For centuries, the process of translating literature has been likened to the art of acting, perhaps most famously by Ralph Manheim, who claimed “translators are like actors: we speak lines by someone else.” In his 2001 essay “Translating Maryse Condé: A Personal Itinerary,” translator Richard Philcox takes this idea a step further, writing that, when reading his translations of Condé’s work in front of an audience: “I become the author, and the translation becomes the text. I thus become Maryse Condé.” Certainly, as Condé’s husband and translator, Philcox has built an impressive career living and working with the Guadeloupean winner of the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize, their personal and professional lives so enmeshed that Philcox and Condé share an email address. Yet, their divergent opinions on the importance of translation mean that Philcox has always approached his work with a surprising degree of independence. On the eve of the North American publication of Condé’s novel The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana, I corresponded with Philcox about “conversing” with Condé on paper, translating French Creole, and his long-held secret desire to become an actor.
—Sarah Timmer Harvey, May 2020
Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): How did you come to translation as a career? Was it a path that you always intended to follow?
Richard Philcox (RP): I began my career as a technical translator with Kodak-Pathé, the French affiliate of Eastman Kodak, in Paris. The task of the technical translator was to translate into English the company’s annual, technical, and financial reports, instruction leaflets, and general correspondence that had to be sent back to the US headquarters in Rochester. It was when Maryse Condé’s novel Heremakhonon was published in 1976 that I launched into literary translation. I was approached by Three Continents Press in Washington DC for an English translation and used my time in the office to work on it. At the time I hadn’t much thought about the history and theory of translation and adapted much of the rules of technical translation to a literary work: i.e. absolute clarity, no ambiguity, short sentences, no time for lyricism, and nothing left to the imagination. None of this corresponded to a novel like Heremakhonon or for that matter anything literary or poetical. I think that if I had to redo the translation, it would be very different today. It was much later when I came to teach translation that I researched the many theories and history of translation and endeavored to convey my enthusiasm to the students.
STH: When and how did you first meet Maryse Condé?
RP: We met in Kaolack, Senegal in 1969 when we were both teaching at the Lycée Gaston Berger. At that time Maryse had not become a writer and had no published work to her name. I had little idea that I would become her translator. Maryse had gone through many difficult and harrowing experiences during her life in West Africa (see What is Africa to Me? Fragments of a True-to-Life Autobiography, Seagull Press) and it was she who taught me, a naïve Englishman, the politics of colonialism and its impact throughout the developing world. This helped me enormously later on while translating Frantz Fanon since he had put into theory what Maryse was writing in her novels.
STH: In 2018, Condé was awarded the New Academy Prize for Literature (the Alternative Nobel Prize) for her body of work. What has winning this prize meant for both of you?
RP: The award came to Maryse as a total surprise. Besides being happy and proud, she was relieved. For the first time, she was at peace with herself. She had been writing for many years without any special recognition, never having been awarded any of France’s prestigious prizes such as the Goncourt or the Renaudot. Now the voice of Guadeloupe, a powerful and magical voice, could be heard internationally.
Although it sounds pretentious, I did feel that I had somehow contributed to this award thanks to my translations. Not many people in Sweden or in the English-speaking countries can read French, and many of those readers were reading my translations of Maryse’s novels. As the journalist Tim Parks wrote in The Observer on April 25, 2010: “The translator should do his job and then disappear. The great charismatic creative writer wants to be all over the globe. And the last thing he wants to accept is that the majority of his readers are not reading him.” Consequently, I felt that I hadn’t disappeared and was extremely proud that Maryse had crossed over national and Francophone borders and could now be read from Japan to the US.
STH: As a translator, you find yourself in the unique position of translating the work of your spouse. For many translators, this would be a dream scenario, as it suggests unlimited access to the author of the text you are translating. Yet, in several interviews, Condé has indicated that she does not discuss the translations with you. Do you collaborate with her in any way during the translation process? And if not, how do you solve any queries or challenges you might have?
RP: In other words, we are intimate enemies. Maryse feels that she is dispossessed by the translation which for her becomes a very different text. She says that the relationship between an author and her text can be compared to no other. For her the translator turns the musicality of the text upside down and in the end, destroys the lovingly elaborated score. What voice then replaces the author’s? According to her, it can only be that of the translator’s.
There is, however, a bond between author and translator as husband and wife. It is a permanent interaction between two people living in harmony, traveling, and living together. An example of this is when I took Maryse to an old sugar mill in Guadeloupe in one of the most desolate parts of the island that reminded me of the landscape she described in La migration des coeurs—which I translated as Windward Heights as a reference to her Caribbean adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Or how our trip to Charleston, South Carolina in 1989—where the roofs were still covered in blue tarpaulins three months after Hurricane Hugo had also devastated Guadeloupe—became her inspiration for her novel The Last of the African Kings. She says that the translation loses the original music and tone. Naturally I don’t agree. Since a translator has so many doubts about a text, I have to plead with Maryse for clarification on certain points. This is squeezed grudgingly out of her and I continue my translation working on the music and tone that would be familiar to an English-speaking reader. When I translated the works of Frantz Fanon, not only did I have the initial translation to deal with, but also all those scholars of Fanon breathing down my neck who have staked their reputation on Fanon’s ideas.
Maryse’s indifference to the translation, however, gives me a free hand and lets my imagination roam in the English language or as Gayatri Spivak says: “The task of the translator is to facilitate this love between the original and its shadow.” In big screen biopics, for instance, it is not necessary to resemble Ray Charles, George VI, or Margaret Thatcher in the flesh. What is important is that the actor convinces the spectator of the character’s voice and personality. The same goes for translation: we are not looking for a literal word-for-word translation, but a voice, a music, and a spirit that convinces the reader of the author’s original talent.
STH: In your essay, “Translating Maryse Condé: A Personal Itinerary,” you wrote about the pleasure you find in reading your translations in front of an audience. You liken the experience to that of an actor or performing a ventriloquist’s act. Does this idea of the translator as ventriloquist speak to your view on the role of the translator?
RP: I have always had a secret desire to become an actor, and perhaps reading a translation in front of an audience compensates for this. Like an actor, a translator needs a text and they both interpret it with their personal talent. “Interpretation” is the key word, and both actor and translator rely on this personal talent to convince their audience and readers. Different actors and different translators will each interpret their texts differently. The same is true for an orchestra whose interpretation of Mozart, for example, will be different at every performance. Edith Grossman writes in her book Why Translation Matters: “It is fascinating and puzzling to realize that only translation has to fend off the insidious damaging question of whether or not it is, can be, or should be possible. It would never occur to anyone to ask whether it is feasible for an actor to perform a dramatic role or a musician to interpret a piece of music.” As for the definition of “ventriloquism” the Oxford Concise English Dictionary says: “The skill of speaking or uttering sounds so that they seem to come from the speaker’s dummy or a source other than the speaker.” We can equate the translator as the dummy, but usually with a different voice.
STH: You have taught translation at various institutions around the world. Are there particular texts that you believe to be essential reading for students of translation? Or translations that you tend to revisit when you are seeking inspiration?
RP: I would like to mention two essential texts for students of translation: After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation by George Steiner and Translation/History/Culture edited by André Lefevere. I try to avoid seeking inspiration from other people’s translations and there is nothing worse than having to correct other people’s work, such as we had to do for Barbara Bray’s translation of Segu.
There are some interesting translation exercises that I have taught, such as the comparison of previous translations of an author’s work. For example, Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal has been subjected to at least four or five English translations and I have retranslated Les Damnés de la terre and Peau noire, masques blancs by Frantz Fanon. An analysis of the period when the translation was done and who the translator was (in terms of gender, origin, education, and color) gives valuable insights into the choice of vocabulary as well as loss and gain in the translation.
STH: Your English translation of Condé’s The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana was published in North America in early May. It’s a novel about a set of twins, who, while remaining physically close, follow very different spiritual and intellectual paths. In your opinion, who or what do Ivan and Ivana represent?
RP: There are two ways to act as a colonized person: either you accept the lifestyle of the colonizer like Ivana or you rebel against it like Ivan. Most Guadeloupeans accept the legacy of colonialism and are satisfied with being French and living in a French Overseas Department; a few refuse this choice. In Maryse’s speech accepting her award at Stockholm, she said she was proud to be one of the few Guadeloupeans who said “No!”
STH: Condé has previously spoken about the many jokes she has made in the pages of The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana. In your translations, do you ever provide any extra context to humor that is culturally specific or language-bound?
RP: Many of the jokes and cultural references in The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana are specifically French, such as references to the French singers Barbara or Sheila and to comedians such as Coluche whose reputation never went far beyond French borders. It would be inappropriate to give them English or American equivalents as this would dramatically change the context. As Susan Bassnett writes in her book Translation Studies:
“Paris cannot be London or New York, it must be Paris; our hero must be Pierre, not Peter; he must drink an aperitif, not a cocktail; smoke Gauloises, not Kents; and walk down the rue du Bac, not Back Street.”
The Caribbean context is the same. If I translate a French Creole word or expression by the Caribbean English equivalent (e.g. béké or white Creole by the Jamaican or Barbadian buckra or backra) it is a shift toward an altogether different society. I prefer to keep the French Creole word and qualify it such as a bakoua straw hat or a golle, a shapeless Creole dress. Many times, an insult or a greeting can stay as it is in Creole and can easily be understood by the reader. In all her novels, Maryse considers the reader to be an intelligent individual, able to read the implications between the lines and understand cultural references.
STH: Towards the end of The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana, there is a reflection on Guadeloupe’s national narrative, which concludes that “Guadeloupe is an overseas department. Its only national narrative is that of France.” Do you share this opinion? Do you think that fiction has a role in (re-)shaping the national narrative in Guadeloupe?
RP: If you have been colonized, you’ve been brainwashed and taught to think and behave like the colonizer. One of the things that struck me when first visiting Guadeloupe was how the news media focused more on Metropolitan France than on local events. People would be better informed about the traffic and weather in Paris than on the island. This has changed a little since then but Paris still pulls the strings and the local politicians are little more than marionettes. The large consumer French chain stores are well established and there is a constant flow of people back and forth between Guadeloupe and Metropolitan France, very much like the situation in Puerto Rico. The population of French Antilleans in France is about the same as on the islands, an exodus in the search for work.
I’m not sure that fiction changes the national narrative for an islander from Guadeloupe. People read very little in Guadeloupe and are more impressed by fiction from France or when an author wins a major literary prize. Fiction does, however, bring a better understanding of the political, social, and cultural situation for French and non-French readers by embodying the national narrative in a story. This is where translation is such a precious asset and puts literature from the French Antilles on the map.
STH: How has your life with Maryse influenced your work as a translator?
RP: We are now an old couple, and silences speak louder than words. I do feel, however, that by translating Maryse I am conversing with her, sometimes talking back to her, telling her fond thoughts, sometimes arguing with her. Sometimes, like The Story of the Cannibal Woman, the text becomes so personal that I can’t help thinking of Gayatri Spivak’s remark “. . . translation is the most intimate act of reading . . . To surrender in translation is more erotic than ethical.” (from “The Politics of Translation” in The Translation Studies Reader). In no other text are we—as author and translator, husband and wife—closer than in The Story of the Cannibal Woman, crystallized as Stephen and Rosalie. Translation as an act of interpretation is a special case of communication, and communication is a sexual act as George Steiner says in After Babel.
Every time I have been moved by the beauty of a text, I have wanted to insert it in my own culture and share it with my fellow readers. I translate myself into the author, place myself in the historical or present-day context and relive the experience that inspired the original work. I have learned the virtues of empathy, changed color and sex, crossed borders and cultures. As a result, I can remain faithful, in all senses of the word, as translator and husband, and yet remain free to continue translating as a man of our times.
Richard Philcox is the long-time translator of Maryse Conde’s works, beginning with her first novel. In Conde’s recent speech in Stockholm on receiving the New Academy Prize for the Alternative Nobel Prize for Literature, she―paraphrasing André Breton―described Philcox, her husband as well as her translator, as her “constant oxygen.” Philcox has also translated Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, has taught translation courses at Princeton, University of Maryland, and the University of San Francisco, and has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sarah Timmer Harvey is a writer and translator currently based in New York. Sarah holds an MFA in writing and translation from Columbia University and, most recently, Sarah’s work has appeared in Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, Gulf Coast Journal, and Cagibi.
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