Biggles’s friend André: A study of Malraux in English translation
Stuart Gilbert’s 1935 translation of André Malraux’s La Voie royale deploys an entire arsenal oft ranslation techniques to rewrite and rework the text at the levels of le xis and syntax in ways which emphasise one dimension of the novel, and so give the impression that Gilbert was re-siting the work in a sub-system of English literature different from the location it occupied in the French literary system. The techniques he used and their effect on reception are analysed, as are his likely reasons for adopting such a specific translation posture, and, in particular, whether his approach is the result ofa particular personality type, whether it can be seen as an example of a polysystem-governed adaptation, or whether it is a regime-bound translation.
In “Macerated Malraux” (Fawcett 1997), I outlined some of the basic tenets of polysystem theory as a basis for arguing that Stuart Gilbert’s 1935 translation of André Malraux’s La Voie royale [The Royal Way] showed systematic shifts that might also be seen as systemic, genericising the book more firmly as an adventure novel than the original, possibly, although this can be no more than speculation, with a view to facilitating the entry of a foreign work into a system that may have considered translated literature in general inferior. The main points of this earlier article are summarised below and the argument taken further by a comparison of some of Gilbert’s translation moves with verbal and narrative routines used in two English adventure novels from the early twentieth century.
References
Appendix: Translations done by Stuart Gilbert
(This list is compiled from the holdings ofthe Library ofC ongress and does not claim to be complete.)