and the familiar (domestic), and the issue of finding a balance between them, are well known to translators. Taking crime fiction as an exemplary field, this study explores translation... more
ABSTRACT The tensions between the strange (foreign) and the familiar (domestic), and the issue of finding a balance between them, are well known to translators. Taking crime fiction as an exemplary field, this study explores translation decisions as part of a continuum alongside authorial and even editorial strategies for the mediation of ‘national’ (understood as including local and/or regional) cultures. Taking examples from Icelandic and French crime writing, this analysis focuses on the role played by food in representing nations, and explores some of the differences between well- and lesser-known cuisines in respect of representing nations both in the original and in translation.
Research Interests:
The concepts of centre and margins are of course, or ought to be, interchangeable: where we are is, in that sense, always the centre. However, no one would deny that in terms of culture, some 'centres' are more dominant than... more
The concepts of centre and margins are of course, or ought to be, interchangeable: where we are is, in that sense, always the centre. However, no one would deny that in terms of culture, some 'centres' are more dominant than others. As a translator of Pacific texts, both from French into English and from English into French (as a co-translator), I have become acutely aware of what is at stake in the 'centre' of the Pacific, in particular on the islands of New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Focusing on texts from French Polynesia, I look at some of the ways in which indigenous Pacific authors writing in French 'deterritorialise' both genre and language conventions to create new forms of expression. Chantal Spitz, for example, employs a highly poetic style, even including traditional poetic forms in her prose. How can the translator respond to these strategies in such a way as to promote a reading 'from the inside out'?
Research Interests: Art and Transcultural
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Pioneering Maori writer Patricia Grace set out to combat literary stereotypes of her people, with the aim of showing ‘who we are’: in her first novel, Mutuwhenua (1978), food is used as a marker of that indigenous difference. Taking... more
Pioneering Maori writer Patricia Grace set out to combat literary stereotypes of her people, with the aim of showing ‘who we are’: in her first novel, Mutuwhenua (1978), food is used as a marker of that indigenous difference. Taking Grace’s references as a point of departure, I extend my analysis of the treatment of food to works by other Oceanian writers, principally Chantal Spitz, Moetai Brotherson, Rai Chaze and Jimmy Ly (French Polynesia) and Déwé Gorodé and Claudine Jacques (New Caledonia). I explore ways in which the affective and cultural associations of foods are exploited in the texts in order to signal difference. How far, and to what end, do the similarities between Oceanian cultures reveal themselves through contextual readings of these references, and to what extent is it possible also to assert cultural commonalities, as they are expressed through food? I argue that the chief purpose of these strategies is political, although this is made explicit to varying degrees by...
Research Interests:
Résumé Nous nous intéressons ici à l'emploi de la densité textuelle dans trois livres de Suzanne Jacob : La Passion selon Galatée (1987), Maude (1988) et Les Aventures de Pomme Douly (1988). Notre étude se base essentiellement sur ce... more
Résumé Nous nous intéressons ici à l'emploi de la densité textuelle dans trois livres de Suzanne Jacob : La Passion selon Galatée (1987), Maude (1988) et Les Aventures de Pomme Douly (1988). Notre étude se base essentiellement sur ce concept tel qu'il est élaboré par Wolfgang Iser dans The Act of Reading (1978). Il sera question aussi de la notion de la texture comme densité de ce qui parle -dans les brèches entre les mots" (Patricia Smart, Écrire dans la maison du père, 1988). Nous constatons dans l'écriture de Jacob un certain nombre de stratégies qui, s'opposant aux pratiques et aux attentes traditionnelles de la lecture, obligent le lecteur à réfléchir sur ses propres pratiques et attentes. En fait, les textes de Jacob ne sont pas "transparents", en ce sens qu'ils ne véhiculent pas seulement la narration des événements et des émotions; ils exigeraient plutôt une lecture capable de mettre en relief des traits structurants de leur propre textualité.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... pehepehe 'la ite 'oe i to 'a'amu 'la riro teie 'ite ei papa papu Fa'ati'ara'a i te ho'ë ao 'apT na 'oe Ao 'api na to... more
... pehepehe 'la ite 'oe i to 'a'amu 'la riro teie 'ite ei papa papu Fa'ati'ara'a i te ho'ë ao 'apT na 'oe Ao 'api na to tama Ao vi 'ore no te nuna'a vi 'ore Ao tura no te nuna'a faatura Ao ti'ama no te nuna'a ma Ao mure 'ore no te nuna ... E vevovevo ana'e no tona iho reo E 'ati noa a'e, 'Aita atu. ...
Research Interests:
Chantal Spitz is a leading Tahitian writer, whose stylistic and linguistic inventiveness poses particular challenges to the reader. Her writing shows a clear resistance to what we might term metropolitanite: the imposition of standards... more
Chantal Spitz is a leading Tahitian writer, whose stylistic and linguistic inventiveness poses particular challenges to the reader. Her writing shows a clear resistance to what we might term metropolitanite: the imposition of standards and values exported from France to French Polynesia through the process of colonization, and having an enduring effect as promulgated through the education system and the adoption of literary norms as 'universal'. Even more than the reader, the translator must come to grips with Spitz's deviations from such norms, in particular where there is a mingling of so-called written and oral codes. Beyond the pragmatic decisions necessitated on the translator's part by these hybrid texts, there lies a profound questioning by the author of the applicability of genre distinctions.