12 The Linguist OCTOBER/NOVEMBER
www.ciol.org.uk
F
rench and British Great War poetry
are, in most respects, thematically
and technically similar, though some
of the French poets are more prosodically
adventurous. Most of the translation
challenges are the same as in any corpus of
poetry. But one factor sets the French poetry
apart: poet and reader shared the painful
knowledge that the war was being fought
on home soil. Therefore the fervour of a
young French soldier in 1914 and the anger
of a battle-hardened poilu in 1916 are not
quite the same as those of their British or
German counterparts.
Care must be taken not to misrepresent
the implications of this unspoken assumption.
Among these implications are those
embodied in cultural and historical allusions,
which can be tricky to translate. Here is an
example from the opening of Albert-Paul
Granier's 'Chanson à la lune':
Lune, m'amie, hé! la lune,
Hâtez-vous de sortir de là!
L'attaque est pour ce soir, pour tout de suite!
– Pourquoi êtes-vous là, derrière le bois?
Pourquoi êtes-vous là, dans les lignes?
Est-ce qu'ils vous ont faite prisonnière,
et comme un gros dracken, vous tiennent
en laisse
avec un homme pour pendentif?
At issue is dracken. The reference is to a
German captive balloon. There are two
spelling mistakes. First, the correct term,
Drache ('kite'), only takes an 'n' when inflected
or in compounds, as in Drachenballon ('kite
balloon'). The noun Drachen means 'dragon',
which may well be what Granier had in mind
– I have seen Drachenballon referred to as
'dragon balloon' in both French and English.
Second, dracken is a typical French
mispronunciation of the 'x' in Drachen; it is
useful here, having an alien ugliness more
threatening than the French dragon. Should
the mistakes be corrected? Even if they are
not, the word would baffle most readers.
While people in 1917 knew of the sinister
Drachenballon from the press, few will
understand the reference today.
One possible translation is 'dragon
balloon', but this could connote Chinese
community festivals. 'Observation balloon'
is clear and technically correct but more
insipid than dracken and rhythmically dilute
in the context. To any but initiates, 'kite
Angry and rhythmic with grotesque word choices – French
WWI poetry is challenging to translate, says Ian Higgins
Poetic justice
