Translating voices in crime fiction

the case of the French translation of Brookmyre's quite ugly one morning

Charlotte Bosseaux

pp. 125-144

in: Jean Boase-Beier, Lina Fisher, Hiroko Furukawa (eds), The Palgrave handbook of literary translation, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Narrative texts are made up of voices, which come to us via a narrator or through character monologues and dialogues. These voices lead us in our understanding of a novel's themes, characters and contexts. In this chapter Bosseaux presents a case study on a crime fiction novel, Quite Ugly One Morning (1996) by Scottish writer Christopher Brookmyre and its French translation. The novel, set in Edinburgh, depicts various characters from different parts of Britain whose voices are an integral part of their identity. The main aim of the chapter is therefore to identify and present some of these voices in the source text and investigate how the French translator has dealt with various aspects of register, particularly the use of the Scottish dialect and swearing.