The Linguist

@CIOL_Linguists SUMMER 2023 The Linguist 11 FEATURES approach, but the reader experience will still be unique for each book." Let the translating begin! At the start of each round of translation, Josephine asked how many books each translator wanted for the coming year and which delivery dates were convenient. The deadlines were generous, so we could fit the work around our other commitments. Ros Schwartz and Shaun Whiteside chose three books a year, well spaced out, and spent three to four months on each one, building in time to set the translation aside before revising it two or three times. There were ten translators in total, two freelance copy editors, a pool of freelance proofreaders, an in-house managing editor to coordinate production of each book and the series editor, in addition to staff working on aspects such as covers and marketing. Given the size of the team of translators, it made sense to have a comprehensive style sheet, as some areas of continuity needed to be maintained. The global readership was an important consideration here (each book was published by Penguin in the USA as well as in the UK), and we were careful to avoid making the atmospheric French context sound too British. David Bellos helped establish the series style with his translation of the first novel, Pietr the Latvian, summarising recurring terminology (particularly police ranks, forms of address and other stylistic choices) in a document that we built on for subsequent translations. This standardisation covered only a small percentage of the text, for example Police Judiciaire was to remain in French and Maigret was always Inspector Maigret. Although the translators didn't consult with each other after the Seneffe meeting, Josephine sent us some of the first titles as a reference, which was very useful. We could not, of course, consult the author, who died in 1989. For Ros, who tends to enter into a dialogue with the authors she translates, this was an additional challenge. "There's a lot of period detail in Simenon's descriptions, so part of the job is doing detective work to find images of items he refers to – but that's also part of the fun," she explains. In one passage, a woman is sleeping with épingles in her hair, and Ros eventually found these exact bobby pins on eBay! Her ancient Harrap's dictionary really came into its own, providing the specific word for the room in a railway station where the oil lamps are stored: 'lamp-room' (lampisterie). Spoken French, both in Simenon's time and today, is very different from written French – it's full of abbreviations, short cuts, omissions, slang etc. Other French crime writers tend to reflect this in their dialogue; Simenon doesn't. In Maigret's Madwoman (La folle de Maigret), which Siân translated, a petty criminal is interrupted by Maigret when he's having breakfast and says "Ne vous attendez pas, quant à vous, que je vous offre quoi que ce soit" – very correct French, subjunctives and all. This actually helps the translator, as there is nothing more challenging than finding the equivalent for a local, regional or class register. The sentence can be translated as "Don't expect me to offer you anything to eat," which is correct but still speakable. As the period setting extends to dialogue, we tried to avoid characters speaking in 21st- century English, so a translation such as "No way are you getting any of this" would have been inadvisable. The stylistic simplicity of the writing is another important element, but while Simenon writes simply, he doesn't repeat himself. In French, many words start with 're-' to indicate repeating/going back/doing something again. In English, one can end up using the words 'again' and 'back' a lot, and Siân credits copy editor Claire Peligry for drawing her attention to this. Decisions also had to be made with regard to affectionate forms of address. Shaun settled on 'old chap' for mon vieux, for example. Very occasionally, a simple-looking phrase turned out to have a complex meaning, which could lead to lively discussions with the copy editor. The phrase appliquer la question caused something of a kerfuffle when a bit of research revealed that it didn't just mean 'ask some questions', but more specifically, 'apply a 14th-century form of water torture'! Referring to or explaining the use of tutoiement was discouraged unless it was absolutely necessary. Informal tu (rather than vous) is often used between lovers or by the police when disrespecting a criminal, for instance. This is a perennial problem when

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