- “Ten Little Negroes” is one of Agatha Christie's best-known novels. The British author wrote it in 1938.
- The great-grandson of the author has decided to change the French title. "We must no longer use terms that risk hurting: this is the behavior to adopt in 2020", he explained Wednesday at the microphone of RTL.
- The new translation - stripped of the 74 occurrences of the word "nègre" - will henceforth be published by Le Masque under the title "They were ten".
- France is far from being the first country to change the title of the novel.
Ten little niggers will gradually disappear from French bookstores. The famous novel by Agatha Christie, published by Editions du Masque, will not however be found, it will now be necessary to look for it under the title They were ten .
The decision was made by James Prichard, great-grandson of the British author. "When the book was written, the language was different and we used words that are now forgotten," said Wednesday at the microphone of RTL the man who manages the heritage of his ancestor. My guess is that Agatha Christie was there to entertain first and foremost and she wouldn't have liked the idea of someone being hurt by one of her turns of phrase. We must no longer use terms that are likely to hurt: this is the behavior to adopt in 2020. "
The change in the French title of this famous detective novel reflects the greater attention now paid to the use of certain terms, their connotations and their discriminating, stigmatizing or insulting dimension. In July, a Danish glacier renamed its “Eskimos” because the word “eskimos” is offensive to the Inuit people. In mid-August, the Knorr brand announced that its “gypsy sauce” - a flagship product in German kitchens - would henceforth be called “Hungarian paprika sauce”, out of consideration for the Roma and Sinti populations.
A different title in the United States from 1940
Be careful, however, not to reduce the change of title to an allegedly “politically correct” tune, as the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven assumes, by writing on Twitter that “inculture triumphs and reigns”.
This semantic concern is not new, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. The original title of this book, written in 1938, refers to the rhyme Ten Little Niggers , a British adaptation of the song Ten Little Indians . In the United States, it appeared in bookstores in 1940 directly under the title And Then There Were None , which is the last line of the rhyme. It is under this title that this novel is known across the Atlantic - even if an American paperback edition, had opted for the title Ten Little Indians between the 1960s and 1980s.
"In the UK, the title was changed in the 1980s," James Prichard told RTL. Also, the English-language adaptations for the small and the big screen - the first dates back to 1943 and the last to 2015 - were originally titled And Then There Were None .
France lagging behind
M6 will soon broadcast a series inspired by the novel, directed by Pascal Laugier, with Guillaume de Tonquédec and Romane Bohringer in the credits. It will be titled They were ten , as it was announced last year, when the project was formalized.
Note that France was one of the last countries to literally translate the original title while others, such as the Netherlands and Sweden, modified the title respectively in 2004 and 2007.
In Agatha Christie's original manuscript, the word “nigger” occurs 74 times. In the new translation, it has completely disappeared. “The Island of the Negro” where the plot takes place thus becomes “the Island of the Soldier”. But the main thing is not moving: the outcome will continue to surprise generations of readers.
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