The influence of grammatical alterations and transpositions on the meaning of a translated text: a comparative study between « L’Étranger » by A. Camus and « The Stranger » by S. Gilbert

This research aims to study the link between grammar and semantics in relation to translation. The objective is to conduct a comparative study between the French novel “L’Étranger” by Albert Camus (1942) and the first English translation of the same novel by Stuart Gilbert (1946), in order to list different grammatical alterations that could be considered as meaning changing factors that could affect the interpretation of the novel.

Introduction

Many factors can be considered when evaluating the accuracy of a translation. Grammar is one of these factors that could considerably affect the semantics in a text or the interpretation of the complete text. (Lee-Jahnke, 2001 : 267, 270). The degree of influence that grammar can have on the text meaning depends on the translation approach and on the type of the text being translated. While some theories can permit grammatical alterations, others limit it. Moreover, some text types are more likely to be influenced by grammatical alterations or transpositions than others. In this research, I will be studying the influence of grammar on semantics in Stuart Gilbert’s The Stranger in comparison with Albert Camus’ L’Étranger, to illustrate the link between these two notions in this specific literary work.

1. Research statement and question:

Translation can be defined as the process of transferring a source text (ST) from a source language to a target text (TT) in a different language, whereby the TT is expected to be as close as possible to the ST in meaning and in style (Nida,1975: 33) . This definition that appears to be simple, explains a complex process. To perform the translation of a text, the translator should have a deep knowledge of both of the languages he/she are translating from and to, in addition to an ability to understand the denotation as well as the connotation of words and sentences, and the ability to take into consideration cultural aspects or contexts that surrounds both of the source and the target text. The norms and rules as well as different theories on how to translate or why we sometimes choose a certain way to translate is what the modern translation science is about. The first translation theories introduced in the modern era are the linguistic theories introduced by J. Vinay et J. Darbelnet between 1950 and 1960. Modern Translation Science was first introduced officially in 1964 (Oustinoff, 2015 :25). Ever since, researchers have started to introduce different theories and approaches about translation other than the linguistic theories of translation. The study of different translation theories shows different aspects of the process of translation: some theories are meaning-based like in the interpretative theory, while others are structure-based, like the linguistic theories. Moreover, there are theories that are based on the function of the text (functional theory) or the purpose beyond the translation (Skopos theory), etc. (Raková, 2014). The different approaches can lead to the following conclusion : a study and/or an analysis conducted on a translated text, is not limited to the accuracy of lexicology, but it could also, depending on the scope or the purpose of translation, include a comparative analysis on sentence structure and word order, grammatical usages, context, co-text and pragmatics. This leads to the main question I am studying in this research: the influence of grammar and grammatical choices made by a translator in a translated text, how they could influence the meaning of a text and to what extent. In order to demonstrate the link between grammar and semantics, I will be studying the grammatical alterations that occurred in the Stranger, by Stuart Gilbert (1946) in comparison with the source text by Camus (1942), and see to what extent they changed the meaning, as I explained earlier.

I plan my Master’s thesis as follows: after a general introduction, a first chapter that includes the theory and the methodology of the research, a second chapter with a presentation of the analyses and their results and a third chapter with a discussion on those results, discussing how Gilbert’s version covers some themes and sub-themes differently, followed by a conclusion.

In order to provide a theoretical framework for my study, it is necessary to consider the diversity of the theories involved. On one hand, the analysis itself is a descriptive grammatical analysis. The grammatical scope of the study is descriptive because the latter does not aim to approve the grammatical usage by Camus nor by Gilbert, and so the grammatical scope cannot be prescriptive. The study aims to point to the level of accuracy of semantics in the English text compared to the French text, by comparing the grammatical choices of both texts, and detect those that have different semantic interpretations in the French text than in the English text. On the other hand, the result of the analysis is going to be the semantic difference found between the excerpts from the English text and their matching French excerpts. Given that semantics is a branch of linguistics, the discussion that I will undertake on the result of the study could be considered of linguistic nature. Finally, the comparative nature of my study can be described as Translation Science interfering with comparative grammar. I have chosen The Stranger as a corpus in order to highlight the link between grammar, semantics and text interpretation.

1. About the Corpus:

The choice of The Stranger as a corpus and specifically the version of Stuart Gilbert, was not random, as a matter of fact, there are multiple reasons why I made this choice specifically. First, although the translation of Gilbert was the one and only translation of L’Étranger that existed, between 1946 and 1982, it was followed by four other translations : the translation of Joseph Laredo in 1982, followed by the translation of Kate Griffith also in 1982, then Matthew Ward’s in 1989, and finally the translation of Sandra Smith in 2012. These numerous re- translations of the same novel must mean that every translator thought they had something additional to offer other than what Stuart Gilbert had offered in his translation, or otherwise, why re-translate a novel that seemed to be already accurately and faithfully translated the first time?

« The first translation by Stuart Gilbert in 1946 […] firmly established Camus’ reputation in the English- speaking world, and yet the four subsequent translators (Laredo 1982; Griffith 1982; Ward 1988; Smith 2013) obviously felt that Gilbert’s version was lacking in some way, that it was possible to produce a version which provided English-speaking readers with what the subsequent translators presumably felt would be a better sense of the meanings being made in the French original.” (White, 2016 :2)

This conclusion is the synthesis of several articles criticizing the translation of L’Étranger by Gilbert, not only White’s. For example, Jonathan Kaplansky explains that the translation of Gilbert is “domesticating” the text in a way that the personality of Meursault, the main character and the narrator of the novel, can be read differently by an English reader compared to a French reader. (Kaplansky, 2004 : 187). Moreover, James Campbell said that Gilbert took the liberty to add, re- arrange or shift sentences meanings, which led to major changes in the meaning.

« As I read, I occasionally compared a sentence of the French text with the Gilbert version. The results were startling. Gilbert, a friend of James Joyce in Paris in the 1920s, adds phrases and changes the meaning of others. Some of his interference is trivial, but any re-arrangement of a hero’s attributes, his way of speaking, of responding to questions, shifts perceptions of who that character is, however minutely.” (Campbell, 2011 : 35) As for Ryan Bloom, he judged the translation of Gilbert as a “colored translation” (Bloom, 2012), and Helen Sebba explains that Gilbert rationalizes what was expected to remain “irrational” or “unexplained”, it is a property of Meursault’s character that he doesn’t think about the consequences or the reason beyond his actions, while Gilbert chose to add explanations on his own to rationalize some actions and reactions made by Meursault. (Sebba, 1972 : 334, 335). Like in the following example: « J’ai décidé d’aller me baigner » (p. 31). A literal translation of this sentence would be “I decided to go swimming”, what Gilbert proposed as a translation was “ …and decided that a swim would do me good” (p.14), as if Meursault thought about whether this swim would do him good or not, a meaning that Camus did not include, intentionally, in the source text.

1. Theoretical Framework:

This change of meaning in Gilbert’s Stranger, could be explained by Gilbert’s translation approach. The examination of the translation approach and what resulted from it, has proven to be a contradiction between the aims and the results of this approach in The Stranger. This contradiction is what forms the question of my research : the approach aims to present “a close equivalent in meaning” to the disadvantage of making “grammatical alterations and transpositions”, however, these alterations result a change in meaning, and as a result, the equivalents are sometimes hardly “close equivalents”.

Researchers explain that Gilbert’s translation is the result of a free translation and a domestication approach, whereas “free translation” and “domesticating” are not synonyms, but rather two different notions whose definitions and properties overlap on many levels (Yang, 2010). While a literal translation is a word by word translation, a free translation is a translation that does not respect following the same sentence structures or sentence components of the source text (Yang, 2010). The translator has the freedom of not respecting the same sentence structures, grammatical usages, lexical accuracy of the source text, for the purpose of interpreting the meaning of the source text the best way he/she could. Therefore, it is a meaning-based translation. Based on what different scholars and writers mentioned about how Gilbert took the liberty to “change”, “shift” or “rationalize” sentences on his own, without the need to, we can say that Gilbert’s translation was a free translation (Sebba,197 ; Campbell, 2011). Hence, free translation, is a translation that is based on the change of the structure and the text form, in support of the meaning. As for the “Domestication Approach”, “domesticating” is defined by Venuti (1995) as “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bring the author back home” while foreignization is “an ethnodeviant pressure on those (cultural) values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.”(Yang, 2010 : 77). Consequently. unlike free translation, which is based on liberating the translation from the form and structure of the source text, domestication is about freeing the text of the cultural context of the source text. While both approaches aim to liberate the translation from the source text in different ways, they both tend to “liberate” the target text. In the light of these two notions, namely, “free translation” and the “domestication approach”, I can answer my research question, provisionally: Gilbert did change the text structure and form, and did “domesticate” the text for the English reader, but this change, instead of supporting the meaning, it led sometimes to a meaning loss, sometimes to an additional meaning and sometimes it led to a different meaning, that is not included in the source text as I explained before. Thus, I will continue to study how and to what extent, the grammatical changes in The Stranger compared to L’Étranger, did influence the interpretation of some excerpts of the novel or even influenced the interpretation of the entire novel, within this scope.

2. Methodology:

Within the scope of the research question, it was necessary to define criteria for choosing the excerpts I am analyzing, and the steps to follow within the analysis procedure itself. It is certainly not possible to analyze the entire novel in both languages, due to the number of pages my research is limited to, and so determining the procedure of the selection and analysis was necessary.

Although the methodology outline is not yet entirely defined, the first step of the analysis was that I examined the first chapter of Part I of the novel (Sample 1). The idea was to compare the source text with the target text, sentence by sentence, in order to find as many grammatical alterations as possible. As a result, I found 43 sentences with grammatical alterations and relative shift, loss or addition in meaning. I have found some examples with little or no change in meaning, and so it was not necessary to study such examples also. I decided to examine the first chapter of the novel for two reasons, the first reason is that the opening of the novel is the part studied the most by several researchers, whether the opening of the source text or the opening of Gilbert’s Stranger. Since a lot of scholars had already proven that there has been a lot of shifts in the meaning of the opening of the novel, I decided that I could study the same part from a different point of view, a grammatical point of view. Secondly, it was a way to validate the corpus, by making sure that I had enough examples for the aim of the research.

The second step was to examine the textual aspects or properties that contribute in the delivery of the meaning, by listing as many textual properties as possible, listing the excerpts including these features, examining whether they are still present in the Gilbert’s translation or not, and if not, study what impact on the meaning and the interpretation of these same excerpts this alteration caused (Sample 2). By way of example: verb tense and aspects in relation to the novel’s interpretation.

In this respect, Jere Tarle explains how the use of the “passé compose”, the aspect corresponding to both “the past simple” and “present perfect” in French, is an exclusive textual property intended by Camus and reflects the persona of Meursault. (Tarle, 1968 : 87), that highlights the solitude of the sentences as a reflection of the solitude of the persona of Meursault (Sartre, 1947 : 6). Moreover, Benveniste explains that the use of the first person of the singular form with the past simple/present perfect reflects an autobiographic form par excellence. (Benveniste, 1966 : 244). This particular verb aspect is, therefore, a sign of the “brevity” of the sentences, which is a reflection of the “abnormality” of Meursault’s personality. (Sartre, 1947 ; White, 2016) Any addition or omission of this verb aspect would lead intrinsically to a loss or an addition of meaning, that was not aimed by Camus. Although I have not studied the whole text yet, the sample study that I conducted, helped me find some examples demonstrating the use of verb tense and aspects like the following example: Ils se taisaient quand nous passions (They kept falling silent whenever we passed/They were falling silent as we were passing). The translation between parentheses is what I am suggesting as a translation for the French sentence. The verb aspect used in French is “l’imparfait”, an aspect that is equivalent to the past continuous. “They fell silent as we came up with them” is what Gilbert suggested as a translation. We can see that Camus chose not to use the “passé composé”, as he intended to deliver a certain meaning, and so his choice of “l’imparfait” in this sentence was intended as well. The translation offered by Gilbert adds a meaning that Camus did not attach to the sentence. The context of this sentence is the following: Meursault went to the nursing home where his mother was staying when he learned about her death, and he was passing the yard with the warden to where they kept his mother, when he noticed that whenever he passed by anyone, they stopped talking. Camus wanted to present Meursault’s personality as someone who does not think about the future nor the past, he only thinks about the present moment (Sebba, 1972 : 227). Using the past simple in this sentence means that everyone stopped talking the minute they saw Meursault in the yard and stayed silent until he disappeared, which was not what Camus wrote. Camus said that they fell in silence when he passed by them. What Gilbert wrote would mean as well that Meursault was paying attention to everyone’s reaction all the way crossing the yard till he disappeared, and that he was thinking about how people reacted retroactively, which is not how Meursault thinks or reacts. Meursault only thinks about the “present moment”, this is why he would rather describe people’s reactions as he passed by them than describing their reaction all the way through.

3. Work in progress

The analysis and the results are not yet complete as I am still working on the research as well as the writing process. After examining sample 1 and 2, and after reading several articles discussing the grammatical and textual features of L’Etranger, and examining the translation of Stuart Gilbert, I expect to find more examples throughout the rest of the novel, that will not only help prove the link between grammar and semantics, but to specify the types of grammatical features and functions that affect semantics in the novel. Criteria for choosing the excerpts I will be examining are not yet completely defined, further analysis and studies will help define the criteria as well as presenting more accurate results.

Conclusion

After examining Stuart Gilbert’s translation approach, the nature of the translated text, the textual feature of Camus’ text including grammatical features and what influence they had on the French text, I might present as a provisional conclusion that grammatical alterations made by Stuart Gilbert in his translation of L’Étranger, led to a noticeable shift in meaning, that may influence the interpretation and the comprehension of the English reader of the novel.

Bibliography :

1. Benveniste, Émile. 1966, Problèmes de la Linguistique Générale, Paris, Gallimard, pp. 237-250.

2. Bloom, Ryan. 2012, “Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be.” The New Yorker, 11 May.

3. Campbell, James. 2011, “The Pleasures and Perils of Creative Translation.” The New York Times, essay, 9 June.

4. Camus, Albert, and Stuart Gilbert. 1954, The Stranger. New York: Vintage Books.

5. Camus, Albert. 1942, L’Étranger. Paris, Gallimard.

6. Kaplansky, Jonathan. 2004, Outside The Stranger? English Retranslations of Camus’ L’Étranger, Pourquoi donc retraduire?, Volume 15, p. 187-198.

7. Lee-Jahnke, Hannelore. 2001, Aspects pédagogiques de l’évaluation des traductions, Evaluation: Parameters, Methods, Pedagogical Aspects Vol. - No. 2, June.

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10. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1947, « Explication de L’Étranger », in Situations I, Paris: Librairie Gallimard.

11. Sebba, Helen. 1972, Stuart Gilbert's Meursault: A Strange "Stranger", Contemporary Literature, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 334-340 (7 pages)

12. Tarle, Jere. 1968, Sur l'emploi du passé composé dans "L'Étranger" d'Albert Camus : De la grammaire à l'écriture et au style, A Review published by les Sections romane, italienne et anglaise de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Zagreb, Vol. - No. 25-26.

13. Nida, Eugene A., 1991 Language Structure and Translation: Essays by Eugene A. Nida, dans Dil, Anwar (éd), Stanford University Press, California. First Edition, 1975.

14. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995, The Translator‘s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London & New York: Routledge. 15. White, Peter. 2016, Constructing the " Stranger " in Camus' L'Étranger - Registerial and Attitudinal Variability under Translation. The Journal of Translation Studies.

16. Yang, Wenfen. 2010, Brief Study on Domestication and Foreignization in Translation, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 77-80, January.