In 1999, French author Rachid Djaïdani published his first novel, Boumkoeur. In it, a young French Arab named Yaz writes the story of his daily life as an adolescent in the projects outside of Paris, known as the banlieue. His narrative describes growing up in public housing, dropping out of the education system, living off the streets after his “foreign” name excluded him from the workforce, and the tenuous relationship between troubled youths like himself and the national police. Today, seventeen years after the publication of Djaïdani’s novel, this story is familiar: it is the cornerstone of the French postcolonial literary genre, including the roman beur, as well as the setting for a number of recent, political and historical events in France, such as the 2005 Paris Riots. Boumkoeur called to me as a translator not merely because of its engaging, heart-wrenching story, but also because of its unique relationship to translation. In the novel, language is not merely the medium used to tell the story, but also a literary device that delivers an astounding postcolonial critique of 20th century French society. In the following essay, I investigate the challenges posed to translation by Yaz’s language, as well as the solutions I offer in my own translated excerpt of Djaïdani’s novel. In this way, I attempt to answer a question that is much more complex than it may initially seem: what’s at stake in translating slang?
First, however, we might contextualize verlan so that its implications in Djaïdani’s text can be better understood. It is a version of slang that evolved in the projects outside of Paris, known as cités, in the early 20th century and that became popular during the 1980’s. It is similar in construction to Pig Latin in English, in that it requires the inversion of a word’s syllables such that the first syllable becomes the last. Verlan in and of itself is an example of the game: the French word l’invers (inverse) is inverted to create verslin, which when spoken, becomes verlan. “Spoken” is important: verlan is a spoken slang, not a standard written language; therefore Djaïdani’s choice to transcribe it already suggests a great deal to his readers about Yaz’s social status, as well as the expectations they should have of his character and his story. As Vivienne Méla suggests, “[Verlan] is a language which, like a mirror, reflects multiple tensions in society… Sometimes [it is] considered vulgar slang, a crude privilege of thugs, drug users, and gangsters of all natures, sometimes [it is] considered a play on language used by adolescents….”[1] Yaz’s use of verlan slang offers a good platform for demonstrating the complicated function of language within the novel, as both a vehicle of plot development and a literary device that conveys greater social criticisms. It is by no coincidence also a great launching point for a discussion about recreation and displacement of meaning in my translation. From his use of verlan alone, then, Djaïdani challenges his readers’ expectations. He forces readers to ask themselves: is Yaz a thug, or is he an adolescent in the wrong place, at the wrong time? Furthermore, while Yaz does speak (and write) in verlan, he also acts as the verlan translator for readers, as seen in passages where he writes, “phrase décodé.” His ability to navigate between the two languages emphasizes, on one hand, his position in a marginalized social group (that of the poor, first generation French Arab), and on the other, his ability and/or desire to integrate into French society. The stake in translating verlan, therefore, was not merely risking the loss of Yaz’s quirky, atypical language, but also the critical commentary it suggests.
Unfortunately, verlan lacks both context and an equivalent in the English language. I did not want to translate it as black American slang, which would imply entirely different historical and social connotations as well as erase the text’s relationship with French culture. I certainly did not want to translate it as Pig Latin, which is merely a silly game for children in American culture. Therefore, rather than attempting to force one language into the cultural constraints of another, I decided to take Gregory Rabassa’s advice, and to “…invent, in this case a kind of artificial [speech] in English.”[3] Throughout the text, I chose to employ contemporary American slang, to avoid words with specific ties to location, and to recreate, through punctuation, some of visual confusion also presented in the original text in the transcription of verlan. We might take when Yaz returns to the basement of Tour 123 after briefly returning to his own apartment as an example.
Original:
“– Grézi ! ouvre, c’est Yaz… Zi va, vrirou la teport c’est Yaz que j’te dis, fais pas le baltringue.
Phrase décodée : Grézi ouvre, c’est moi Yaz, je suis du retour, fais pas l’imbécile, ouvre” (Djaïdani, 58).
Translation:
“Grézi! op’n up, ‘s me! G’on, op’n the door, ‘s me Yaz ’m tellin’ ya, stop fuckin’ ‘round.
Decoded Sentence: “Grézi, open up, it’s me Yaz, I’m back, quit messing around, open up.” (Brynes)
Where Djaïdani’s text reversed the syllables (ouvrir becomes vrirou), I chose to eliminate vowels and replace them with apostrophes, with the effect being a still largely legible sentence (as the original is, in French) that requires the reader to pause, to spend an extra moment studying the written language. I also strove to recreate the vulgarity associated with the use of verlan: while Djaïdani’s text does not use curse words in this example, I chose to use the English expression, “stop fucking around,” to emphasize the difference in register between Yaz’s initial use of slang and the more “appropriate” translation he provides for readers. In a similar vein, I often replaced formal written language with an oral transcription, such as “going” to “gonna,” or “you” to “ya,” in an attempt to recreate the informal, undereducated speech patterns used by both Yaz and Grézi. This echoes Djaïdani’s choice to frequently drop the ne required in a standard French negation (ne…pas), which is a common, informal speech pattern in contemporary French. These are only a few of many examples of how I negotiated with the source text in order to displace some of verlan’s cultural connotations in my translated text. Although I could not recreate verlan specifically, I could and did recreate some of its implications.
Furthermore, because I could not recreate this slang in the English text, I strove all the more to preserve key moments of poetic expression in the narrative. Yaz’s lapses into alliteration, meter, and rhyme function as an indicator of his desire to be an author (the very premise of the novel), as well as accentuate his position as a mediator between a marginalized group of youths and French society, and between contemporary culture and traditional culture. Although his word choice may be crude, Yaz’s description of the female body, of the traditional love object, does contain poetic elements.
Original:
Le pistonnage de mon magma dans son con océanique sera rhythmé par les tambours de l’amour jusqu’au compte à rebours de jet final qui sera plus violent que le Big Bang. (Djaïdani, 55)
Translation:
My magma will thrust mechanically into her oceanic pussy to the rhythmic beat of sweet love, a count down to the final skeet which will be more violent than the Big Bang. (Brynes)
The French text contains both assonance (the returning [o] in mon, océanique) and rhyme (tambour, amour, and rebours). Interestingly, “les tambours de l’amour jusqu’au compte à rebours” is also exactly twelve syllables, creating a rhythm that replicates the traditional twelve syllable poetic French verse, the alexandrine. In translating this passage, I substituted consonance for assonance (the [s] in oceanic, pussy, sweet, skeet) and recreated the rhyme (beat, sweet, skeet). Although I failed to recreate the syllabic rhythm, I did choose to use the word “skeet” here as both a play on Yaz’s vulgarity and as a cultural marker: although “skeet” is a term usually used in black American English, it is also widely used in rap music. Its inclusion in this passage pays homage to the American rap culture in a way that is not only recognizable to the readers, but also in a way that recalls Yaz and Grézi’s own fascination with American culture and rap. It is to this fascination with an often-misunderstood American language and pop culture that I will turn to now.
Throughout the narrative, Yaz often references American culture (Tony Montana, Scarface, John Wayne) and uses scattered English words or expressions. His use of English most often correlates with descriptions of image or reputation, such that American pop culture or language becomes a status symbol for the French youth in the cité. Indeed, these references highlight the influence of American rap culture, of gang life as depicted in music and film, and of the glamorization of violence on Yaz, and perhaps more importantly, on Grézi.
Original:
Grézi est la parfaite reproduction du Gremlin, big shoes aux pieds, survêt bleu pas trop serré et pas trop large, doudoune de marque, c’est important, pull Lacoste et une petite chevalière en or au petit doigt. … Comme d’autres jeunes de son age, il aurait aimé avoir comme grand frère Tony Montana…comme brother, ce killer. (Djaïdani, 44)
Translation:
Grézi is the spitting image of a Gremlin, a street kid, “beeg shooz” on his feet, blue tracksuit not too tight and not too loose, brand name puffy jacket, that’s important, Lacoste sweater and a little gold signet ring on his pinkie. Like other guys his age, he would have liked to have Tony Montana for a big brother… a “bruzza,” this “keellah.” (Brynes)
The original text implements the English words fluidly: no quotation marks or italics are used to indicate the introduction of a foreign language. Stylistically, this choice implies that Yaz uses these English words frequently and understands them at least fundamentally. More importantly, it implies that English (and in other places, Arabic) has a place in French linguistic culture. Unlike when he writes in verlan, Yaz doesn’t need to translate English for his readers: they are expected to understand. In recreating this passage in English, then, I wanted to provide some indication of the intrusion of a foreign culture – or more aptly, in translation, a reference to the source culture. In my first draft, I simply italicized the English words, hoping the visual element would force readers to question why these words, in particular, were differentiated. I quickly realized, however, that my goal wasn’t merely to emphasize these words, but to stress how they represent the relationship between the French and English languages in French contemporary culture. I changed my approach therefore, to a loosely phonetic transcription that (hopefully) replicates a French native speaker’s pronunciation of these English words. “Brother” becomes “bruzza,” as the English [ð] is notoriously difficult for French speakers to recreate; “killer” becomes “keellah,” to replicate the confusion between the French and English [i] vs. [aɪ] sounds. The misspellings, which not only resemble phonetic mispronunciations, also reinforce the notion that Yaz understands these words only minimally, through contact with music and other pop culture references.
What I have attempted to demonstrate in this short essay is how one small aspect of Djaïdani’s novel contains such integral implications for the text as a whole. In translating this text into English, in which there is no equivalent to verlan, I had to make specific choices that would either recreate Djaïdani’s suggestions, or displace them. As I have explained, some of these choices included playing with punctuation and oral/written language forms, retaining poetic devices, and intentionally using misspellings to simultaneously replicate (mis)pronunciations and point to the source culture. In Djaïdani’s novel, what’s at stake in translating slang is not just a question of vocabulary or register, but rather a complex critique of contemporary French society, the groups it marginalizes, and the call for a new, inclusive identity. In his novel, Djaïdani adapts the notion of translation as the intersection between two languages and modifies it to represent the intersection between two discourses. In this way, translation emerges as a critical solution to the crisis of national identity that functions both inside and outside of his text.
[1] Méla, Vivienne. “Le Verlan ou le Langage du Miroir.” Langues 101 (1991): 73-94. Web.
[3] Rabassa, Gregory. “No Two Snowflakes are Alike: Translation as Metaphor.” The Craft of Translation. Eds. Biguenet, John and Rainer Schulte. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print.
*****
Stephanie Brynes currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a Masters/Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin. As an academic, she studies 18th and 20th century French literature, translation, and philosophy, and is currently launching a project to recover French women’s narratives of the First World War. As a human, she enjoys traveling, baking elaborate cakes, hiking, and gardening.
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