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Jean Guiloineau is a translator. He has translated, among others, Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer, but also Toni Morrison. He is credited with the French versions of the first novels of the American writer disappeared: The most blue eye , The Song of Solomon , Paradise and Tar Baby , published by Christian Bourgois.
RFI: What did you encounter as concrete difficulties in translating Toni Morrison?
The main challenge was to always live up to the language and storytelling requirements of the original version. I remember asking Toni Morrison if you could not translate the title of her novel " The Bluest Eye " into French by Les Yeux plus bleus , rather than keeping the "eye" in the singular. It seemed to me that the plural was better in French. I still remember his answer: " No, it's the stare which is important, not the eyes as such! (" No, it's the look that's important here, neither the eye nor the eyes .")
What struck us when we were working on Toni Morrison's novels was her deep demand for herself, which was reminiscent of William Faulkner's writing. She expected the same demand from her readers. In his novels, there were no footnotes for easy reading. It was up to the readers to manage by staying focused to follow the thread of storytelling.
Can you cite other examples of this language requirement in Morrison's novels?
I could mention hundreds of them. Let's take the beginning of his novel Paradise : " They kill the white girl first. This sentence, apparently simple, can not be translated without taking into account the play of sounds. I had heard that the name Ku Klux Klan was originally inspired by the sound of the breech that closes: klac! klac! klac! Toni Morrison's sentences use this kind of psychosomatic resonance. Nothing is accidental in his choice of words. The word " first " for example in the opening of Paradise sounds like " fire ", in the sense of "fire" or "shoot". Instead of translating literally, I tried to transcribe the sentence by remaining close to the phonetic logic of the original version. This gives: "They kill young Blanche first". "First" rather than "first" because "first" that rhymes with "death" evokes the fall, the end.
Were human contacts with Toni Morrison easy?
She was a great lady. When we met her once, we do not forget her. In my life as a translator, I was able to approach many famous people, but the two people who made me an exceptional impression, it was undoubtedly Toni Morrison and Nelson Mandela whose autobiography I translated. I had the impression of meeting the story when I was with Mandela, but also when I was with Toni Morrison who will certainly count in African-American history in the same way as James Baldwin or Du Bois . From Mandela I was able to approach for five minutes, I remember the memory of a man attentive, kind, deeply human. Similarly, Toni Morrison was accessible, as she had become a literary "diva" that was being pulled around the world.
The translator is the first reader, in a way, of the translated work. What is the judgment of the translator on Toni Morrison's work? What did you think was the singularity of this work?
Its singularity was the ability of its author to combine power and lyricism, an alliance that is the hallmark of this novelist out of the ordinary. She had also managed to reach the universal while practicing a writing she said " irrevocably black " by the language, by the characters, by the stories she had begun to tell. She used literature to stage her conception of the world.
If you were to advise a Toni Morrison novel to someone who would like to learn from this author, which one would you recommend?
Without hesitation, I would say The most blue eye . This is Toni Morrison's first novel published in 1970, a novel that upset me the most, I think. There is an intensity, a force of narration which makes that the reader is carried away.