The Linguist

APRIL/MAY 2017 The Linguist 19 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES The Peacock is mainly narrated through internal focalisers, with different scenes told from the perspective of different characters (although always in the third person). With one significant exception, the dialogue is entirely in indirect speech. On one level, this style allowed me a certain flexibility. The fact that Aileen's speech is never quoted word for word enabled me to soften her Scots into Scots English (at one point "Jim hadn't understood her first sentence because of her broad Scots accent"). In this way I could keep the orthography of her speech consistent with the rest of the text and ensure these sections remained accessible to a readership beyond Scotland. For example, we learn that "She still had plenty of time to have weans, and she wasn't worried about finding the right man to start a family." If I'd been working in Scots, this might have become "She still had plenty o time to hae weans, and she wisnae fashed aboot findin the right man to stairt a family." I had a choice of Scots words for 'children': 'bairns' tends to be used more on the east coast, while 'weans' spills out into the regions around Glasgow. There's also a generational difference, and as Aileen is younger, 'weans' feels more natural, particularly imagining the book to be set around the Trossachs (about 30 miles from Glasgow). The subtlety of regional markers I realised that the voice I used for a character in any indirect speech had to be consistent with the voice when the story was narrated from that character's perspective. So I moved away from stylistic consistency across the whole text in favour of consistency within individual voices. This didn't only affect dialect words; the McIntoshes and Aileen refer to the family's animals using the pronouns 'he' or 'she', while the visiting bankers stick with the less familiar 'it'. Regional markers are often a lot more subtle than the obvious dialect words. While the McIntoshes refer to the 'glen' and the bankers talk about the 'valley', I was more interested in the regional use of words such as 'living room'/'sitting room'/'lounge'. While working on The Peacock, I consumed as much Scottish media as possible, trying to tease out the different elements in my own vocabulary – listening to BBC Scotland, revisiting favourite authors and paying close attention when chatting to my elderly neighbours. (And yes, I also watched the well- known comedy-drama Monarch of the Glen.) I utilised social media for anecdotal research on which words people from different regions use. 'Sitting room' turned out to be more typical of speakers from the south of England, while 'living room' is more frequently used by Scots. English speakers more often refer to the evening meal as 'dinner', while Scots tend towards 'tea' – unless people are dining out or having guests over, in which case 'tea' becomes 'dinner'. One translation choice was more of a cultural translation – and one I had to defend a couple of times. In the original, the McIntoshes live in a Herrenhaus ('manor house'/'mansion'). I have never heard the word 'manor house' used to refer to a house in Scotland – to my mind it conjures images of Agatha Christie and Middle England. 'Mansion' is less jarring geographically, but still has nothing to do with the kind of place that the McIntoshes live in – a relic of Scotland's feudal system, defined more by its age (the oldest parts of the building date back to the 17th century), and the fact that it belongs to the local landowner or Laird, than by any potentially imposing appearance. Castles like this are dotted about the Scottish countryside and are just that – castles – unless, like Aileen, you live nearby or work on the estate, in which case they are simply 'the big house'. As a speaker of Scots English, I often find that I am editing myself as I write, reluctantly removing words like stramash ('uproar'/'row') from my translations. At other times, I have polite stand-offs with editors about phrases which apparently sound strange to non-Scottish ears. Yet why shouldn't we translate into this colourful, expressive, humorous language? In this sense, translating into Scots English for so much of The Peacock was a joyful release – and something I hope to do more of in future. COVER STORY Isabel Bogdan's Der Pfau (above); and Annie Rutherford's translation (top)

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