Towards Close Reading in Translation Studies

A comparative study of Dag Solstad’s Genanse og verdighet in English and French

Martin Shantz Heide

Nor4490 – Master thesis in Practical Literature: Publishing, Editing, Criticism

Department of linguistics and Scandinavian studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo

Fall 2020

Summary

What happens to unconventional language in translation? What happens when we subject translations from several languages to close reading and attentive comparative analysis? This master’s thesis attempts to explore and illuminate these linguistic aspects of translation. Dag Solstad’s 1994 novel Genanse og verdighet serves as a vehicle for exploration. The novel’s language, rhythm, and grammatical construction creates a rant-like speech pattern, complete with a radical sociolect and morphology. This poses stylistic problems for the translators. Close readings of Sverre Lyngstad’s 2006 translation Shyness and dignity and Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s 2008 translation Honte et dignité show how the translators primarily rely on conventionalizing techniques, obliterating several of Solstad’s stylistic peculiarities, affecting grammatical, lexicographical, and semantic aspects of the text. Both translations finally appear more conventional vis-à-vis the source text, employing more traditional vocabulary, morphology, and narration. These observations are sometimes, but not always, present in other translations by Lyngstad and Coursaud. The particularities of the two conventionalizing techniques vary considerably. In the end, a translation seems to be a heterogeneous object of research, resisting traditional categories. This thesis simultaneously builds an argument for the employment of close reading and comparative research techniques. The mentions of these methods are surprisingly few in anthologies of methods and approaches in translation studies. The data collected through close reading allows for an extensive comparison with elements such as the translators’ corpora, moving from minute details to overarching observations. These observations validate the employment and express recognition of close reading and comparative research as valid translation studies paradigms.

Preface

The background for this master’s thesis is, in many ways, double. With my limited background in translation research, I knew I wanted to work within the field. After all, honing one’s analytic skills is an integral part of developing as a researcher, something I was eager to do. I also wanted to employ my capacities of language, being in a position where I speak three languages more or less fluently; Norwegian, English, and French. While I have worked on translation analysis and theory before, I had never done an analysis that spanned more than one source and one target language. As I figured the English and French target languages must imply different strategies, obstacles, and solutions, they would make for an interesting comparative analysis. It was then suggested to me that I work on Dag Solstad, whose particular style would require different translative approaches. At the time, Tredje, og siste, roman om Bjørn Hansen had just been released, and the newspaper polemic discussed in the thesis’ introduction was fresh in mind. However, Solstad’s novel from 2019 was all too recent to use as a premise, as I needed a novel translated into both English and French. His 1994 novel Genanse og verdighet became an apparent choice, as its extended reception in Norway and abroad made both English and French translations easy to find. Writing under the program ‘Practical literature: Publishing, Editing, Criticism’ rather than comparative literature, where I have done most of my academic work, required me to rethink the project slightly. Doing a pure qualitative and textual analysis could risk conflicting with the program’s specific angle. That being said, as I am ultimately reading and analyzing various publications of the same novel, the project definitely entails the element of publishing. By an extended definition, this also implies editing, and I also comment on certain biographical data. Additionally, the project explores the context of the translation studies framework, theoretical and critical, enveloping the final moment of the program’s title. As the novels analyzed are remediated versions of Solstad’s original, it answers to the Norwegian distinction, Litteraturformidling. Writing during the covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has presented more than a few issues. As my project’s position vis-à-vis the theoretical framework of the translation studies academic library required a fair share of contextualization, the closing of all libraries for a significant portion of the year was problematic. Without consistent access to the required material, there were immense risks of gaps and holes in the theoretical library I was able to engage in the thesis. In the end, I hope and believe I have avoided any glaring omissions.

iii

A master’s thesis is not a completely individual product; several people are involved in the writing process, tied both to the academic institutions and to me personally. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor, Professor Jon Haarberg, for his excellent and engaging work in reading, critiquing, and advising me on my project. I would also like to thank my proofreaders, Adrian Christian Eidem and Siri Heide, for their thorough readings and helpful comments on the text. Additional thanks go out to Professor Marianne Egeland, the program supervisor for ‘Practical Literature: Publishing, Editing, Criticism,’ without whom the practical and pragmatic approach to comparative literature would not be a specialized educational program, and Professor Ståle Dingstad, who was a great help and support in the early phases of the project. Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to Professor Lawrence Venuti, whose conversations and email correspondences following his guest lectures at the University of Oslo in 2018 were as interesting as they were motivating for my research.

Contents

Summary ...... i

Preface ...... iii

Chapter 1: The premise of an investigation ...... 1 1.1 Translating the unconventional novel ...... 1 1.2 Outlining the project and the methodological approach ...... 2 1.3 Positioning the project within the translation studies discipline ...... 4

Chapter 2: Sverre Lyngstad’s Shyness and Dignity ...... 8 2.1 A renowned translator’s take on modern literature...... 8 2.2 First excerpt ...... 10 2.3 Second excerpt ...... 14 2.4 Third excerpt ...... 17 2.5 Sverre Lyngstad’s translational optic...... 21

Chapter 3: Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Honte et dignité ...... 25 3.1 French translator and first-class knight ...... 25 3.2 First excerpt ...... 27 3.3 Second excerpt ...... 32 3.4 Third excerpt ...... 34 3.5 Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational optic ...... 37

Chapter 4: Revisiting the premise ...... 44 4.1 An invalid or implicit method ...... 44 4.2 Revisiting the theoretical context...... 47 4.3 A method with a past ...... 49

Bibliography ...... 51

Chapter 1: The premise of an investigation

1.1 Translating the unconventional novel

In the fall of 2019, the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen ran a story on grammatical errors in Dag Solstad’s novel from the same year, Tredje, og siste, roman om Bjørn Hansen (Third, and final, novel about Bjørn Hansen). Two proofreaders, who were engaged by the newspaper, managed to find around 500 cases of faulty punctuation in this 107-page novel alone (Larsen and Espevik 2019, 26). Brushing aside Solstad’s romantic view on the moment of literary creation, the newspaper attributed the grammatical anomalies to carelessness on the side of the widely acclaimed writer (Larsen and Espevik 2019, 26–27). Dag Solstad responded to the article, accusing Klassekampen of cultural pedantry (Solstad 2019, 14–15), which led the editor-in-chief of the newspaper’s cultural-editorial staff to publish a humbling withdrawal, apologizing to the esteemed author (Skurdal 2019, 14–15). Solstad’s untraditional writing style proposes some fascinating questions for those of us who are interested in translated literature. What do translators do when they are faced with the unconventional? How are deviations from standardized grammar and traditional syntax treated in translated literature? While Dag Solstad is by no means an out and out avant-garde writer, the transmitting of his artistic liberty is worth a closer examination.1 Perhaps because he is not as radical as the avant-garde experimental writers, the errors solicit a different type of attention. After all, as the case with Klassekampen implies, Solstad’s faults are considered mere errors, not stylistic or rhetoric elements of his authorship. The question becomes; how are the stylistic particularities of Dag Solstad’s novels rendered in translation? There are several historical examples of inadequate attempts at translation, especially translations done in the same era as an unconventional original. Jorge Louis Borges famously suggested we should wait until the end of a literary epoch to translate its literature for this reason (Borges 2012, 104). However, a thorough examination of Borges’ reasoning, the translations of unconventional novels, remains an underdeveloped translation studies project. Of course, there are some, such as Umberto Eco’s studies of the French translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) (Eco 2007). Fact remains, these studies are far too few and too far between. This master’s thesis is something of an attempt at expanding this library.

1 The word ‘transmitting’ is here used with a meaning close to its dictionary definition: “to pass from one place or person to another” (Stevenson and Waite 2011, 1533). In the context of this thesis, this denotes the process of transmitting language content from one linguistic domain to another, i.e. translation.

1.2 Outlining the project and the methodological approach

While Tredje, og siste, roman om Bjørn Hansen is a far too recent publication to have been translated into several languages, there are novels by Dag Solstad that could serve as excellent research objects for this study. It stands to reason that the project should examine one of his novels, as the controversy surrounding his style is the primary motivation for the thesis. A novel that serves as an example of Solstad’s style, as well as a subject of numerous translations, is Genanse og verdighet (1994). The two translations of the novel that I wish to analyze here are Sverre Lyngstad’s 2006 English translation (Shyness and dignity) and Jean- Baptiste Coursaud’s 2008 French version (Honte et dignité). The question asked is a question that concerns language above all else. The article in Klassekampen tries to correct Solstad’s novel in the strictest grammatical sense; they correct his punctuation. It is on this background that I launch my research on language transferal. In my opinion, the best way to explore the translator’s treatment of the source language is through a side-by-side comparative reading, one that is mainly focused on the linguistic deviations found in the translation.2 While the entirety of the translator’s cultural pedigree is fascinating, I am more interested in the translator’s treatment and transmission of untraditional linguistic elements. I am therefore principally interested in the translator as someone who exercises linguistic influence rather than cultural. While the two, culture and language, undoubtedly affect each other, restricting my analysis to one of the two is necessary to comply with the predetermined scope and length of this master’s thesis. The translator is here understood as a harborer of linguistic relevance for the translation. Due to this conception of the translator, the relevance of the translators’ personal stylistic and linguistic traits, the foundation of their translational language is an interesting element to the analysis. Therefore, I am interested in looking at the translators’ linguistic habits by looking at their other writings, translations, and comments about their craft. Just as Solstad has particular stylistic traits observable across several novels, I believe that translators should have similar recognizable elements that ought to correlate between different works. Whether these elements are due to cultural background or not is something I will not explore in-depth, but it should be noted that the two translators, Sverre Lyngstad and Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, are almost diametrical opposites as far as background is concerned. In other words, whether the results of the analyses expose difference or similarity, they subtly comment on the relevance of the translators’ backgrounds.

2 Other linguistic deviation than the most obvious one; the deviating language.

The addition of the translators’ corpora extends the scope of the comparative reading. As I wish to remain consistent in my linguistic approach, I am only interested in verbalizations and statements from the translators themselves and their relation to the three languages: Norwegian, French, and English. As such, I will not delve into each translator’s biographical data, other than their writings. Thus, the method is starting to look quite recognizable, with its roots in the approaches of Formalism and New Criticism. However, my project is decidedly different from these as it is not a hermetic analysis; it will compare different works of different writers and translators. My proposed project would probably be impossible if I examined the translations in isolation, separate from their source material. A specific method is starting to take shape; a close reading and comparative analysis of the translations and the respective translators’ corpora. The thesis’ formal restrictions are considered; the project’s scope is restricted to close linguistic reading, and only a selection of the translators’ corpora will be represented. These restrictions are in concordance with the project’s motive to investigate the transmission of Solstad’s unconventional language in the translations. A linguistically attentive close reading and comparative analysis of the English and French translations of Dag Solstad’s Genanse og verdighet might be a more precise (but less idiomatical and readable) title to this project. Following the project and the method, I am mainly interested in how linguistic shifts correspond to the source text’s significance or fail to do so.3 The three types of shifts that will be of particular interest are grammatical, lexicographical, and semantic shifts. Grammatical shifts are significant alterations to grammar, such as morphological changes or deviating punctuation. Lexicographical shifts constitute alterations to strictly denotative values, while semantic shift signifies changes made to connotations, as the name implies. As I am studying transferal over different linguistic domains, in both Germanic and Romance languages, alterations to everything from language registries to forms of negations can affect these three values. A formal form of negation in French, for example, could alter the grammatical construction of the phrase, replace the original lexicographical choice, and change connotations and semantic values of the original passage.

3 The terms ‘shift’ and ‘correspondence’ are taken from John Cunnison Catford, as he defined them in his book A Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965). According to Catford, ‘formal correspondence’ is “any TL [target language] category which may be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the ‘same’ place in the economy of the TL as the given SL [source language] category occupies in the SL” (Catford 1965, 32). A ‘shift’ is a divergence from such correspondence: “By ‘shifts’ we mean departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL” (Catford 1965, 73). In this thesis, I will not support an ideal of one-to-one transmission of significance. The terms are still valuable tools, as stated in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies: “Translation involves the transfer of certain values of expression or content across a semiotic border; shifts are concomitant with this transfer” (Bakker, Koster, and Leuven-Zwart 2000, 226).

1.3 Positioning the project within the translation studies discipline

While the method has been defined as close comparative reading with particular attention to linguistic deviations, I still need to position my study within the broader context of the translation studies discipline. While a comparative survey of my project vis-à-vis the entire academic library would be useful and enlightening, I will have to restrict this to comply with length restrictions of the thesis. Defining the most apparent traits of my approach might be useful, so I can look at the translation studies traditions that are the most similar to my own. Above all, my approach will analyze deviations in language between source text and translation and attentively research changes to significant structures in the novel. The project is linguistic in nature. Furthermore, the research is based on a classic literary research method, the comparative study, looking at the different editions directly compared to one another. This implies the employment of hermeneutic strategies. Finally, the translator is considered a harborer of linguistic relevance, based on which he exerts influence. The translators’ stylistic consistency will be examined over several examples of their corpora. Thus, the study extends beyond the primary research object, the translations themselves. Hermeneutic models have particular relevance for translation studies theory, which originates in nineteenth-century German hermeneutics. Friedrich Schleiermacher first differentiates between target- and source-oriented translative approaches in Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens4 (1813) (see Schleiermacher 2012), a binary view on translation that was widely supported. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of annexation is built on this view (see Humboldt 1992), as is Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s idea that a synthetic approach would produce the better result (Goethe 2012, 65). Building on these positivist and sociocultural perspectives, Walter Benjamin develops a Hegelian theory of translation as a literary work’s continuing presence and influence within various literary domains (see Benjamin 2012). Benjamin names this its “Überleben” (Benjamin 1991, 10).5 There are further developments of the hermeneutic approach during the twentieth century. In his influential work After Babel (1975), George Steiner develops a hermeneutic framework for translational action, deconstructing and reconstructing the source text through a set of specific moves (see Steiner 1977). This idea is altered somewhat through the 70s and 80s. Hans Vermeer and Katharina Reiß develop Skopos Theorie, where the translator’s moves

4 Original title, later republished as Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens in 1816.

5 Often translated to the English “after life” (Benjamin 2012, 79), a translation that I am not particularly fond of, as it would presuppose a death of a literary work. I would argue this is the opposite of Benjamin’s idea.

are reframed as a strategy of aligning the source text to fragments of the target literary system (see Vermeer and Reiß 1984, Reiss 2001 and Vermeer 2012).6 The most considerable proliferation of linguistic approaches to translation studies is undoubtedly in the mid-century. Except for Roman Jakobson and Vladimir Nabokov’s skepticism towards recodification and its ethics (see Jakobson 1959 and Nabokov 2012), most linguists throughout the 50s and 60s were more positivist in their theories and approaches. Jean-Paul Vinay, Jean Darbelnet, Eugene Nida, George Mounin, and John Cunnison Catford propose different variants of equivalency theories, presupposing that equivalent words and phrasings exist within different linguistic systems (see Vinay and Darbelnet 1975, Nida and Taber 1969, Mounin 1963 and Catford 1965). According to these theories, the translator’s work is simple, locating different carriers of identical significance. In the wake of Skopos and action-theoretical approaches to translation analysis, Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury pioneered new, empiric directions in the discipline, filling a hole in Holmes’ map of translation studies (see Even-Zohar 1990 and Toury 1995).7 The resulting subdiscipline, Polysystem theory (alternatively: descriptive translation studies), has a more cultural bias,8 as Susan Bassnett explains in her 2014 book Translation:

Holmes, Even-Zohar and Toury, along with José Lambert and others set out parameters of a new approach to the study of translation, which has sometimes been referred to as ‘the polysystems approach,’ sometimes as ‘descriptive translation studies,’[…] and as ‘the Manipulation approach.’ […C]riticized for shifting the emphasis onto the target culture to the detriment of the textual source […what descriptive translation studies] succeeded in doing was to position the study of translation within the study of culture more broadly, highlighting political and socio-economical factors. (Bassnett 2014, 24)

As Bassnett clarifies, polysystem theory aims to explore socioeconomic perspectives, a translation studies parallel to the proliferation of cultural studies in the 1990s. This tendency to focus on reflections on socioeconomic and material facets of translation is often reflected

6 A more cynical take on these ideas, along with those of annexation, forms during the eighties and nineties. Writers such as Antoine Berman, Henri Meschonnic, and Gayatri Spivak start discussing the impossibility of translation and its ethical implications (see Berman 1984, Meschonnic 1999, and Spivak 2012).

7 “Holmes’ map of translation studies” (Baker 2000, 278) is James Holmes’ attempt at creating a visual representation of the different branches and subdisciplines in translation studies. It is now “widely accepted as a solid framework for organizing academic activities within this domain” (Baker 2000, 277).

8 “Polysystem theory--under whatever formulation--eventually strives to account for larger complexes than literature” (Even-Zohar 1990, 2), states Itamar Even-Zohar in Poetics Today Volume 11, number 1 (1990), dedicated to polysystem studies. With this, he reaffirms his position from “The Position of Translated Literature Within the Literary Polysystem” (1978), where translation is judged, not by its product, but rather as “an activity dependent on the relations within a certain cultural system” (Even-Zohar 2001, 197). Similarly, Gideon Toury, in Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (2012), describes translation as “performed in a particular cultural environment” (Toury 2012, 6); they are “designed to meet certain needs there” (Toury 2012, 6).

in the titles of works within the subdiscipline. Translation and Power (2002) (eds. Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler), Apropos of Ideology (2003) (ed. Maria Calzada Pérez), and Agents of Translation (2009) (eds. John Milton and Paul Banda) are some evident examples. Following the proliferation of descriptive translation studies, Corpora translation studies become a more established subdiscipline in the 1990s, headed by translation researchers such as Mona Baker. Remaining much in the spirit of its mother discipline, “they regard linguistic regularities as probabilistic norms of behaviour that reflect, construct and reproduce culture” (Laviosa 2013, 228), in order “to uncover the nature of translated text as a mediated communicative event” (Baker 1993, 243). Mainly invested in searching for universal translation tendencies (Laviosa 2013, 232), Corpora translation studies researchers establish and investigate translation by establishing and confirming hypotheses (Laviosa 2013, 230). More modern approaches tend to nuance these approaches and create a more synthetic sociocultural and theoretical analytic strategy. For example, Lawrence Venuti’s hermeneutic method applies polysystemic elements to a translator’s horizon of interpretation. For Venuti, we need to “read translations as translations, as text in their own rights” (Venuti 2013, 208). This implies that we understand that “[t]he variations [in translated texts] may be determined not simply by the reading language and culture, but by a reading of the text that incorporates knowledge of the source culture as well” (Venuti 2013, 195), an interpretive horizon created by linguistic and materialistic considerations, stemming both from the source culture and the receiving situation.9 This synthetic approach resonates more with my own. The discipline of World Literature often comments on the role of translation. While theoreticians such as David Damrosch, Franco Moretti, and Pascale Casanova attribute importance to translation, it is usually instrumental. For example, Damrosch readapts Walter Benjamin’s theory of translation in What is World Literature (2003) (Damrosch 2013, 199, 204), but it is described as an agent in his particular circulation system. Casanova affords translation a much more prominent role in La République Mondiale de Lettres (1999), as the very craft that makes circulation possible at all (Casanova 2008, 359–365), but it is not at the crux of her theory; it is merely the remediation of the circulating literature. The conception of

9 Umberto Eco does, arguably, attempt a similar analysis in his works; Experiences in Translation (2000) and Dire quasi la stessa cosa (2003), as he describes translation as a process of negotiations performed by the translator (see Eco 2007 and 2012). In addition to this, the Italian intellectual works closely with examples in his analysis. However, the examples are both problematic; in the case of In the name of the rose (1980) and Ulysses (1922), the originators took part in the translation process, inevitably changing the hermeneutic conditions.

remediation resonates with my research on metamorphosis in transmission, but I will explore translation as more than an instrument for circulation. How can I contextualize my project within the linguistic, hermeneutic, and descriptive translation studies framework? While they resonate with the project’s three constitutive elements, the linguistic focus, comparative method, and extension of the scope, they do not seem to fully align with my approach. For example, while the hermeneutic traditions often employ comparative methods, in-depth analysis of the research object is usually sacrificed in favor of overarching superstructural theories. Schleiermacher does not even analyze any examples, and while Steiner employs numerous in After Babel, they are not comprehensively studied. In a similar vein, the mid-century linguistic approaches are too occupied with positivist notions of formal correspondence and equivalence. These theories would be a near- impossible entry to the research on unconventional language in translation. Finally, extending the analysis to include the translators’ corpora is reminiscent of descriptive translation studies and polysystemic approaches.10 However, my search for linguistic incongruencies and correlations between these and the respective translators’ corpora is different. My project is descriptive, intending to explore the various translations empirically, but I intend to remain close to my research objects, unlike polysystemic and descriptive approaches. I explore them textually rather than socially. Socioeconomic and material considerations will not be prioritized to the source’s detriment, to put it in Susan Basnett’s words. The linguistic analysis is my primus motor. The broader study of culture is secondary to my analysis. Nor do I have any clear hypothesis, and I intend to perform a qualitative study, not a quantitative one. This separates it from most Corpora translation studies projects, although there are both methodological and teleological similarities. It would not be too far-fetched to call my analysis pragmatic, as I attempt to distance my translation analysis from sociological and theoretical biases often found within the translation studies academic library. By ‘pragmatic,’ I simply mean the literal sense of the word, “dealing with things in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations” (Stevenson and Waite 2011, 1127).11 My analysis implicates theoretical approaches to translation studies but does not entirely rely on any single one. As such, the question is simple; what insights can a pragmatic, linguistic, and comparative close reading of the novel and its translations provide?

11 In linguistics, the word ‘pragmatic’ often denotes Noam Chomsky’s theories of Transformative Generative Grammar, which had an effect on particular schools of translation studies (see Hatim 2000). However, in the context of my project, the word pragmatic is used in its strictest literal sense.

Chapter 2: Sverre Lyngstad’s Shyness and Dignity

2.1 A renowned translator’s take on modern literature

Sverre Lyngstad’s 2006 translation, Shyness and dignity, was published by Harvill Secker, a subdivision of Penguin Publishing. The translation was funded by the association NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad) (Solstad 2006, Copyright Page), an association that works to disseminate Norwegian literature beyond the Scandinavian territories. The organization’s financial aid must be considered a political incentive. For his role in exporting Norwegian literature to an English-speaking audience, Lyngstad was decorated with the Saint Olav’s Medal in 1987 (The Royal House of Norway 2020). According to the Norwegian royal court’s description, the medal is a “reward for services in advancing knowledge of Norway abroad” (The Royal House of Norway 2018). In other words, the choice of engaging such an acclaimed translator to the task of translating Genanse og verdighet could have as much political relevance as NORLA’s funding. In both cases, the services rendered to Norway and its literature, not excellence in translation, are the deciding factors for funding and acclaim. These facts are reflected in the explicit advertising on the book’s cover. A quote by Haruki Murakami hails Solstad’s writing as “serious literature” (Solstad 2006, Cover), and a quote by Professor James Wood heads the back cover describing an “utterly hypnotic and utterly humane writer” (Solstad 2006, Back Cover). Furthermore, there is a description of Solstad as “Norway’s leading author” and the novel as “one of Solstad’s major works.” There is also a mention of the translator: “in Sverre Lyngstad’s fine translation,” (Solstad 2006, Back Cover) something which is seen less commonly. The cover art is more vibrant than that of the original Norwegian novel, colored in green and white, creating sharp visual contrasts (Solstad 2006, Cover). Coupled with the picture of a broken umbrella and the use of a more poignant font on the title, this version seems to be designed to solicit plenty of attention. These advertising strategies testify to political ambition. While flattering quotations on novel covers are not uncommon, the cover of a translation can be compared with that of the original. In this case, that would be the much more sober Norwegian edition. This underlines the political marketing agenda of the English version; it is a novel meant to catch the eye of the reader, and at the same time, advertise Norwegian literature, here represented by “Norway’s leading author” and presented “in Sverre Lyngstad’s fine translation.”

Do these observations signal my thesis’ transition into a sociopolitical exploration akin to polysystemic translation studies approaches? While it is true that they reflect the English translation’s political ambition and comment on the potential inherent power structures involved in the choice of the translator, I would argue that these facts are not exclusive to materialist analysis models. Most readers of literature would examine the front and back covers of the novel before reading it, and as such, any elements found there will influence the reading directly. Furthermore, the advertising tells us something about the novel’s publishing history, about how it has been received. Similarly, by choosing such a reputable translator, political ambition is reinforced through a certain guarantee that the translation will be of sufficient quality. Lyngstad, as this reputable translator, is unlikely to have been a cheap option. Given that these advertorial elements affect my reading of the novel and that Lyngstad’s reputation makes me more sensitive to the language employed in the translation, these facets have a linguistic relevance. As such, they are as useful to my close reading as they are a part of the novel itself. Although this is in a paratextual manner, these facts are directly in contact with the contents of the narrative and affect its reading. Lawrence Venuti does not include paratextual material in his list of elements deserving particular attention when reading translated literature (Venuti 2013, 109-115). However, it would seem to me that these elements are relevant for the analysis, as they tell us something about the publisher’s perception of the work. As signifiers, the paratextual elements witness for quality of an eminent novel worthy of extended circulation. In addition to this, it is not just any translator that has been entrusted with the task of remediating the work of “Norway’s leading author.” A translator who had been awarded for his services to the kingdom was selected, and NORLA financed the project. Would this affect the translational approach? Are these facts reflected in the translated novel itself?

2.2 First excerpt

In an early excerpt, the novel’s protagonist, Elias Rukla, teaches a class on Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck (1885) at Fagerborg High School, where he teaches Norwegian language and literature. Mid-lecture, Elias Rukla has a sudden epiphany about one of the play’s characters, Dr. Relling, and his relevance for the drama at large. The students’ lack of interest in their teacher’s insight instigates Elias Rukla’s emotional and intellectual processes, leading to a pivot in the narrative. The part reads as follows:

Det syntes han fullt ut ble oppveid ved at elevene nå hadde hatt den sjeldne anledning, ja han ville ikke nøle med å si lykke, å iaktta på nært hold en voksen mann bale med de helt vesentlige spørsmål i vår kulturarv på en innforstått, og ufullkommen måte, som får ham til å stotre, svette, forfølge tankebaner så langt han, på sitt ufullstendige vis er i stand til, og hvis ikke det var nok til at i hvert fall noen av elevens nesebor nå begynte å være noen av de betingelsene som også deres liv skulle bygge på, som et fundament, om enn de kanskje aldri mer skulle lese dette stykket av Henrik Ibsen, så skjønte de likevel betingelsene for at dette stykket var tilstede, her, nå. (Solstad 1994, 31–32, original italics)

Elias Rukla’s disillusionment is a deciding factor in his eventual breakdown, the emotional distance between the teacher and his students underlining the feeling of alienation explored by Solstad in this novel. Thus, this scene is of paramount importance to the narrative at large. The passage’s linguistic and stylistic traits would pose a challenge to any translator. Constructed by a single sentence, the excerpt has an oral tone and a hectic rhythm diffusing the relationship between main and subordinate clauses.12 The frequent use of commas emphasizes this hectic and oral tone, verging on stream-of-consciousness while remaining syntactically concise. Sverre Lyngstad renders this passage in the following way:

That, he felt, was fully compensated for by the fact that the pupils had now had the rare opportunity, he would not hesitate to say good fortune, of observing, in close-up, a grown man struggle with the absolutely essential questions of our cultural legacy in an acceptable, though imperfect, way, making him stammer, perspire, follow certain trains of thought as far as he, in his incomplete manner, was capable of doing, and if that was not sufficient to cause the nostrils of at least some of his pupils to start sensing some of the conditions which their lives, too, would build on, as a foundation, and even if they might never read this play by Henrik Ibsen again, they would still understand the reasons why this play was present here, now. (Solstad 2006, 30– 31, original italics)

12 Solstad’s style makes use of certain phraseological particularities that are difficult to define in one word. He employs a colloquial and informal vernacular written with a syntax that approximates the pauses and stops of speech patterns rather than written language. It is an internal monologue that imitates rambling; it pushes the syntax to its edge without ever breaking it down, as would be the case with a proper stream-of-consciousness. No word I can think of accurately captures this stylistic element, and I have therefore named it an ‘oral tone,’ fully mindful of the fact that Solstad’s style has little to nothing to do with vocalization.

Sverre Lyngstad seems to adopt a strategy of correspondence in translating this passage. The phrase is rendered in its entirety, the frequent use of commas reproducing the hectic and oral rhythm that characterizes the source text. As a result, the processual nature of Elias Rukla’s reflections is retained in this translation, at least from a grammatical point of view. Nevertheless, significant grammatical shifts are taking place, already evident in this passage’s first line. One example is Lyngstad’s translation of ‘det syntes han fullt ut ble oppveid ved at elevene nå hadde fått den sjeldne anledning’ to ‘that, he felt, was fully compensated for by the fact that the pupils had now had the rare opportunity.’ Lyngstad adds additional commas to a passage already abundant in subordinate clauses. The grammatical rules of the English language require this addition, as the subject-object reversal ‘det syntes han’ is replaced by the pronoun ‘that,’ forming the subject of the phrase followed by the clause: ‘he felt’ needed to recreate the original significance. Its separation from the principal clause is required by English grammar. The same is true for the added commas on each side of ‘in close-up.’ Lyngstad’s chosen replacements necessitate changes to punctuation. While highlighting the Norwegian and English languages’ grammatical incompatibility might seem like an argument for the impossibility of translation, there are clues in this passage of Lyngstad’s attempt to maintain the original structure intact. For the most part, the Norwegian translator retains the original passage’s subject-object relations. Replacing the Norwegian demonstrative article ‘det’ with the English demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ retains the sentence’s original antecedent. Also, Lyngstad follows the demonstrative pronoun with the sentence’s real subject, ‘han’ in the original and ‘he’ in the translation. Lyngstad does appear to value correspondence with the source-text, but certain alterations have to be made in doing so. The added commas contribute to retaining both the antecedent and subject of the excerpt’s opening sentence while also restructuring its rhythm. There are shifts to verbal tenses happening alongside punctuation. A particularly fascinating shift is the change of the original’s infinitives to the continuous present. This might be an inevitable shift, as the two tenses fulfill similar functions in the respective languages; however, the change does necessitate the removal of several articles. By removing articles, the passage’s rhythmic structures inevitably change. The shifts demonstrate Lyngstad’s tendency to retain certain aspects of the source text while forgoing others. In keeping the function of temporal structures, the rhythmic scheme of the passage is sacrificed. One obvious question that arises is whether or not this is an inevitable result of the transmission. Even if it is, Lyngstad’s effort to retain one of the two is worth mentioning.

Lyngstad is not consistent in his ambition to correspond as closely to the source text as he is in the passages above. There are examples of more drastic verbal changes, as exemplified by the translation of “på sitt ufullstendige vis er i stand til” (Solstad 1994, 32, my italics) to “that he, in his incomplete manner, was capable of” (Solstad 2006, 31, my italics). In addition to the two added commas, Lyngstad changes the verbal tense from present to simple past, reducing the immediacy portrayed by the language and temporal ambiguity of the source text. What is the result of such a change for the reading of the passage? It would seem to formalize the language, which in the original is hectic and oral. A conventional narrator seems to appear in Sverre Lyngstad’s translation. The status of the narrator is, at best, ambiguous in Solstad’s original novel. There are two lexicographical shifts in this passage worthy of particular attention. The first of these is Sverre Lyngstad’s translation of “begynte å være noen av de betingelsene” (Solstad 1994, 31, original italics) to “start sensing some of the conditions” (Solstad 2006, 31, original italics). In addition to a grammatical shift from the infinitive to present continuous, replacing the Norwegian verb ‘være’ with ‘sensing’ has lexicographical consequences. The Norwegian verb ‘å være’ can be translated as ‘to sense;’ however, its more common sense is ‘to be,’ its homonym in the Norwegian language. Whether or not Dag Solstad employs this verb (in italics) to create ambiguity is a question of interpretation, but the substitution begs the question; can the English verb ‘to sense’ be said to have the same potential for multiple meanings as the Norwegian ‘å være’?13 The interplay between ‘being’ and ‘sensing’ could be a crucial interpretive element for a theme exploring alienation. While it might be relatively inconsequential for the narrative at large, it constitutes a shift. The second significant lexicographical shift is the replacement of ‘elevene’ for the English word ‘pupils,’ a term that does not entirely correspond to the Norwegian original. In the Norwegian language, the word ‘elev’ applies to someone attending any school level below the university, i.e., elementary school to high school. The people attending Elias Rukla’s class are, thus, ‘elever’ in Norwegian. Conversely, a ‘pupil’ in the English language refers to attendees of the school system’s lower tiers. ‘Pupils’ become ‘students’ once they start attending high school, making ‘pupil’ a misnomer for Elias Rukla’s students.

13 Additionally, the fact that this word is printed in italics is not irrelevant, as it draws the reader’s attention towards it and its meaning. This does not seem to have escaped the attention of Sverre Lyngstad either, as he has reproduced this typography. Somewhat ironically, in the translation, the italics draws attention to the substitution’s incapability to represent the originals meaning. Which word, however, would transmit the multiplicity of Solstad’s original, being or sensing? Both words, arguably, lead to a semantic shift.

Why would Sverre Lyngstad employ the archaic version, ‘pupil,’ here? Solstad creates a juxtaposition between Elias Rukla’s work as a teacher and his student life. In conjunction with this, he reflects on the difference between ‘elev’ and ‘student,’ ‘pupil’ and ‘student,’ in a passage describing how the attendees of Rukla’s class have not yet reached the emotional or intellectual maturity of ‘students’ (Solstad 1994, 16–17). This passage necessitates the deployment of the misnomer. The lexicographical incompatibility creates a translator’s paradox. Employ the word ‘pupils,’ which keeps the distinction between pupils and students intact while misrepresenting Rukla’s students, or ‘students,’ idiomatically correct in the target language, with the unfortunate repercussion of annihilating Solstad’s reflection on the difference between the two terms. Lyngstad’s employment of ‘pupils’ affords us with a clue to his translational strategies, as he chooses the term that corresponds with the source to the detriment of readability in the target language. What insights does this initial close comparative reading afford us as researchers? It seems that Lyngstad demonstrates an ambition to correspond as closely as possible to the source text, and he is often successful. He tries to replicate the subject-object structures and lexicographical choices of Solstad’s original. However, in doing so, he forces some significant departures from the source material, mainly what concerns rhythm and orality. On the lexicographical level, attempting to remain close to the original’s significance creates a denotative shift that can be perceived as somewhat illogical, like the pupils finding themselves in the wrong classroom. The alternative would risk obliterating other passages in the novel, forcing Lyngstad to make a choice. His choice is our clue to his translational strategy; Solstad’s original text seems to be of the highest priority. This shows the fallacies of the classic translation studies approach of source-target dichotomies, as neither one nor the other could adequately explain the paradox faced by Sverre Lyngstad. With the financial backing of NORLA and a decorated translator’s appointment, the English version of Solstad’s novel demonstrates political ambition. Whether or not the two are causally linked is impossible to answer without resorting to speculation, but there are some leads we can follow. The ambition of NORLA is the same as the justifications for Lyngstad’s reception of St. Olav’s medal: the effort to circulate Norwegian literature abroad. This ambition would seem to correlate with Lyngstad’s translation itself, an effort to have the original, or its closest possible surrogate, circulate on the international book market. Whether or not this is a sound argument remains to be explored through further investigation.

2.3 Second excerpt

In the first excerpt, we saw Lyngstad’s tendency to retain certain structural elements of Genanse og verdighet while forgoing others, particularly syntactic ones. He often maintains proximity to the original transcript on the lexicographical level, even to the detriment of the target situation’s idiomatic language. Whether or not this is constitutive for Lyngstad’s translation remains to be explored, here through a second passage:

Alt dette hadde han gjort høyst frivillig, med åpne øyne, ja, han hadde valgt det selv, og i fritt valg mellom mange andre muligheter som hadde stått ham til rådighet, han kunne f.eks. ha blitt advokat, ingeniør, siviløkonom, lege, etc., etc., men han hadde valgt å studere filologi for å bli samfunnets lojale oppdrager, viderefører av det grunnlag hele samfunnet bygde på, og måtte bygge på, slik han hadde sett det, rett nok uten å fundere så mye på det, fordi det hadde vært så selvfølgelig. […] Hans valg var foretatt ut fra at det ville gi ham en indre tilfredsstillelse å ha sin daglige virksomhet som lektor i den høyere skolen, og at denne tilfredsstillelsen ville frambringe et indre lys som ville gjøre det grå ved hans ytre framtoning nok så likegyldig, og i det lå det jo en tillit til det norske samfunn og dets fundament som han måtte karakterisere som rørende, ja vakker, tenkte han, og som var blitt delt av forbausende mange unge studenter på hans eget 1960-tall, og både før og etter det ti-året, ja denne rørende tillit hadde faktisk vært vanlig blant begavete unge mennesker i hele vår nasjons historie, tenkte han, nokså forundret, for han hadde aldri tenkt på det på den måten før. (Solstad 1994, 109–110)

The excerpt is from a much later part of the novel. By this point, we have witnessed Elias Rukla’s student life and friendship with Johan Corneliussen, and marriage to his friend’s ex- wife. Through the narrative’s retrospect, the protagonist’s anxieties and inferiority complexes have been explored. This passage is a defense of Elias Rukla’s choices in life and is essential in order to understand his character’s development as we are approaching his breakdown. While this part is comprised of two sentences rather than a single one, there are similarities in rhythm and syntax to the first excerpt. The hectic, oral tone is equally prominent here. Lyngstad deviates more from the source text in his translation of this part:

He had done it all voluntarily, with open eyes; yes, it was his own decision, having chosen freely among many other possibilities that had been at his disposal, like becoming a lawyer, an engineer, economist, or doctor, etc., etc., but he had chosen to study philology in order to become one of the nation’s loyal educators, carrying forward the foundation which all of society was built on, and had to be built on, in his view, a choice made without much pondering, to be sure, because it had been so self-evident. […] His choice had been made on the premise that it would give him an inner satisfaction to have his day’s work as a teacher in secondary school and that this satisfaction would produce an inner light which made the greyness of his outward appearance fairly unimportant, an assumption that showed a confidence in Norwegian society and its foundation that he had to characterise as touching, even beautiful, he thought, and which had been shared by surprisingly many young students in his own 1960s, as well as both before and after that decade – well, this touching confidence had, as a matter of fact, been general among talented young people throughout our nation’s history, he thought, with some surprise, because he had never thought of it in that way before. (Solstad 2006, 117–118)

The number of shifts seems comparatively higher in this part, at least as a first impression; however, as analysts, we have to agree that there is no such thing as an entirely homogenous translation. Lyngstad here makes more significant alterations to rhythmic structures than was the case before, through noticeable changes to punctuation. The addition of a semicolon in the first line, and a hyphen in the twelfth, are somewhat more severe than the occasional addition of commas we saw earlier. Does this passage demonstrate the same dualism on the translator’s part as the previous one did, where the effort to retain certain elements led to the obliteration of others? After all, the semicolon represents a relatively significant pausation and syntactic reorganization. The ambition to retain subject-object relations is also less apparent in this excerpt than in the previous one, which is clear already from the first sentence: ‘Alt dette hadde han gjort høyst frivillig’ is translated into ‘he had done it all voluntarily,’ reversing the order of the subject and object in the phrasing. Additionally, the Norwegian modifying adverb, ‘høyst,’ has been removed in the translation, which creates a semantic shift of the emphasis between the two versions. Replacing ‘han hadde valgt dette selv, og i fritt valg mellom mange muligheter’ with ‘it was his own decision, having chosen freely among many other possibilities’ presents a similar issue. By replacing the subject, ‘han,’ by ‘it,’ and the object, ‘dette,’ by ‘decision,’ Lyngstad reverses the source text’s grammatical organization. The result is that the antecedent of the subject becomes obscured, while the object is more clearly defined. This happens without regard to the displacement of the original verb. Another lexicographical and semantic shift worth mentioning is the translation of ‘samfunnet’ to ‘nation’ in the fourth line. Do the two terms carry the same connotations? I would argue that, without geographical modifiers, ‘samfunn,’ society, signifies something more abstract and nebulous than the word ‘nation.’ To which definition is Elias Rukla alluding, the idealist and reader of philosophy? It is, of course, possible to read Genanse og verdighet as an entirely Norwegian narrative about a Norwegian teacher with a past from a Norwegian university, a servant of Norwegian society. No matter how justified such an interpretation might be, emphasizing these qualities could restrict the novel’s potential readings. However, this could be in line with the political ambition of having a Norwegian novel circulate abroad, highlighting Norwegian literary and ethical values. There are a couple of more shifts in this passage that are worth mentioning. There is a semantic difference between Solstad’s ‘frambringe’ and Lyngstad’s translation, ‘produce,’ as being a creator is not always synonymous with making something appear. A similar misalignment of significance can be demonstrated between the Norwegian word ‘forundret’

and the English ‘surprised,’ the former being closer in meaning to the English ‘astounded’ or ‘astonished.’ While highlighting these minute changes might seem somewhat pedantic, the essence of this analysis is close attention to the minute changes happening in the transition between language domains. More than this, the changes allude to a series of choices permeating the translation. While the shifts might seem small and inconsequential, they affect the significance of the passage. That being said, attempting to create closer correspondence does not necessarily result in an altogether different effect. In the eighth line of the excerpt, Sverre Lyngstad has translated ‘det grå ved hans ytre framtoning’ with ‘the greyness of his outward appearance.’ This is a direct translation, as close as possible to a word-for-word rendition of Solstad’s text. However, the notion of being ‘grey’ is not identical in Norwegian and English, underlining the problems when translating idiomatic language. In both languages, the expression of ‘being grey’ means someone of a boorish appearance and character. However, while this is the sole meaning of the Norwegian expression, there is a second connotation in the English language, where the notion of ‘grey’ can comment on someone’s sexuality. Reading Elias Rukla’s romantic life as being somewhat unengaging would not be very unbelievable and could give the word ‘grey’ a completely different meaning than in the source. Interestingly, retaining lexicographical correspondence is what endangers such a significant shift. As far as possible, Lyngstad remains faithful to the verbal tenses of the source text in this passage, reproducing the original conjugations. By doing this, he remains consistent with the conjugations and tenses from the previous passage as well. However, this consistency itself is at odds with Solstad’s novel; the Norwegian author is somewhat inconsistent in his conjugations. In the previous excerpt, the original transcript contained a verb in the present tense, interrupting the verbal consistency of a narrative written in the preterit. In that case, Lyngstad replaced the verb with one conjugated in the past tense. This choice conforms to the European literary tradition, one that Dag Solstad’s novel is somewhat askew with, even though he is not a fully-fledged avant-garde writer. In the case of the second excerpt here, Lyngstad reproduces Solstad’s tenses as long as Solstad’s tenses remain conventional. Thus, it could seem as if Lyngstad is making corrections, realigning Solstad’s novel with European literary dogma. According to this second analysis, Lyngstad seems somewhat inconsistent in his ambition to reproduce the original transcript’s grammatical particularities in an accurate manner. However, the Norwegian translator seems to be consistent in his own employment of verbal tenses and vocabulary. A translator’s language is starting to become visible through

the analysis, a potential attempt to create a more conventional version of Dag Solstad’s novel, one that corresponds to the classical literary schemata of the European tradition. This transcends target- or source-orientation; shifts are relatively constant whether Lyngstad is trying to reproduce the language of the original transcript or not. A final analysis is necessary to further substantiate this argument.

2.4 Third excerpt

Much earlier in the novel, we find a short passage that is somewhat emblematic of this analysis’ findings:

Jo, hvis man leser stykket med åpne øyne, uten å tenke på noe annet enn akkurat dette, og så stiller spørsmålet: Når er dr. Relling nødvendig, er svaret åpenbart. Dr. Relling er nødvendig ett sted, og det er mot slutten av siste akt. Han ba elevene bla fram dit, og de gjorde det, bladde fram, noen raskt, noen seint, alle i det samme døsige lyset som alltid er inne i et klasserom i en norsk skole. (Solstad 1994, 12–13)

The passage might not be long enough to exemplify all the particularities of Dag Solstad’s style. However, its importance to the narrative is indisputable. It is one of its most essential pivots, the moment where Elias Rukla has the epiphany about Ibsen’s Dr. Relling that sets all the other events in motion. There is a chance that this passage might solicit particular attention from the reader due to its narrative importance. Lyngstad translates it as such:

Well, if one reads the play with one’s eyes open, without thinking of anything but just this, and then asks the question, When is Dr Relling necessary? the answer is obvious. Dr Relling is necessary in one place, and that is near the end of the last act. He asked the pupils to leaf forward, and they did, some quickly, others slowly, all sitting in the dim light which is characteristic of classrooms in a Norwegian school. (Solstad 2006, 9–10)

Again, significant changes are made to the punctuation, and with that, the rhythm and oral tone of the passage. The addition of a question mark in the excerpt’s second line stands out as particularly eye-catching. At this point, I have to point out that these changes might not be Lyngstad’s own, but changes made by various proofreaders and editors. However, as researchers, we can only work with the available information; in this case, it is the book itself. As my project is based on close reading, the published work is the only available research object. As mentioned above, it sometimes seems as if Lyngstad is making corrections that coincide with conventional English grammar. The addition of the question mark here definitely fits such a theory.

As was the case before, Lyngstad does not remain entirely consistent in his translational moves; some changes made to this passage are not grammatically conventional. A simple comma in the translation replaces the colon from the second line of the original transcript. Again, as we have seen in the previous excerpts, the pausation and rhythm of the source text are altered. Contrary to conventional grammatical rules, however, Lyngstad capitalizes the first letter of an interrogative clause introduced by a comma, begging the question of whether a colon would be the more appropriate punctuation in this case. Perhaps even stranger is the fact that the following phrase has no capitalization after the question mark. Lyngstad’s translation of this passage is somewhat inconsistent. Surprisingly, here Lyngstad is less traditional than the original transcript. Sverre Lyngstad still makes plenty of changes that are more in line with the historical conventions of European literature. The source text’s repetitive elements are removed in favor of a more traditional constructional philosophy. Solstad’s doubling of vocabulary, ‘bla fram’ and ‘bladde fram,’ is reduced to a single phrase: ‘leaf forward.’ The same goes for the repetition in the phrase “noen raskt, noen sent” (Solstad 1994, 13, my italics), which is altered to include a more varied vocabulary in “some quickly, others slowly” (Solstad 2006, 10, my italics). In the former of the two examples, Lyngstad does something that is rarely seen in modern-day translation, as he omits an entire clause in his rendition of the text. He does so in favor of a conventionalizing move. The language registry also undergoes a significant change. Lyngstad tends to elevate the language and translate the work into a more formal registry. Examples of this tendency are the employment of the English pronoun ‘one,’ the capitalization of Dr. Relling’s title, and the addition of the Latinized adjective ‘characteristic,’ all of which are quite formal rather than vulgar or radical. In addition to this, Lyngstad prefers to employ a rather descriptive language, changing metaphoric values, such as ‘døsig,’ into descriptions, such as ‘dim.’ Dag Solstad’s usage of light to create an allusion to the students’ sleepiness does not survive the transmission to English. The light is not a presence, as it is in the original, but instead, it is an element characteristic of the environment. The metaphoric and proleptic nature of the source text, where the light is used to signal the students’ lack of interest, is not reproduced in the translation. Lyngstad’s rendition of this passage seems to be more in line with traditional literary values than Dag Solstad’s original. Repetitive elements are varied or omitted, a more descriptive language is favored, and punctuation is changed in a manner that seems corrective to the source text. These are hallmarks of traditional, realist narrative forms. Looking over

Sverre Lyngstad’s library of translated works, it is dominated by Norwegian literature from the early twentieth century, among them the novels of Knut Hamsun, Arne Garborg, and Sigurd Hoel. Dag Solstad’s novels represent one of his rare forays into modern literature, and while authors such as Hamsun had an experimental style for his time, this style is not particularly similar to more modern literary expressions, such as Dag Solstad’s. Is it possible that Sverre Lyngstad’s specific experiences in translations are indicative of his translational strategies? Could it be his rendition is affected by his history of translating more traditional literary forms? To investigate such reflection further, an analysis of Sverre Lyngstad’s enterprise as a translator is necessary. Before starting this investigation, a brief look at the analysis’ results might help reorient ourselves. Sverre Lyngstad’s version, Shyness and dignity, demonstrates a significant political marketing ambition. The financing by NORLA, the choice of an acclaimed translator, and numerous advertorial statements on the novel’s cover and backside allude to such, going as far as describing Solstad as “Norway’s leading author, an icon among Scandinavian writers” (Solstad 2006, Back Cover). The same can be said of the cover design, where eye-catching contrasts in font and photo solicit the viewer’s interest. Are the translational strategies in line with the apparent political advertorial ambition of the novel? For the most part, Sverre Lyngstad’s translation remains close to the formulations of the source text, which alludes to the ambition to have a close surrogate of the source novel circulate in a foreign language domain. The choice of the English misnomer ‘pupils’ is a testament to this aspiration. It is plausible that it would be in NORLA’s best interest to fund such a surrogate, as it would be a more accurate advertisement for Norwegian literature and culture. Nevertheless, despite the signs of a source-oriented translation strategy, Lyngstad’s work has several indicators of interpretive choices made by the translator and is not consistent in its effort to correspond closely to the source material. All in all, Lyngstad’s Shyness and dignity is a quite heterogeneous translation, certain parts corresponding to the original novel to a high degree, other diverging in a more significant manner. An interpretive presence is constant and seems to have affected all the translational moves made by Lyngstad. It is difficult to attribute any categories to this version. The close and attentive reading of the translation lays the groundwork for an analysis of these translational moves. They show evidence of fragmentation, and there does not seem to be one overarching description that would accurately describe the translation as a whole. The close reading uncovers the heterogeneity of translated literature, it is the attention to the

minute and textual details that allow us to make these observations. This again allows us to reach broader conclusions about the work as a whole. The analysis of Shyness and dignity underlines a problem when working with translated literature, one that Lawrence Venuti explains in The Translator’s Invisibility (1995):

A translated text, whether prose or poetry, […], is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text – the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the “original.” (Venuti 2008, 1)

Venuti’s assessment seems accurate, and as mentioned above, Lyngstad’s work seems to attempt to create a fluid version, at least for the most part. This also coincides with a wish to have the ‘original’ circulate abroad. If this is how we judge translated literature, and Shyness and dignity is presented “in Sverre Lyngstad’s fine translation” (Solstad 2006, Back Cover), then it stands to reason that he delivers an approximation of the original novel. Nevertheless, as the analysis shows, the translator’s interpretive choices permeate his work, changing its ‘appearance’ to use Venuti’s vocabulary. Embracing these stylistic and linguistic factors as we continue the analysis, I wish to extend the scope to Lyngstad’s corpus of translational writings. I take this to mean his work as a translator and his various writings on the craft of translation. Are there similarities to be found between Shyness and dignity and other works translated by Lyngstad? Are there tendencies in his translational theory that might reveal useful information and aid our work as analysts? The goal of such an extension of the analysis’ scope is to inform the main research object, Lyngstad’s version of the novel. Exploring the translator’s linguistic consistency over a broader selection of works might shed some light on the questions posed by reading Sverre Lyngstad’s translation of Genanse og verdighet.

2.5 Sverre Lyngstad’s translational optic

The following part aims to explore what I call the translational optic, the parts of the translator’s horizon that are of linguistic importance to his work. I am not seeking to create a unified and universal theoretical model for translational movements or explain inert power dynamics affecting the interplay between source and target situations. Nor do I search for universal or generalized traits of translative practice as a whole, which would be a Corpora translation studies aspiration. I study the singular, a translator and his work with translation, but I cannot disregard that the translator forms a space where the texts are reconfigured. As I focus on the translator as a singular condition as opposed to a universal one, I choose the word optic. Its definition, “relating to the eye or vision” (Stevenson and Waite 2011, 1005), has strong denotations to personal perception, linking it to those of the translator himself. With the possible exception of a source text, which more critical condition could there possibly be for a translation than a translator? Through an exploration of this instance of the translator as a textual condition, perhaps the shifts discovered in the analysis of Shyness and dignity could be further contextualized. In Sverre Lyngstad’s case, this context is quite broad; the Norwegian translator would hardly be as celebrated unless he had translated numerous works. Therefore, I have to be quite selective, as a full investigation of the corpus would be difficult under the restrictions of this thesis. I am sure a smaller selection of works will still be enlightening, even if somewhat less comprehensive than ideal. An advantage in exploring Sverre Lyngstad’s enterprise as a translator is that he is one of all too few who has written about his own translational work. In the later editions of Sverre Lyngstad’s translation of Hunger (1890) by Knut Hamsun, a translator’s afterword is included: “Translator’s Trap: Knut Hamsun’s Hunger in English” is a pronounced critique of the English translations of the novel, Mary Chavelita Dunne’s 1899 translation (under the alias of George Eagerton) and Robert Bly’s revised translation of 1967. Bly’s translation receives the brunt of the criticism: “While Bly’s version avoids bowdlerisation” (Lyngstad 2016a, 219), it is not “particularly readable” (Lyngstad 2016a, 219). The afterword also explains Lyngstad’s improvements in great detail. Through this thorough explanation of Lyngstad’s changes, it is possible to discern his view on the translator’s role, at least in part. The main critique of Robert Bly’s version is directed at his mistranslations. There are clear indications that Sverre Lyngstad sees the practice of translation as a question of making right and wrong lexical choices. There is little to no reason to believe that the Norwegian translator doubts the possibility of transmission in any way, as he states the importance of

“trying to produce a faithful as well as readable text in English” (Lyngstad 2016a, 220). Correspondence is of importance, although not to the detriment of readability. Creative liberty is of less priority for Lyngstad, who criticizes Bly’s “slapdash, pseudo-creative attitude towards the craft of translation” (Lyngstad 2016a, 220); it would seem the translator is not any kind of co-author in his opinion. In criticizing Robert Bly’s “excessive licence in construing the text” (Lyngstad 2016a, 223), and in stating that this is “a matter of principle” (Lyngstad 2016a, 203), Lyngstad demonstrates a view of translation that values exact and accurate transmission. Whether or not this is achievable does not seem a matter of debate. The view on translation proposed here is somewhat at odds with my analysis of Shyness and dignity, especially in the case of lexical incongruencies, like ‘pupil’ and ‘grey.’ According to what Lyngstad writes in the afterword to Hunger, these words should have been chosen both to recreate the sense of the Norwegian equivalent and to ensure readability in the target situation. Do these proposed translations fulfill these two conditions? Making comments on what could be interpreted as Elias Rukla’s sexual orientation or suggesting that his students are younger than they should be, are both lexical choices that could be disruptive for the reader, who might stop and reflect on the employment of these words. In concordance with his insistence on fidelity in translation, Sverre Lyngstad provides an appendix to the afterword, where he lists changes he made from Bly’s version of Hunger. Here the Norwegian translator presents his seven categories of faults and 149 examples of mistranslations in both the Bly and the Eagerton versions of the novel (Lyngstad 2016b, 237– 247). Lyngstad’s categories are in themselves quite revealing for his translational optics: Misreading of idiomatic expressions, literal or quasi-literal rendering of metaphorical expressions, construing words etymologically, misreading of tone, misreading of near homophones and of words with multiple meanings, grammatical misconceptions and choosing word meanings mistakenly and or arbitrarily (Lyngstad 2016a, 221–223 and Lyngstad 2016b, 237, 241, 243, 244). It is rare to see such high degrees of organization and specificity in translation criticism. Through the examples provided in the appendix, we can get a more nuanced impression of Lyngstad’s translational strategy. An example of a change he has made is the replacement of “finde på å si” (Lyngstad 2016b, 247), from Bly’s “decide” (Lyngstad 2016b, 247) to “take it into my head to say” (Lyngstad 2016b, 247). Like the example of ‘pupil’ in Shyness and dignity, the sacrifice of idiomatic fluency for lexicographical correspondence to the source is evident. According to the Norwegian translator, this is an example of reducing the “[concreteness and specificity]” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244) in Bly’s version.

In the same category, we find the choice to replace Bly’s translation of the word “iagtta” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244), “examine” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244), with “observe” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244). While being similar to the previous example, this one seems more pedantic. A similar case is Lyngstad’s replacement for Bly’s translation of “Ord som store, klamme Udyr” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244). Where Bly renders the phrase as “words like huge, cold- blooded reptiles” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244), Lyngstad proposes “words… like big clammy monsters” (Lyngstad 2016b, 244). Lyngstad’s adherence to correspondence through choosing lexicographically similar adjectives and nouns, again endanger idiomatic fluency in English. In sacrificing idiomatic language, he demonstrates which approach he values most. This would seemingly be to find the surrogate he sees as the right carrier of significance. This is not to say that Lyngstad is not right to criticize Robert Bly’s translation; for the most part, the critique is justified, particularly the critique of Bly’s hyperbolic language. However, this is not an examination of Lyngstad’s critique or a review, but an exploration of what these categories can tell us of Lyngstad’s translational strategies. The appendix reads as a methodological list of suggested expressions, almost as precise as those seen in Vinay and Darbelnet’s La stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais (see Vinay and Darbelnet 1975). It does seem that Sverre Lyngstad adheres to a strict idea of equivalency in translation, as evidenced by ‘observe’ supposedly being closer to ‘iagtta’ than ‘examine.’ Its closer relation to the Norwegian original is questionable, even if one considers Lyngstad’s pedantry. Nevertheless, it was the word that Lyngstad chose, and critically defended. Lyngstad’s sacrifice of idiomatic fluency in favor of formal correspondence is not unique to Shyness and dignity or Hunger. There are several similar examples in his translation of Dag Solstad’s 1992 novel Ellevte roman, bok atten (Novel 11, book 18), examples that are fascinating in conjunction with his afterword to Hunger. A particular issue in this translation is Lyngstad’s deployment of adjectives. “[D]e fire årene som hadde gått” (Solstad 1992, 5, my italics) is replaced by “the four years which had passed” (Solstad 2017, 2, my italics), choosing the more traditional relative pronoun. “[A]tten år etter” (Solstad 1992, 11, my italics) is translated to “eighteen years afterwards” (Solstad 2017, 7, my italics). While retaining a close lexicographical correspondence to the source material, Lyngstad’s choices create a more conservative tone than the one in the original. Lyngstad thus retains lexicographical proximity while forgoing semantic correspondence. What does this extension of the scope to Lyngstad’s translation of Hunger and his other writings on translation teach us? I would argue that the translator is starting to emerge as something of a consistent entity from a linguistic perspective. We see the translator’s

tendency to prefer specific language registries. In Lyngstad’s case, this language is rather formal, changing semantic values from the original novel’s oral tone. Not only was this suggested through the analysis of Shyness and dignity, but we can now see how this might be characteristic of the translator himself, as evidenced by his translations and other works. This preference is somewhat at odds with the translator’s expressed ideal, to find the most appropriate surrogate for the original meaning. Do the semantic values not often rely on the tone of the phrasing? Lyngstad is not entirely consistent in his approach, as we witnessed in the analysis, an inconsistency discovered through attention to the small, word-by-word changes in the translation. These alterations happen in the minute, in the transmission’s smaller details. While Lyngstad does remain somewhat consistent linguistically, making similar alterations in all his translated works, he is ideologically inconsistent. The unstable nature of translated texts deserves a more comprehensive research object than is possible here. The fact that these types of text show such instability is valuable information. A large number of established theoretical frameworks in translation studies’ subdisciplines fail to provide an adequate explanation of the heterogeneity of this analysis’ results, for the incongruency between the translator’s idea and product. Hermeneutic dichotomic models fail to account for the object’s status, whether or not Lyngstad’s translation is, in fact, source- or target-oriented. Linguistic models can only be applied to the translator’s instrumental philosophy but are quite useless when exploring the deviating product. Descriptive approaches, looking at social and materialistic factors, would presuppose a strong and clear connection between ideal and result, which does not seem to be evident. Corpora studies risk missing the forest for the trees by trying to posit universals. That similar issues are present in different products by the same translator, might not be a great surprise and has been explored by translation analysts such as Kirsten Malmkjær (see Malmkjær 2001). Nevertheless, the attentive analysis, the close reading of the minute details that constitute the discrepancy between source-text and translation is often absent from the academic library, and it does expose heterogenic elements. I will discuss the results of the analysis further in the final chapter, but as we move on to the French version of Genanse og verdighet, the question is: Are a translator’s stylistic variances defined by sociological or instrumental factors alone? Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s background and education are significantly different from Sverre Lyngstad’s, not to mention that he hails from the target culture rather than the source culture. Additionally, the French language endangers another set of linguistic challenges and strategies for transfer. How different is Sverre Lyngstad’s translation from Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s 2008 version, Honte et dignité?

Chapter 3: Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Honte et dignité

3.1 French translator and first-class knight

Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s 2008 translation of Genanse og verdighet, Honte et dignité, was published by the Montréal based publishing house Les Allusifs. As was the case with Sverre Lyngstad’s translation, NORLA provided financial aid, but this time in conjunction with additional financial assistance from CNL, le Centre national du livre (Solstad 2008, Copyright Page). While this fact complicates this translation’s political and advertorial mechanisms, it suggests one significant difference from Lyngstad’s work: NORLA is not the sole financial contributor, altering the amount of Norwegian influence on the translated work. Whether or not a correlation between this fact and the translation itself is evident, remains to be explored. Apart from the difference in political mechanisms, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud and Sverre Lyngstad have certain similarities as translators. As his Norwegian counterpart, the French translator has been decorated by the kingdom of Norway, who anointed him knight, first- class, of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in 2008 (The Royal House of Norway 2020). This happens to be the same year as his translation of Genanse og verdighet was published. While there might be a causal relationship between the publication and the anointment, Coursaud likely started working on the translation long before. In other words, while Lyngstad was already an award-winning translator when he was approached with the project of translating Genanse og verdighet, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud was probably not. This separates the two translations’ political ambition, as they did not approach an equally recognized translator in the case of the French version. Do these differences manifest themselves in the translation? The cover of the French version is much more neutral than was the case with Lyngstad’s English translation. Its design follows a clear visual standard set by other publications by Les Allusifs (Les Allusifs 2020), with the author’s name placed on the top, and the title on the upper half of the cover and encircled. No quotes or blurbs are featured here; it is quite minimalist and subdued, apart from the vibrant yellow color. As with all the versions analyzed here, the cover features the umbrella as a motif; however, closed this time and piercing a hand in a more clip-art fashion than the photorealistic umbrellas on the other versions. Out of all the differences between the various versions, the most striking for the

comparatist is perhaps the lack of advertising on the cover of Coursaud’s Honte et dignité (Solstad 2008, Cover). Albeit colored white, the back cover of the novel is quite similar to its front cover. The title is repeated, again encircled, this time without the motif. The translator is mentioned directly beneath the title, inside the circle: “Traduit du norvégien par Jean-Baptiste Coursaud” (Solstad 2008, Back Cover). We also find a plot summary on the backside, describing Elias Rukla as a person “in crisis,”14 a result of him having “put authenticity ahead of happiness,”15 making him a “spectator to his own life.”16 As far as plot descriptions go, this one seems quite interpretive. Following the summary, there is a description of Dag Solstad, hailing the Norwegian writer as one of the essential authors of Norwegian literature (Solstad 2008, Back Cover), above the sole blurb on this version, this time from the New York Sun: “a nervous crisis that has repercussions for an entire culture.”17 According to the American newspaper, this is a novel to be taken very seriously. The cover of the French-Canadian translation of Genanse og verdighet is more subdued and minimalistic compared to the cover of Sverre Lyngstad’s English translation. The fonts and designs are neutral and sober, and it only features one single advertorial quotation on its backside. This is not to say that flattering descriptions of the original author are absent; in addition to the New York Sun quote on the back of the novel, there is another description found inside the book (Solstad 2008, 4). What is noticeable is how these advertisements are more subtly placed; they solicit less attention than those on the cover of the English version. This could be attributed to Les Allusifs’ consistent visual design language; an advertorial blurb would be more intrusive to the publishing house’s recognizable style. However, we should ask ourselves whether or not allowing such an advertisement-free stylistic convention might have something to do with the lesser influence of organized funding. The plot and author description do, however, include advertorial content, but it is difficult to deny that it stands out much less on this version that was the case with Lyngstad’s Shyness and dignity.

14 My translation. Original quote: “le monologue intérieure d’un homme en crise” (Solstad 2008, Back Cover).

15 My translation. Original quote: “[il est] épuisé d’avoir trop longtemps fait passer l’authenticité avant le bonheur” (Solstad 2008, Back Cover).

16 My translation. Original quote: “un spectateur de sa propre vie” (Solstad 2008, Back cover).

17 My translation. Original quote: “une crise de nerfs qui a des répercussions sur toute une culture” (Solstad 2008, Back Cover).

Marketing is done more subtly for the French edition than for the English one. Without access to the appropriate information, I could do little more than speculate on the specific reasons for this. Nevertheless, the political mechanisms and the lack of advertorial content do correlate; the lesser-known translator, the smaller publishing house, and the less significant financial aid from the source culture. If nothing else, these mechanisms are different from those at play in Lyngstad’s rendition of the novel. The reader of Honte et dignité is confronted with less praise for the author, less of a horizon going into the reading, but is not entirely unaffected. Whether or not these subdued political elements correlate with the translational strategies deployed by Jean-Baptiste Coursaud remains to be discussed through a textual analysis of the text.

3.2 First excerpt

The first excerpt here is the same as the first passage analyzed in the Lyngstad chapter, and it exemplifies particular traits of Solstad’s style and serves as a useful research object for the French and English versions of the novel. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendering of this passage reads as follows:

Cette défaillance avait toutefois, de son propre avis, un effet compensateur sur les élèves en ce qu’ils avaient en ce moment même la rare occasion, oui, il n’hésiterait pas une seconde à dire : le bonheur, d’observer de près un homme adulte patauger dans des questions tout à fait essentielles prenant leur source dans notre patrimoine culturel, et ce, sur un mode complice mais imparfait qui avait le don de le faire bafouiller, transpirer, poursuivre des raisonnements aussi loin qu’il était en mesure de le faire, lesté comme il l’était de ses carences ; et si tant est que cela ne fût suffisant pour que les narines de quelques élèves se mettent en tout cas et dès à présent à humer certaines des conditions sur lesquelles leur vie à eux aussi se construirait, à l’instar d’un fondement, quand bien même ils ne liraient plus jamais cette pièce de Henrik Ibsen, ils comprenaient malgré tout les conditions régissant la présence, ici et maintenant, de ladite pièce. (Solstad 2008, 43–44)

It is striking how much this part diverges from the source material. It is worth keeping in mind that the differences between a northern Germanic and a Romance language system are more significant than those between a northern and a western Germanic one. A more significant number of grammatical, lexicographical, and semantic shifts might be necessary to transmit the same content to French than to English. The punctuation stands out once again as a major change, altering the rhythmic schema of the translated passage. As was the case with Sverre Lyngstad’s rendition, new grammatical clauses create the need for new commas, absent from Solstad’s original transcript. The commas on each side of ‘de son propre avis’ and ‘oui’ in the second line, and

‘et ce’ in the fourth line are excellent examples of such altercation. Conversely, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud removes the comma from the final line, “her, nå” (Solstad 1994, 32), replacing it with the conjunction ‘et’: ‘ici et maintenant.’ In addition to these alterations to commas, Coursaud adds entirely new punctuation marks, as he goes one step further than Lyngstad in his rendition. One such addition is the colon found in the third line of the excerpt: ‘il n’hésiterait pas une seconde à dire : le bonheur.’ Another one is found in the sixth line with the addition of a semi-colon: ‘lesté comme il l’était de ses carences ; et si tant est que cela ne fût suffisant.’ These punctuation marks alter the pausation from the source text, reducing the hectic and oral rhythm of Solstad’s style. Furthermore, they highlight the grammatical clauses as oppositional, changing values of emphasis. This last change must be seen as a semantic shift; it reconfigures the passage’s potential significance, and Coursaud seems to be more liberal in his approach than Lyngstad was in his translation. While more liberty might be necessary when traversing the language barrier between Norwegian and French, the sheer number of alterations indicates the probability of a different translational strategy. This serves as a decent segue into discussing lexicographical and semantic shifts in Coursaud’s translation of this passage. We can find such a change already in the first line; Solstad’s phrase, “[d]et syntes han fullt ut ble oppveid” (Solstad 1994, 31), is replaced by ‘cette défaillance avait toutefois, de son propre avis, un effet compensateur.’ The differences between the two phrases are numerous. Coursaud adds two commas and a subordinate clause; ‘de son propre avis.’ The replacement of the pronoun, ‘det,’ by an adjective, ‘cette,’ is perhaps more abrasive, even though both are demonstrative. However, the adjective’s deployment necessitates a noun, ‘défaillance,’ to create a grammatically coherent phrase, creating a significant shift. The reference to a definite fault, or a failure, is only found in the French translation, as it remains vague in both the Norwegian original and in Lyngstad’s English rendition. Thus, this alteration insinuates personal interpretation on the part of the francophone translator alone. The most significant consequence of changing demonstratives is that the antecedent of ‘det,’ which was up to the readers’ inferral in the original transcript, becomes more specific. Solstad precedes the phrase with: “[h]an var fortvilet, ikke fordi han som lærer ikke maktet å gi en slik briljant utleding av Vildanden som han syntes han så for sitt indre øye” (Solstad 1994, 31, original italics), where no unambiguous fault is ever described. Whether or not Elias Rukla commits a fault is entirely up to the reader’s interpretation. In Coursaud’s version, however, this interpretation is already provided. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud could have

chosen the French pronoun ‘cela,’ which corresponds more closely to the Norwegian ‘det.’ A phrase such as ‘cela avait toutefois, de son propre avis, un effet compensateur’ would have been grammatically correct while also retaining the ambiguity of the source material intact. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud chooses differently in his translation. The added clause in this phrase, ‘de son propre avis,’ also contributes to an altered emphasis in Honte et dignité. I have already discussed how the addition of a subordinate clause requires the employment of two extra commas, changing the rhythmic schema of the line. However, it also serves to reaffirm a particular focus; we are reading the opinion of Elias Rukla, emphasized as his opinion. In Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s version of the story, this cannot be understood as a fact. While this is stated in the source text, it is perhaps overstated in the French translation. ‘De son propre avis’ is, without a doubt, a typical French expression. The adjective ‘propre’ doubles up the function of the pronoun ‘son,’ adding emphasis. The separation of the clause, creating apposition, solicits further attention from the reader. These traits were completely absent from the Norwegian source text. The French preference for nouns over adjectives could explain why Coursaud makes such drastic alterations. This is a linguistic habit that differs from Germanic languages, which tend to employ verbs and adverbs instead. In other words, when Coursaud replaces the Norwegian word ‘syntes’ with the French clause ‘de son propre avis,’ he is following the conventions of the French language. Nevertheless, it is lexicographically less similar than it would be if he chose a verbal sentence, such as ‘il trouvait que’ or ‘il pensait que.’ It is a similar issue to ‘défaillance,’ where French linguistic standards favor nominal phrases. While I have already discussed several different types of shifts in this passage, I have neglected the perhaps most significant incongruences between the source text and the translation, one that is quite common with literary transitions to the French language. This is the morphological issue with Coursaud’s phrase ‘cela ne fût suffisant,’ with the verb conjugated in the imparfait du subjonctif, which lacks equivalents in the Norwegian and English languages.18 Furthermore, this particular tense of the subjonctif has mostly fallen out of use since the late 1970s,19 and with Solstad’s preference for radical verbal conjugations,

18 In English and Norwegian, the verbal mode of the subjunctive/conjunctive has almost entirely fallen out of use. In English, it is still used to express certain irrealities; ‘if I were rich’ is an example. In both languages, it is still found in certain expressions, such as ‘long live the king’ or ‘måtte det gå bra.’

19 According to Académie française’s website, the French language counsel, the imparfait du subjonctif was replaced by the present tense of the mode: “Le 28 décembre de la seconde [1976] […]. Il n’était désormais plus nécessaire que nous sussions conjuguer ce temps […]. Il suffisait maintenant que l’on sache, que l’on emploie, que l’on prenne et que l’on écrive” (Académie française 2015).

the use of an outdated and formal variation seems strange. There are several examples of this incompatible morphological choice throughout the novel. In addition to the imparfait du subjonctif, we see eleven examples of the passé simple on this page alone: “s’exclama;” “pria;” “se pencha;” “amorça;” “retentit;” “provoqua;” “rendît;” “adressa;” “préféra;” “fit;” and “lut” (Solstad 2008, 44).20 What is problematic about the usage of the imparfait du subjonctif and the passé simple? The most drastic consequence is a remarkable change in the tone of the novel. The two conjugational forms belong to a traditional, and above all, a predominantly literary grammatical schema with strong associations to realist forms of fiction. The grammatical lexicon le Bescherelle describes the passé simple as “reserved for the written language. Employed in narratives, it places the action in the distant past, with no link to the speaker’s present” (Laurent and Delaunay 2012, 163, my translation).21 What is underlined here is the non-deictic quality of the passé simple; as a verbal form, it is separated from the moment of enunciation. It is a recounting and strictly narrative form. I would argue that the close and inseparable link between narrator and narration is fundamental to Solstad’s narrative, demonstrated through the tone, processual rhythm, and personal reflection. Do these remain intact through the change to a more formal language registry and approximation to traditional literary conventions? There certainly are risks. Coursaud’s narrator does not seem to be the same as Solstad’s, as the verbal tenses and modes impose distance. The translator is clearly more than a surrogate in the case of Honte et dignité. Whether or not Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s interpretation of Dag Solstad’s Genanse og verdighet leads him to conceive it as a more conventional novel, I would argue that his rendition poses several problems because of these verbal conjugations. As a result, the relationship between the source text and the translation is one of tension. It would seem like the two do not entirely belong to the same literary genres and styles. Dag Solstad writes in the particular form of Norwegian, ‘radikalt bokmål,’ favoring more liberal conjugations and orthography. Descriptions such as “et vilt vræl” (Solstad 1994, 32), “keitete ansikt” (Solstad 1994, 32), and conjugations such as “hun framsa” (Solstad 1994, 32) are examples of orthography and morphology that are opposite to the ideals of conventional literary forms. In other words, they are somewhat opposite to passé simple.

20 The original French term, passé simple, is preferred over the English ‘simple past,’ just as imparfait du subjonctif is preferred over ‘subjunctive imperfect,’ to emphasize the incompatibility of the two verbal forms. There is no English or Norwegian narrative verb tense.

21 Original quote: “Le passé simple, aujourd’hui, est réservé à la langue écrite. Employé dans le récit, il situe l’action dans un passé sans aucun lien avec le présent du locuteur” (Laurent and Delaunay 2012, 163).

Before we decide to categorize this translation as target-oriented, it is essential to draw attention to the fact that individual lexicographical choices correspond closely to both target- and source-culture. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s replacement of the Norwegian ‘elev’ by the French ‘élève’ is one such example. These two terms correspond well to the context. Less correspondent is the case of the substitution of ‘være’ for ‘humer.’ Lyngstad inserted the word ‘sensing’ in his translation, a word with less potential for duality. However, Coursaud’s choice imposes the corporal nature; one breathes with the body through physical activity. Additionally, smelling or inhaling is arguably semantically further from ‘være’ than ‘sensing’ is. On the other hand, one could claim that inhaling is more relevant to the idea of being. However, the extra attention solicited by this word is diminished in Coursaud’s translation, as he removes the italics. It is rare to see significant typographical shifts of this type. Traditional translation studies categories fail us in cases such as these, as the research object’s target- and source-orientation fluctuates drastically. Polysystemic arguments could point to classical literary influences on the translator being the deciding factor here, Jean- Baptiste Coursaud’s education being a socioeconomic condition. However, the translator’s extensive experiences with Scandinavian literature, both as a student and a translator (Straume 2014), would suggest more than adequate knowledge about the Norwegian language, both in terms of its registries and literary tradition. Coursaud’s translation does not remain consistent, one way or the other, and it does not seem to be explicable through hermeneutic or descriptive models of translation interpretation. Linguistic models would probably struggle to account for Coursaud’s strategy, as equivalency is doubtful. What has been a consistent element throughout the analysis, however, is the presence of drastic shifts. Lexicographical, semantic, and grammatical shifts have been found in abundance in Lyngstad and Coursaud’s translations both, perhaps explaining their ubiquitous presence in translation studies theory. However, the consequences of these shifts remain difficult to explain adequately from the theoretical corpus. At first glance, Coursaud’s translation is as heterogeneous as Lyngstad’s, oscillating between close correspondence and semantic incongruity. Nevertheless, this oscillation makes Coursaud’s version somewhat reminiscent of Lyngstad’s. This is by no means to say they are identical; Coursaud takes greater liberty in his reconfiguration, building on a Latin linguistic tradition where narrative forms are often subjects of their own grammatical rules. The distance created between narrator and protagonist through the employment of the passé simple would be complicated to reproduce in English, for example. Further research on Coursaud’s translation is necessary before any conclusive remarks can be made.

3.3 Second excerpt

From a much later part of the narrative, this passage is another excellent example of the novel’s style, with hectic rhythm, interior monologue, and oral tone and presentation. The source text reads as such:

Han virkelig lette etter at noen skulle hentyde til dette, om ikke annet i en slags kode, ja, hvis en eller annen under en av disse kvikke replikkrundene på lærerværelset plutselig hadde rettet sin pekefinger opp, mot himmelen, og på den måten signalisert at det fantes en lang religiøs tradisjon i vår del av verden, basert på kristendom, og at man følgelig ofte pekte slik med pekefingeren rett opp, mot himmelen, der ifølge tradisjonen Gud, og hans engler, ja de salige også, skulle befinne seg, ja da ville Elias Rukla ha falt ham om halsen, uansett hvor ironisk en slik pekefinger ville ha fortonet seg, både for den som utførte denne bedrift, og for de andre. (Solstad 1994, 119–120)

The single sentence spans seven lines in this format, containing several clauses and a rapid flux between themes and impressions. At this point in the novel, Elias Rukla is searching for certain confirmations, perhaps a savior, as suggested by the religious allegories. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud presents us with the following translation:

Il cherchait vraiment, désespérément, quelqu’un qui ferait mention de ça, ne fût-ce que sous la forme d’une sorte de code, oui, exactement : si au moins quelqu’un, n’importe qui, au cours de ces échanges verbaux alertes dans la salle des professeurs, avait brusquement levé l’index, qu’il l’ait pointé vers le ciel et ce faisant ait signalé qu’il existait dans notre partie du monde une longue tradition religieuse reposant sur la chrétienté et que, par conséquent, on pointait souvent l’index comme ça, vers le ciel, là où selon la tradition se trouvaient Dieu, ses anges, et même ses apôtres pendant qu’on y était, oui, alors là, mais Elias Rukla lui aurait sauté au cou, quelque ironique qu’eût été l’apparence de cet index, tant pour celui qui aurait exécuté cet exploit que pour ceux qui y auraient assisté. (Solstad 2008, 154–155)

As is the case with virtually every excerpt, this passage’s rhythmic scheme is altered through a significant change in punctuation. The colon in the second line particularly stands out, forcing a more considerable pause in addition to altering the reading of the following phrase. Again, the rambling nature of Elias Rukla’s interior monologue undergoes a significant transformation and conventionalization. There are some significant lexicographical and semantic shifts in the translation of this passage. These are of a different nature from those we have seen before. Instead of being caused by an alteration to vocabulary, an expansion on it is taking place. The first example is the doubling of the adverb ‘désespérément’ and ‘vraiment.’ It creates an insistence on the message that could be understood as overemphasizing it. Similarly, in the second line, ‘exactement’ is added after ‘oui,’ creating a near-identical insistence on the source message.

We see yet another example in the second line, where the substitution, ‘quelqu’un, n’importe qui,’ is an out-and-out double of the original phrase, ‘en eller annen.’ Whether or not these repetitions are problematic for the reader will inevitably vary on the individual. Not every reader is as sensitive to repetitions. The remarkable shift in emphasis is less debatable. There is little doubt that there are alterations done to the text made by Coursaud’s additions. The more subdued tone of Solstad’s original passage is here replaced by Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s overemphasized search for Elias Rukla’s intellectual equal. While the message remains relatively similar, its delivery is changed, and its tone altered. A different passage is then created. A different passage means changes are made in the translation process; changes made based on Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s choices. These changes constitute translational shifts, no matter their effect on the passage at whole. Another similarity between the previous excerpt from Coursaud’s translation and this one is the presence of the grammatical mode subjonctif, this time in the simple past tense; ‘qu’il l’ait pointé vers le ciel,’ and ‘ait signalé.’ The simple past conjugation of the subjonctif is without a doubt more common than the imperfect tense, but it still belongs to the upper echelons of the French language. In other words, it is highly doubtful that these choices match the radical morphology employed by Dag Solstad. Additionally, one of these shifts changes the very construction of the sentence; one of the subjonctif verbs replaces the conjunction ‘hvis,’ which has an equivalent in the French language, ‘si.’ I would argue that it is difficult to find an explanation for this change other than a personal stylistic choice on the part of the translator, a stylistic choice reminiscent of traditional literary forms. There are more examples of the subjonctif in this passage, such as the imperfect ‘ne fût-ce.’ However, in the second to last line, we see a rarer conjugation of the mode, le plus- que-parfait du subjonctif: ‘eût été.’ This particular tense of the subjonctif is traditionally used to express a virtual action preceding the principle verb of the sentence, and it is a tense almost exclusively found in formal, written French (Laurent and Delaunay 2012, 120).22 As is the case with the other past tenses of the subjonctif and the use of the passé simple, Coursaud here aligns his translation with traditional and formal French literary styles. His Honte et dignité does not recreate Dag Solstad’s radical dialect and casual tone. Quite the opposite, the narrator is replaced by a more conventional one, with more diegetic distance to the action, and utilizing a more conventional narrative style of storytelling.

22 In le Bescherelle the subjonctif is described as the “mode de la virtualité […] le mode des actions présentées comme possible” (Laurent and Delaunay 2012, 112).

There are more lexicographical incongruencies between the source text and Coursaud’s translation. Replacing the Norwegian ‘salige’ with the French ‘apôtres’ reinforces the specificity of the religious imagery employed by Dag Solstad. The Christian symbolism could here have retained its original slightly more ambiguous form through the use of the French ‘béni,’ closer to the English ‘blessed,’ a word that corresponds more accurately to the original Norwegian term, which does not denote any specific biblical figures. Again we see an interpretation shine through in the translated version, one that might be entirely justifiable through the presence of religious allegories, but an interpretation all the same. The denotation deviates from the source text due to these interpretive choices. The problematic relationship between source text and translation becomes more and more apparent through close attention to these minute details. The use of the various tenses of the subjonctif stand out as the most divergent element in these excerpts of the translation, at least from a linguistic perspective. However, how different are these changes from the ones Lyngstad makes in his Shyness and dignity? Shifts are present in both translations, no matter what category we place each of them in, and they are virtually omnipresent. Identifying these problems seems like a strong argument for the utility of a closely attentive, comparative approach to translation analysis, abstaining from traditional translation studies categories.

3.4 Third excerpt

This early passage describing Elias Rukla’s morning could prove to be somewhat emblematic for Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translation, as Solstad wastes little time establishing his style:

Det skulle ikke forundre meg om det ble regn, tenkte han, og hentet sin sammenleggbare paraply. Han la den ned i veska si, sammen med hodepinetablettene og noen bøker. Han sa farvel til sin kone, påfallende hjertelig, og i en tone som virket ekte, og som sto i sterk kontrast til hans irritable og hennes nok så dratte ansiktsuttrykk. Men slik var det hver morgen, med den største møye samlet han seg til dette hjertelige «ha det bra» som en gest til denne kvinne han i årevis hadde levd tett innpå, som han følgelig måtte kjenne en djup samhørighet med, og selv om nå i det store og det hele bare kunne kjenne rester av denne samhørighet, så var det maktpåliggende for ham hver morgen, gjennom dette muntre, og likestilte «ha det bra», å uttrykke at i djupet av sin sjel så mente han at intet var forandret mellom dem og selv om de begge visste at det overhode ikke stemte overens med de faktiske forhold, så måtte han tvinge seg selv, for sin anstendighets skyld, opp til de høyder hvor denne gest var mulig, ikke minst fordi han fikk tilbake et farvel i samme liketille og ekte tonefall, som virket dempende på hans uro, og som han ikke kunne unnvære. (Solstad 1994, 5–6)

With long phrases with plenty of clauses, a direct, hectic, and informal tone, Solstad opens his novel as he means to go on, at least from a stylistic point of view.

Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendition of this passage reads as such:

Ça ne m’étonnerait pas si le temps se mette à la pluie, songea-t-il. Et d’aller chercher son parapluie télescopique qui rejoignit aussitôt, au fond du cartable, les cachets contre le mal de crâne ainsi que quelques livres. Il prit congé de sa femme, la gratifiant d’un « au revoir » d’une surprenante cordialité, sur un ton a priori authentique, en contraste criant avec la mine, chez lui irascible, chez elle passablement fourbue, qu’arborait le visage. Il en allait ainsi chaque matin, néanmoins. Non sans se faire violence, il s’évertuait à lâcher un amical « porte-toi bien », comme un geste a l’attention de cette femme dont il partagé depuis tant d’années l’intimité et avec laquelle, conséquemment, il s’obligeait à éprouver une profonde affinité, et, quoique en l’instant présent il ne ressente guère, dans l’ensemble, que les simples reliquats de cette affinité, il mettait un point d’honneur à manifester tous les matins, avec ce « porte-toi bien » aussi enjoué que spontané, le fait que, au plus profond de son âme, rien selon lui avait changé entre eux, et ce, quand bien même tous deux savaient pertinemment que cela ne coïncidait en aucun cas avec leur relation effective ; malgré cela, il sentait forcé, par décence envers lui-même, de s’astreindre à ce geste, sans le faire pour autant franchir d’improbables limites, une auto- injonction pas si accessoire, puisque lui-même se voyait en retour gratifier d’un « au revoir » dispensé sur le même ton spontané, authentique, qui avait l’art d’atténuer son inquiétude et dont, tout bonnement, il ne pouvait se passer. (Solstad 2008, 9–10)

As has been the case with the other examples, the rhythmic patterns have been altered through changes in punctuation. In addition to alterations made to the comma pattern, a semicolon is added in the excerpt’s thirteenth line. However, the most intrusive change in this passage must be the deviating periods. In the sixth line, Coursaud adds an entirely new period, creating a contrast between introducing the word ‘goodbye’ and the reflections upon it. Whether or not Solstad initially had specific reasons for keeping the two clauses intended in a single sentence is a matter of interpretation. However, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendition makes such interpretations more difficult. A more complicated case is the removal of the period in the second line of the excerpt and inserting one in the first. The two phrases are about the same length as in the original, but with an altered structure. Again we have to ask, with Solstad’s original text being so stylistically concise, are there not consequences to altering the syntactic relationship between these phrases? Some considerable lexicographical shifts are happening in this passage as well. Jean- Baptiste Coursaud’s chosen vocabulary is more formal than the one found in the source text; the French translator makes use of a more literary language. ‘Tenkte’ is substituted for ‘songer,’ a verb closer in meaning to the English ‘ponder,’ ‘sa farvel’ is translated by the passé simple conjugation ‘prit congé’ and then as the participle variant ‘la gratifiant.’ In the ninth line, we see a formal negation in the phrase ‘ne ressente guère,’ eschewing the more common ‘ne ressente pas’ for its more literary equivalent. It is worth considering that the negation ‘ne… guère’ is very rare in colloquial French, where one would use ‘ne… pas’ in its

place, almost no matter the context. While the two mean the same thing, the one chosen by the French translator is by far the more literary expression, which inevitably affects the tone of the novel. In this passage, a literary device employed by Dag Solstad is the repetition of Elias Rukla bidding his wife farewell. As was the case with Lyngstad’s translation, the repetitive elements are absent in Coursaud’s version. In the source text, the passage opens and ends with the more formal ‘farvel,’ while the repetitions throughout the body are the more informal ‘ha det bra.’ This oscillation between formal and informal language might have significant symbolic potential, as it might illustrate something about the relationship between the protagonist and his wife. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s lexicographical shifts significantly alter the relationship between the formal and informal variants. The initial farewell is rendered as the quite formal ‘prit congé’ in Coursaud’s version. The second, ‘au revoir,’ is employed with a nominal grammatical function, rendering the passage more descriptive, separating the narration from the protagonist’s enunciation. Coursaud alters Solstad’s repetitive pattern; the following instances of ‘ha det bra’ are substituted for ‘porte-toi-bien,’ before the final ‘au revoir’ ends the passage. Coursaud disregards that the initial ‘farvel’ was replaced by ‘prit congé,’ he does not mimic the repetition, ignoring Solstad’s literary technique. There are several significant differences between Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Honte et dignité and Sverre Lyngstad’s Shyness and dignity. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud takes much greater liberties in his rendition, employing a vocabulary that is further removed from the original text’s radical conjugations than we saw in the English translation. The usage of the imparfait du subjonctif and the passé simple particularly stands out, as neither are used in standard, colloquial French, the registry which would most likely be closest to Solstad’s original. These are not the only examples of a misaligned registry, as the French translator also uses more formal forms of negation and employs what seems to be a more conventional narrator, distanced from the story. While Sverre Lyngstad’s conventionalizing moves rendered the novel in a more descriptive language, Coursaud’s conventionalizing moves is more directed at the spatial and temporal distance between the narrator and the protagonist. However, before anyone gets the impression that Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s version of the novel is the target-oriented alternative to Sverre Lyngstad’s source-adaptive rendition, I would mention that one could argue for the opposite as well. The most prominent example of Coursaud being semantically more similar to Solstad than Lyngstad was, is the case of ‘elev.’ The French ‘élève’ corresponds more closely to the Norwegian ‘elev’ than ‘pupil’ does, the

etymological connection being the apparent reason. Nevertheless, this example poses questions of the utility of a discussion of approximation to the source text is particularly necessary or even a productive endeavor. Despite the significant differences between the English and French translations, their obvious similarities cannot be ignored. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud presents us with a more traditional narrative form, with more distanced narrator obliterating much of the interiority of Solstad’s original narration. Add to this, Coursaud makes use of a more literary language registry through the employment of traditional narrative verbal forms. There are as many similarities as there are differences between the two: not only do they present heterogeneous products, the relationship between them is itself heterogeneous. What remains to explore is if this heterogeneity extends to Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational enterprise.

3.5 Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational optic

Unfortunately, unlike Sverre Lyngstad, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud has not written any theoretical reflections on his translational strategies. However, he has been interviewed by NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation). As he is one of the relatively few translators to be anointed knight of the order of Saint Olav, his appearance in the media is hardly surprising. Perhaps these interviews can provide us with some insight into Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational practice in lieu of theoretical discussions from the translator himself. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud expresses his love for Norwegian literature in a corporal fashion; the French translator has quotations from Norwegian writers tattooed on his body, from “the writers who have meant a lot to me [Coursaud], not only as writers but also as people” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008, my translation).23 The translator hails the highly esteemed writer Lars Saabye Christensen for “appearing and writing our lives” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008, my translation).24 He further expresses how he finds it harder to translate “simple sentences without poetic devices and metaphors. When something is simple, it is hard to translate” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008, my translation).25 This statement is quite interesting in light of my analysis, as Solstad’s colloquial and informal language is substituted for a more traditional and formal French one. Coursaud’s preference for a poetic

23 Original quote: “forfatterne som har betydd mye for meg, ikke bare som forfattere men som mennesker” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008).

24 Original quote: “dukker han opp og skriver våre liv” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008).

25 Original quote: “enkle setninger uten poetiske effekter og metaforer. Når noe er enkelt er det vanskelig å oversette” (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008).

registry might be one of the decisive reasons for changing the registry in Genanse og verdighet. Coursaud discusses his practice in more detail in a radio interview with NRK from 2014. Among other things, he opens up about the need to deploy different translational strategies when working on different writers, especially when they are as varied as Saabye Christensen and Erlend Loe (Straume 2014). However, while Coursaud agrees to the statement that his job is to render the literary works as “same as possible” (Straume 2014, my translation),26 he also talks of “understanding a voice” (Straume 2014, my translation),27 and translating that voice into “what it would have been, had it originally been in French” (Straume 2014, my translation).28 On the one hand, he insinuates the possibility for one-to- one equivalency; on the other, he proposes a strategy of alteration. What the two statements have in common, is the belief in equivalency. While he holds back on commentaries on his specific translation projects, comments on particular authors notwithstanding, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud does provide us with something of a hint on his view on literature and translation. He talks quite a bit about the beauty of literature, the emotional aspects of literary devices, techniques, and constellations (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008 and Straume 2014). Coursaud seems to have somewhat of a romantic view on literature; writing is a question of beauty, and human identity shines through, according to the French translator. While he does discuss the difficulty of translating one passage or another, or a specific style or author, he never approaches an argument about the impossibility of translation. Coursaud seems to firmly believe that every voice has an equivalent in the receiving situation, a voice that can capture the source text’s values of tone and significance; at least, it would seem to be the opinion he expresses in these interviews. The one who is tasked with finding these equivalences is him, the translator. These interviews fall somewhat short of the foundation provided by Sverre Lyngstad, who illustrated his own translational strategies in “Translator’s Trap: Knut Hamsun’s Hunger in English.” Nevertheless, the interviews help us form a picture of the translator behind the French version, and he does share significant similarities with his Norwegian compatriot. They both seem to insist on the possibility of equivalency in translation. Lyngstad illustrated this through his schematic substitutions of Robert Bly and Mary Chavelita Dunne’s choices

26 Original quote: “så samme som mulig” (Straume 2014).

27 Original quote: “å forstå en stemme” (Straume 2014).

28 Original quote: “finne den franske stemmen som de ville ha, hvis de hadde skrevet direkte på fransk” (Straume 2014).

on a lexicographical level. The motivation for these substitutions was their correctness. In the case of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, he admits to his belief in equivalency, as he explains his belief that his job is to find the replacing voice in French. Neither of these translators confirms to traditional categories, as the close reading showed. The best way to fully map out the French translator’s habits, traits, and optics would obviously be to examine his entire career. Just as was the case with Lyngstad, this would be impossible. As I did before, I have restricted the analysis to a handful of examples, which can at least point to some correlating elements. In Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational corpus we find another novel by Dag Solstad, Ellevte roman, bok atten. This translation was preceded by the 2008 English translation by Sverre Lyngstad and could have been the primary research object if it was not for Genanse og verdighet’s broader international reception. The French translation was published by Swiss publishing house Les Éditions Noir Sur Blanc’s collection Notabilia in 2018.29 Could Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Onzième roman, livre dix-huit be informative for my research? Already on the second page of the novel, we find an example of the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif, “eût été” (Solstad 2018, 18), the same one we saw in Honte et dignité. However, on the following page, we find a more drastic example of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s adaptive approach. In Dag Solstad’s original, we find the following passage:

Faren døde i september. Hun reiste hjem, til begravelsen, og arveoppgjøret, og kom tilbake til Oslo etter ei uke. Hun levde som før, en måneds tid. Men så bestemte hun seg for å flytte tilbake til Kongsberg […]. Egentlig hadde det passet godt om hun dro nå, til Kongsberg, og ut av hans liv, uten å etterlate seg noe annet i hans bevissthet, enn minnet om litt stjålen lykke. (Solstad 1992, 6–7)

Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendering of this passage into French is done as follows:

Le père mourut en septembre. Elle regagna sa ville natale, rentra assister à l’enterrement et s’occuper de la succession, puis retourna à Oslo une semaine plus tard. Elle poursuivit sa vie d’avant, un mois durant. Or, du jour au lendemain, elle décida de revenir vivre définitivement dans sa ville natale de Kongsberg […]. Au fond, cela tombait bien qu’elle s’en aille, qu’elle parte à Kongsberg et s’éclipse sa vie, sans rien laisser dans sa conscience sinon le souvenir d’un semblant de bonheur subtilisé. (Solstad 2018, 19–20)

29 There are several similarities between Noir sur Blanc’s Notabilia and Les Allusifs. The former’s catalog has a consistent visual design language used on all their novels in the Notabilia collection (Les Éditions Noir sur Blanc 2020). Furthermore, their ambition is to translate “short novels, open to the international, with singular texts and strong voices” (Robitaille 2012, my translation). Both publishing houses were pioneered by Brigitte Bouchard (Robitaille 2012).

The are several similarities between this passage and the various excerpts I studied in Honte et dignité; Jean-Baptiste Coursaud is definitely employing a strategy of adaptation in Onzième roman, livre dix-huit. The pattern of punctuation is altered, entire grammatical clauses are added, and some expansions on the source text are taking place, such as the additional reference to Turid Lammers’ birthplace and return to her hometown Kongsberg. However, what is especially pertinent in this passage is the abundance of the passé simple, as we saw in certain passages in Honte et dignité. Again, Coursaud demonstrates his penchant for a literary and formal language, preferring traditional literary styles over more modern ones. This is what the passé simple signifies, as well as the many variations on the subjonctif. Additionally, they impose the same distance between the narrator and the narrative. This is not to say he exclusively uses such registries, ‘[a]u fond, cela tombait bien qu’elle s’en aille’ is a more modern variant including a conjugation in the subjonctif, but he definitely employs a majority of conjugations in conventional grammar, and does so in several different translations. Coursaud’s preference for conventional literary devices and language registries becomes all the more apparent through the comparative analysis of his translational enterprise. The translation analyses correlate with the NRK interviews with Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, where the French translator describes both his view on literature and translation. His romantic and sentimental views on literature stand out; he mentions the word beauty several times and links this to the novelist’s unique voice. The traditional literary style employed by the translator correlates with these views. We see this in Honte et dignité and in Onzième roman, livre dix-huit both. It should be considered that Solstad’s style in the latter is somewhat more traditional; however, this only begs the question of why they are so stylistically similar in Coursaud’s translations, rendered in the same conservative French language. Why does Jean-Baptiste Coursaud translate them so similarly? The obvious answer would be that an agent with a signature style renders both of them, that a similar textual reconfiguration paradigm is being exerted on both novels. That being said, Coursaud himself mentions the need for different translational strategies when approaching works of different authors. His style should vary when working on novels written in a completely different voice, to use Coursaud’s own terms. When he mentions how simplistic literary expressions are harder to translate, it is in the context of a specific author, Erlend Loe (Aasheim and Bjørdal 2008). Loe’s style is indeed very different from Solstad’s, with short and simple sentences, humor, and satire being parts of his trademark style. Comparing Coursaud’s approach to Solstad and his approach to Loe could

yield interesting results; how does the French translator approach Erlend Loe’s more straightforward and simple style and language? A quick glance at Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s 2006 translations of Erlend Loe’s Doppler (2004) and Volvo lastvagnar (2005) reveals some fascinating contrasts to his work on Solstad’s novels. Here, the French translator avoids the excessive use of the passé simple, recreating the simplicity and fluency much of the original work. The question is quite apparent, Erlend Loe and Dag Solstad both rely on the same verbal tenses, and they both employ a distinctively colloquial tonality to their novels. Even though Loe writes shorter and simpler sentences, why does Solstad’s style more merit a return to traditional literary dogma? While they are less dominant in the Erlend Loe translations, formal French grammatical conventions are not entirely absent. In particular, uncommon verb tenses of the subjonctif can be found here as well. Some of these are the forced result of Coursaud starting phrases with certain French expressions, such as “pour peu que” (Loe 2006a, 19) or “à moins d’ailleurs que” (Loe 2006a, 19). In order to comply with the rules of French grammar it is mandatory to follow these particular expressions by a verb conjugated in the subjonctif, and the translator obliges; “pour peu que son espèce eût eu” (Loe 2006a, 19), “à moins d’ailleurs que j’aie lu” (Loe 2006a, 19). It is not merely the use of the subjonctif that conventionalizes the passage. As has been the case in virtually every example, the tenses are the issue here. They belong to an elevated language registry that corresponds poorly to Loe’s style. The two examples here are, respectively, conjugated in the past perfect and past tense of the subjonctif. While the present tense of the subjonctif is common, these past tenses are rarer due to the grammatical mode’s atemporal nature. Particularly the past perfect of the subjonctif is rarely ever heard or seen in French except in traditional styles of literature. Had there been an equivalent to these grammatical tenses and mode in Norwegian, it is very doubtful that Erlend Loe would have made use of them, considering his informal style. There are additional cases that are not explicable through adjectival and adverbial openings. “[C]ela eût entraîné” (Loe 2006a, 19) and “[i]l eût été faux” (Loe 2006a, 36) are examples of this from Doppler. In Volvo trucks we find similar examples: “ne le fût jamais” (Loe 2006b, 13) and “elle l’eût immédiatement dédaigné” (Loe 2006b, 17). In Doppler we also find the formal and literary form of negation: “sans guère faire mine” (Loe 2006a, 46). While Jean-Baptiste Coursaud seems to be semantically much closer to the tone of the source text in his translations of Erlend Loe, he is not more consistent in these than he was in translating Solstad, at least not by a significant degree.

This inconsistency could serve as a further argument for the heterogeneity of translated literature. Does this disprove any hypothesis based on Coursaud’s formalizing and conventionalizing of the translated language? Not necessarily, first evidenced by the presence of problematic verbal conjugations. Nevertheless, the degree varies considerably, making an argument of universals in translations somewhat unstable. Normalizing and standardizing have been theorized and even posited as universals for translation by Corpora translation studies academics (Laviosa 2013, 231–232), but such attempts at unifying theories are inept at explaining heterogeneity; they mainly rely on similarity. Additionally, it is useful to consider the particular translator’s background; Jean-Baptiste Coursaud himself mentions the simplistic nature of Loe’s style and how it presents difficulties for the translator. Nevertheless, the French translator relies on complex literary devices in his rendering. These contradictory elements are made visible through the applied method of this analysis. The reason for Coursaud’s conventionalizing would be difficult to discern. Without a doubt, French is a language with a particularly dogmatic literary tradition, complete with specific literary narrative tenses and grammatical variations not used in ordinary speech. Additionally, there are many adherents of this literary language today, keeping this convention alive and well. However, French writers are writing within a French literary sphere, which includes these tenses and modes. The same cannot be said of Erlend Loe or Dag Solstad, who hail from a different tradition and system, and whose works are being transported to the French literary domain. Additionally, writers who apply these narrative verbal tenses tend to operate with conventional narrators, distanced from the story itself. Could the Norwegian and French literary systems be incompatible to such a degree that Solstad and Loe are impossible to carry over accurately? This would be a challenging proposition to argue for, as it presupposes that there are no writers who have written in simplified French language. This is simply not true. From Émile Zola’s employment of more accurate informal dialog to Albert Camus’ novels written entirely in passé composé, the more commonplace and colloquial equivalent to the passé simple, there is a long and influential history of writers who have written in a simple variant of French. Why would Coursaud not utilize a style more reminiscent of Camus, for example? With his short phrases, colloquial language, and simple informal tenses, he seems like a perfect fit. It would not be easy to find the sole explanation for the translated work’s heterogeneous nature in the language alone. However, there are correlating elements found in the translator’s enterprise that suggests an individual application of the language. Given the degree of conventionalization seen in Solstad and the lesser, but not absent, tendency in Loe,

it is plausible that we are here dealing with specific translative actions from a single linguistic source. Coursaud is the translator of both, but they are not subject to universal law, something the differences exposed by the close reading and comparative analysis of his works shows. What can be said to conclude the examination of Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational optic? He seems to have a much more romanticized view of literature than Sverre Lyngstad’s more schematic approach. He mentions beauty and individual voices several times in the interviews with NRK, and he tattoos Norwegian literary quotes directly on his body. His creative license, to use Lyngstad’s vocabulary, coincides with a less apparent Norwegian political influence; NORLA is not the sole financier of this project. Jean- Baptiste Coursaud’s translation is much more adaptive than Lyngstad’s English version of the text, regarding lexicographical, semantic, and grammatical choices. It is not impossible that there exists a causal relationship between the translator’s creative liberty and the lesser influence from the novel’s source culture, although this would be difficult to conclude without resorting to speculation. Nevertheless, these apparent creative differences do not distract from the obvious similarities between the two translators. Their similar view on translation and translative strategies become evident when Coursaud defines his job as searching for equivalent voices in the receiving situation. Yet, in the case of the Solstad translations, both tend to employ a more conservative and traditional registry, often endangering similar semantic shifts. Both translators, while they might not always correlate with each other, demonstrate similarities in various translations; the translators are relatively consistent in their respective approaches, although it is difficult to posit any universals between the two. The close reading, linguistic analysis, and comparative method uncover the heterogeneous nature of the research objects. The many facets of translated literature pose issues with many established translation studies theories, exposing theoretical blind spots. The results show that the translations are as similar as they are different. Though they adhere to some near-identical conditions, such as tendencies towards conventionalization and equivalence-based translational strategies, the different degrees of liberty taken in transmitting is still significant. Even though the translators themselves are vastly different, and the two translations were differently funded, the conventionalization mentioned above was evidenced in both the French and the English version. With the results of this analysis, it is time to revisit the premise of the thesis. What insights did a pragmatic, linguistic, and comparative reading of the novel and its translations ultimately provide?

Chapter 4: Revisiting the premise

4.1 An invalid or implicit method

In his book Method in Translation History (1998), Anthony Pym disregards comparison or close reading in his table of contents. While his book now might seem aged, Pym’s project, to review “dominant concepts of descriptive translation studies” (Pym 1998, vii), demonstrates the method’s historically diminutive position in translation studies and polysystemic or descriptive translation studies paradigms. The reasons for his omission could lie in Pym’s opposition to empiricist models, which he claims does nothing but “produce descriptions” (Pym 1998, 26), counterproductive to Pym’s ‘intercultural studies,’ which “excludes everything considered specific or central to one culture or another” (Pym 1998, 201). Pym’s ideal translation studies discipline depends on conditions quite the opposite of mine; he eliminates the particular, the occasional, and considers translation from the broader perspective of extended cultural studies. The close comparative reading of a source work and its translation could not fit into such a paradigm, since it cannot be done without looking at textual manifests in an empirically exhaustive way. This mindset permeates anthologies of translation studies method, such as Gabriela Saldanha and Sharon O’Brien’s Research Methodologies in Translation Studies (2013), The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies (2013) (eds. Carmen Millán and Francesca Bartrina), and The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (ed. 1998: Mona Baker, eds. 2009: Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha). There are no chapters dedicated to comparative models or close reading research methods in any of these. By delving into the texts, we can find comments on the historical application of comparative research models in translation studies. In “A Causal Model for Translation Studies,” in the anthology Intercultural Faultlines (2000) (ed. Maeve Olohan), Andrew Chesterman includes the comparative model as a paradigm in certain translation studies subdisciplines. According to Chesterman, the comparative method is used in two branches of the academic field; it “underlies the contrastive approaches taken by scholars such as Catford and Vinay & Darbelnet” (Chesterman 2000, 17) and “[a] more recent variant of the comparative model is used in corpus studies” (Chesterman 2000,17). I have discussed both of these subdisciplines in chapter 1, and Chesterman confirms several of my arguments. According to Chesterman, the comparative method is employed in linguistic translation studies to demonstrate the relation between the research objects as “one of

equality or identity […] or indeed difference” (Chesterman 2000, 16). While this is similar to my findings, it differs from those of contrastive linguistics by not placing “language systems (langues) rather than texts (instances of parole) in either side of the relation” (Chesterman 2000, 17). While this “model is useful for charting clear equivalences, for instance in terminology work” (Chesterman 2000, 17), mine is not, as it does not adhere to the positivism of Catford, as an example. My study places texts (paroles) side by side, and while it comments on contrastive elements in the two language systems, it remains textually focused. The close reading supersedes extratextual linguistic considerations on equivalence. The Corpus translation studies use of the model is, according to Chesterman, “to discover the nature of the similarity relation […i]n what respects translations tend to differ from parallel texts” (Chesterman 2000, 17, my italics). The keyword here is that they tend to, as this research is mainly focused on searching for universal laws that govern the act of translating. This definition resonates with Mona Baker’s; “to uncover the nature of translated text as a mediated communicative event” (Baker 1993, 243). Chesterman closes his explanation of the comparative method by stating that

The goal of research based on comparative models is therefore to discover correlations between the two sides of the relation […]. Comparative models allow statements about language-pair translation rules (Catford), about language-system contrasts, or about translation product universals. (Chesterman 2000, 17)

In other words, the comparative study can be in service of instrumental observations, equivalency, or it can generate general statements on translation. Neither contrastive nor Corpora translation studies seem to be interested in the singular case, but rather super theoretical constructional principals of translation. My project delves deeper into the particular, occasional, and looks at translation from a situational perspective. I am not trying to create a unified model for translation studies; I am merely looking at a singular case and applying a particular model. This does not mean that my purview is entirely separate from the translation studies framework; as mentioned initially, my work is utterly dependent on it. Both Pym and I attribute importance to the translator as a nexus for textual reconfiguration, making their position vis-à-vis the text an essential object for research. Hence, I looked at Sverre Lyngstad’s translations and reflections on translating to explore his linguistic point of departure. It illustrates his aim to reconfigure texts to duplicate the exact significance, with little attention to idiomatic language, as was often evident in Shyness and dignity. Similarly, the idea of equivalence implicates authorial

voices in Coursaud’s corpora, a traditional voice seen in Honte et dignité. Rather than universal phenomena, I looked for consistent tendencies that inform my analysis. Pym’s analysis of the translator is a vessel to explore intercultural factors. The significant similarities between the translations that my analysis exposes, challenge Pym’s observations. Lyngstad and Coursaud come from very different backgrounds in translation, education, and operative relations to the source- and target cultures, one from Norway, one from France. Their approaches differ too; Lyngstad is strictly schematic and pedantic, Coursaud has a more romantic disposition, even though both build on equivalency. Despite these variations, the two translations conventionalize Solstad’s language, opting for a dogmatic literary rendition.30 Whether done lexicographically or morphologically, the results are not entirely different; they are reminiscent of older literary modes and traditions. What role does their cultural heritage play when they create such similar results? Even though the two translations resemble each other in many respects, it would be a mistake to say they are entirely similar. Coursaud’s greater creative liberty, more severe tonal reconfigurations, and morphological form of conventionalization are distinct from Lyngstad’s schematic approach and search for formal equivalency in lexicography, resulting in a more descriptive language. In the translators’ corpora, I found correlations between the translations of Genanse og verdighet and other works by the same translators, but I also found clear evidence of significant differences. There were fewer instances of traditional narrative verbal tenses in the French version of Erlend Loe’s more simplistic language than in Solstad’s. Lyngstad’s insistence on readability and equivalent carriers of significance fails to illuminate why he employs the word ‘pupil.’ I would not dare propose these findings as universal. While mentions of the comparative method are exceptionally rare, even fewer do we see of close reading. Why are these methods not worthy of chapters in the methodological library? I can argue for the facts above by analyzing and comparing the minute alterations and details in translated works. This should lend credence to the comparative and close reading method’s utility as a tool for investigating significant shifts. Perhaps its omission is due to the tradition of instrumentalism, as seen from Schleiermacher to Nida, Darbelnet to Steiner. More surprisingly, there are not more mentions found with proponents of descriptive paradigms, such as Anthony Pym. Revisiting the theoretical context might be necessary.

30 Normalizing, simplifying, and standardizing are concepts already explored by corpora linguistic researchers, even studying the obliteration of metonymy in Norwegian to English translations (see Øverås 1998, see also Laviosa 2013). However, as I find the translators use more traditional and conventional dogmatic language, I would rather call it conventionalizing, as I would not claim it is simpler in any way, only more traditional.

4.2 Revisiting the theoretical context

Two translators with different approaches to the craft, different backgrounds in translation and education, producing similar yet distinct works: How do we contextualize the analysis within the broader translation studies discipline? In the introduction, I discussed the traditions within the discipline that would be the most similar to mine. As mentioned, most of these theoretical subdivisions were instrumental, concerned with the process of translation. This analysis poses problems for the categories of traditional hermeneutic translation studies; neither the French nor English version could be described as a source- or target- oriented translation, despite the translators’ potential effort. With his rigid search for equivalence and word-for-word translations, Lyngstad could represent a source-oriented translational strategy, as the case of ‘pupil’ suggests. On the other hand, Coursaud’s search for a French ‘voice’ to replicate the original transcript seems like it would fit with a target- oriented strategy, as he is looking to recreate the work as it would have been, had it been initially written in the French language. However, both approaches value equivalence, and the two translations showed some very similar characteristics. Both translators elevated the language registries and altered the narratological elements in favor of traditional paradigms. In light of the comparative close reading, I would argue that both translators conventionalize Solstad’s novel, concordant with traditional realist literary devices, employing conventional tenses or orthography. I would be uncomfortable dividing these translations into normative categories and ignore the nuances and heterogeneity exposed by the close reading. The fields of contrastive linguistic theories of translation prove equally inept at providing a framework for these examples. While both translators reflect on the concept of equivalency, Lyngstad in the form of strict schematics and Coursaud in the vaguer notions of ‘voices,’ neither of the two translations can be said to present equivalents to Solstad’s original. At least, I would not dare to claim so, after having studied each of them in close detail. The hermeneutic models of the latter half of the previous century are equally difficult to justify in light of the analysis. Does either of the two translators ‘reconstitute’ the text, as George Steiner would propose? Is categorizing the translation within fragments of the target- situation enough to explain the transformation, as Skopos-Theorie scholars would suggest? Such categories still imply disregarding the results of my close reading and analysis. The heterogeneity of the translations poses problems for these paradigms. While the translators often seem to follow clear translational strategies, they wind up deviating from them just as often. Many issues are ignored in these classic subdisciplines, like the source text

inviting the use of anachronistic or otherwise problematic words. Had Lyngstad used ‘student’ instead of ‘pupil,’ it would lead to the obliteration of the reflection on the difference between the two. Linguistics remain relevant; it is not entirely up to target-situations or the processes to unilaterally dictate the outcome. If one were to propose a sort of phenomenology of translation, the translator is an agent, but not the sole progenitor of the work; neither are the source or target situations, at least not according to the close reading and comparison. The translated work is a more complex construction than simple transmission problematics would indicate, whether they are focused on instrumental, processual or product categories. The close reading reveals a more multifaceted, heterogeneous research object. Acknowledging the influence of complex cultural contexts leads us to polysystemic and descriptive approaches. There is an obvious utility in contextualizing translational action within a broader cultural context, understanding the complex nexus of cultural influence between different literary domains. Nevertheless, as Susan Basnett criticized, it is often “shifting the emphasis onto the target culture to the detriment of the textual source” (Basnett 2014, 24). My discussions of Chesterman’s description of the comparative model supports this statement; universals in the processes of translation are prioritized in these subdisciplines, the research object becomes nothing but a symptom of the cultural context. This priority explains why there would be little interest in careful textual analysis and why empiricism can be nothing but descriptions, to use Pym’s vocabulary. I would argue that the close reading and comparative analysis in this thesis goes beyond such descriptions, as it attempts to clarify pertinent relations between source text and translation, while also acknowledging the translator’s influence. However, I try to accomplish this without undermining the textual source, always including it in my analytic purview. The heterogeneity of translated literature is challenging to explain. Just like comparative literature itself, the translation studies discipline has spawned numerous schools, subdisciplines, and theories. One could argue that the examination I have performed is based on a too restrained selection of works to argue with the academic library. Perhaps I was (un)lucky in my choice. The scope of this master’s thesis could never extend far enough to constitute an exhaustive analysis. Nevertheless, I would argue that if the translation studies library could be criticized through such a meager selection of works, there is something within it that is worthy of critique.

4.3 A method with a past

Finally, I would like to revisit a quote by Lawrence Venuti from earlier in the thesis:

A translated text, whether prose or poetry […], is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text – the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the “original.” (Venuti 2008, 1)

There is probably plenty of truth to Venuti’s statement; a translation is better received when it reads more fluently, the less we perceive the foreignness of the writing. While this might give the reader the impression that the translation is close to the original, how would one know unless one compares the two directly? A French reader might perceive Coursaud’s Honte et dignité as fluid; in fact, it may be more digestible due to the conventionalizing of the novel’s vocabulary, verbal tenses, and techniques. After all, he is an acclaimed and awarded translator; it would be strange if his products were not fluid reads, considered in isolation. However, Venuti’s implied argument is that fluency does not fully illustrate the nature of translation. What interests me as a researcher is the transformation that happens as the literary work is transmitted from one cultural-linguistic domain to another, and the subsequent transformation of the object, the creation of alternate text. Source- or target- oriented translational strategies, descriptive or processual approaches to analysis aside, there is little doubt to me that the object produced by a translator is a different object from the source text. Venuti would probably agree, a translation’s ‘originality’ is nothing but an illusion. The best way I can think of to highlight, explore, and analyze this incongruity between original and translation is to pay the closest possible attention to the alteration of minor details, and compare the details side by side. This matches Jakob Lothe’s definition of close reading in Litteraturvitenskapelig leksikon (2007) (Lexicon of comparative literature) as a “concentration on the literary work as an aesthetic object” (Lothe 2007, 157, my translation).31 Jakob Lothe ties this to the approaches of Formalism and New Criticism in mentioning how origin and effects are disregarded in close reading (Lothe 2007, 157), but I would still claim this method is the progenitor of my own. While I do compare the data from the close reading to its source text and tie it to the translator as creator, these are the comparative elements of my approach. The

31 Original quote: “konsentrasjon om det litterære verket som estetisk objekt” (Lothe 2007, 157).

data that is compared is the data uncovered by the careful and detailed analysis of the object; the project starts in the small details; the broader observations result from these. In the same volume, Christian Refsum defines the comparative research method:

A comparative study can compare single works, authorships, themes and formal traits in different works, artistic movements or epochs. The perspective can be linguistic, rhetoric, thematic, historical or sociological. The term is also used across different schools such as Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction and New Historicism and Postcolonialism. (Refsum 2007, 112, my translation)32

As Refsum explains, the origin disciplines of close reading, Formalism and New Criticism, are also known for their employment of comparative research paradigms. The combination of the two methods is nothing new; they have been mainstays in literature research for about a century. This omnipresence is what makes their absence from the translation studies’ methodological surveys so striking. Nevertheless, the multitude of schools might be a testament to their ubiquitous presence. The unacknowledged implication of the method would, in that case, probably only be valid in the case of the comparative method. After all, Andrew Chesterman felt the need to separate this method from other approaches and attribute it solely to two subdisciplines of translation studies research, contrastive and corpora linguistics. Because of this, I have chosen to focus on close reading in the title. Even though none of the anthologies include a separate section dedicated to comparative method, I feel it would have been slightly misleading as an overarching focus. Corpora studies do compare corpora, Pym compares cultures, Venuti compares interpretations. I like to think I compare readings, close readings, and I think we should take this tool back out of the metaphorical toolbox and reapply it more honestly and earnestly in translation studies research. The two methods are historically linked; there is plenty of valuable information discovered through this synthesis.

32 Original quote: “En komparativ studie kan sammenligne enkeltverk, forfatterskap, temaer og formelle trekk i ulike verk, kunstneriske bevegelser eller epoker. Perspektivet kan være lingvistisk, retorsik, tematisk, historisk eller sosiologisk. Betegnelsen brukes også på tvers av skoleretninger som formalisme, nykritikk, strukturalisme, dekonstruksjon og nyhistorisme og postkolonialisme” (Refsum 2007, 112).

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