- Title
- Translating Boris Vian's Je voudrais pas crever
- Creator
- Freij, Maria
- Relation
- Australian Journal of French Studies Vol. 47, Issue 1, p. 60-71
- Relation
- http://arts.monash.edu.au/french/ajfs
- Publisher
- Monash University
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- The translator of poetry ought to be a poet, Dryden tells us. If only it were that simple. Many argue that translation is in itself impossible, and it is at times “very tempting to take such a position seriously”. The translation of Boris Vian’s posthumous poetry collection Je voudrais pas crever is a case in point in terms of expanding the frontiers of the possible with regard to translation. Indeed, translating Vian’s prose is already a sufficiently challenging task given the high degree of pathos and (very often language-focused) humour, with which he and authors like him, including close friend and OuLiPian Raymond Queneau, have become synonymous. To translate Vian’s poetry is, therefore, all the more challenging since his poetry is so often considered to be supplementary to his novelistic production; and a translation of this verse component of the Vian oeuvre needs to be sensitive not only to his penchant for lexical innovation but also his poetic technique. It is from within this framework that I wish to describe here some specific translation issues that arose while I was producing my own English version of what has been argued to be Vian’s most intimate and poignant collection of verse.
- Subject
- translations; Boris Vian; poetry; humour
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/922035
- Identifier
- uon:9467
- Identifier
- ISSN:0004-9468
- Language
- eng
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