Getting the meaning right is the easy part for a translator; capturing the essence is harder and may be impossible. Take this French word play: ‘Si six scies scient six cyprès chaque scie scie son cyprè.’ Literally translated, it means: ‘If six saws saw six cypresses each saw saws its cypress.’ But the meaning isn’t the point. The point is that, spoken aloud, the same sound is repeated six times. It is clearly impossible to translate this and the meaning without recourse to footnotes - out of the question for a children’s story. So what is a translator to do? Depending on the context an English joke sentence might be used; something like: ‘smith where jones had had had had had had had had had had had more effect on the examiner’ where the meaning is similarly immaterial. (It makes sense if correctly punctuated: see below*) But what if an author had skilfully incorporated the literal meaning into the finished text too?

Despite such conundrums, in 1979, twenty years after I first read LE PETIT PRINCE, I determined to attempt a new translation myself as a labour of love. (I knew no matter how successful my new version there was no possibility of publishing it before the copyright expired in 1994.) The opening sentence of Chapter XI is an example of the thorny problems I faced. In the original French it reads:
   ‘La seconde planète était habitée par un vaniteux.’
literally:
   ‘The second planet was inhabited by a vain man.’
Katherine Woods translates this almost word for word:
   ‘The second planet was inhabited by a conceited man.’

But although in French ‘vaniteux’ and ‘vaniteuse’ are common words (meaning ‘vain man’ and ‘vain woman’) we have no equivalent in everyday English. Maybe this is because vanity is the dark side of chic - another common French word! Significantly, the French often say the English lack chic. They’re probably right but this may be because we have less vanity too. Certainly I’ve never seen a pub or café in England with mirrors lining every vertical surface. In France it’s a common sight, though why customers should want to check they’re still chic every few seconds is beyond me. (I’ve seen them doing it and it looked like vanity to me.) My point is that perhaps a word for ‘vaniteux’ doesn’t exist in English because we have less need of it. So how is the word to be translated? Well, LE PETIT PRINCE is for children who would never say: ‘A conceited man inhabits...!’ but might say: ‘A show-off lives…’ So I opted for:

   ‘On the second planet lived a show-off.’
It’s still not perfect but it’s certainly closer to the spirit of the original. (The very week my new translation was finally published in 1994, I was walking past a school playground and heard one child shout at another: 'You swank!' Of course! The perfect word! If my translation's ever reprinted I'll try to get the publisher to agree to 'show off' being changed to 'swank' in the four or five places it occurs.)

In the opening chapter, after describing how he became a pilot, Saint-Exupéry writes about how lonely his life has been...
   ‘...jusqu’à une panne dans le désert du Sahara, il y a six ans...’
literally...
   ‘...just to a break-down in the desert of Sahara, there is six years...’
which Katherine Woods renders...
   ‘..until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago...’

Notice that Saint-Ex makes no reference to ‘accident’ or ‘plane’ and that ‘panne’ means ‘breakdown’. Furthermore, have you ever heard a native English speaker refer to the ‘Desert of Sahara’? This is my version:
   ‘...until six years ago when I had a break down in the Sahara Desert...’

After the little prince’s astounding appearance ‘a thousand miles from human habitation’ Saint-Ex comments:
   ‘Or mon petit bonhomme ne me semblait ni égaré, ni mort de fatigue, ni mort de faim, ni mort de soif, ni mort de peur...’
Literally:
   ‘Now my little goodman nor me seemed nor lost, nor dead of fatigue, nor dead of hunger, nor dead of thirst, nor dead of fear.’
which KW renders as:
   ‘And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear.’
This is my version:
   ‘Yet this little fellow didn't seem to be either lost, or tired, or hungry, or thirsty, or frightened.’

Later Saint-Ex asks the little prince:
   ‘Où est-ce chez toi?’
literally:
   ‘Where is it at yours?’
Which KW, unbelievably, has rendered:
   ‘What is this ‘where I live’ of which you speak?’
while I’ve simply put what any grown-up would ask a child:
   ‘Where's your home?’

There are even places where KW has the meaning wrong. (Surely they can’t be typograph-ical errors after fifty years in print?) For example, at one point Saint-Ex writes:
   ‘Si je vous ai raconté ces détails sur l’astéroide B 612 et si je vous ai confié son numéro, c’est à cause des grandes personnes.’
Literally:
   ‘If I you have recounted these details on the Asteroid B 612 and if I you have confided its number, it is for the cause of large persons.’
Unaccountably, Katherine Woods’s version of this is:
   ‘If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on no account of the grown-ups and their ways.’
which not only omits the number referred to but means the exact opposite of Saint-Ex’s original! This is my translation:
   ‘I've given all these details about Asteroid B 612, including its number, for the benefit of grown ups.’
The next paragraph - too long to quote here - confirms that I’m right about this.

Some of Katherine Woods’s translations make me wonder what her native tongue was because her English is often grammatically wrong. For example, where Saint-Ex has:
   ‘Alors les épines, à quoi servent-elles?’
literally:
   ‘Then the spines, to what serve they?’
she has:
   ‘Then the thorns, what use are they?’
Which is not only clumsy but bad English. (Definite articles are not used for generalisations.) This is my version:
   ‘So what's the point of thorns then?’

And compare:
   ‘A cet instant-là je me disais: < Si ce boulon résiste encore, je le ferai sauter d’un coup de marteau. >’
Literally:
   ‘At this instant there I me said <If this bolt resists more, I it will make jump of a blow of hammer.’
KW has:
   ‘At that instant I was saying to myself: “If this bolt still won’t turn, I am going to knock it out with the hammer.”’
This is my translation:
   ‘At that moment I was thinking: “If this bolt resists one second longer, I'll knock it to bits with a hammer.”’

Here’s another example of the same mistake:
   ‘Il faut bien que je supporte deux ou trois chénilles si je veux connaître les papillons. Il paraît que c’est tellement beau. Sinon qui me rendra visite? Tu seras loin, toi. Quant aux grosse bêtes, je ne crains rien. J’ai mes griffes.’
Word-for-word, this reads:
   ‘It makes well that I support two or three caterpillars if I wish to know the butterflies. It seems that it’s so beautiful. If not who will me visit? Thou wilt be far, thou. As to the gross animals, I not fear nothing. I have my claws .’
KW laboriously, incorrectly and ungrammatically renders this as:
   ‘Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful. And if not the butterflies - and the caterpillars - who will call upon me? You will be far away... As for the large animals, I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws.’
Teachers of English as a foreign language will recognise: ‘if not the butterflies - and the caterpillars - who will call upon me?‘ as typical foreign student’s bad grammar and inelegance. Besides, ‘caterpillars and butterflies’ don’t even figure in the phrase in question. This is my version:
   ‘I must put up with a few caterpillars, mustn’t I, if I want to see butterflies? I hear they're so beautiful. Besides, who else will come to see me? You'll be far away. As for big animals, they don't frighten me. I've got my claws . . .’

A word or two about question phrases (‘Must I? Don’t you? Have you? Wouldn’t he? etc.) The twelve special verbs that make them in English (called anomalous finites) are also used for negatives, interrogatives, short form replies and several other expressions unique to English. Nothing remotely like them appears in the original wording of any foreign text. (Some languages express one form with an invariable ‘isn’t it?’ e.g. ‘N’est-ce pas?’ in French tagged onto anything, but that’s as far as it goes.) Yet these expressions are an integral part of English syntax. Consider this interchange:
   ‘I’ve just sold my car.’
   ‘Oh, you have, have you?!’
With five short words the second speaker expresses surprise and disbelief and simultaneously confirms accurate perception of what was said (by repetition of the anomalous finite used, in the tense used, by the first speaker). If the second speaker had replied:
   ‘Couldn’t you?!’
the first speaker would have known immediately that he or she hadn’t heard properly. This is one of many practical, efficient communication devices made possible by the twelve anomalous finites. Now consider the plight of a French translator faced with this piece of dialogue. How is the second speaker’s utterance to be translated? The only solution is to imagine what a French speaker might say in a similar context. Probably:
   ‘C’est pas vrai!’
But suppose you then had to translate this back into the original English. Katherine Woods would undoubtedly have put:
   ‘It is not true!’
and missed it. In fact few translators have experience teaching English to foreigners, or are aware of anomalous finites, or of much English syntax at all, but this surely doesn’t mean a text translated from a foreign tongue should never contain these quintessentially English forms, does it?!

Sometimes, happily, a phrase works better in the new language than it did in the original. Thus where Saint-Ex has:
   ‘Ce sera tellement amusant! Tu auras cinq cents millions de grelots, j’aurai cinq cents millions de fontaines..’
Literally:
   ‘It will be so amusing! Thou wilt have five hundred millions of bells, I shall have five hundred millions of fountains...’
KW missed it, of course:
   ‘That will be so amusing! You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water!’
But I grabbed my chance:
   ‘It'll be fun! You'll have five hundred million bells, and I'll have five hundred million wells...’

 

© Alan Wakeman 1994

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