Reflections on the translation of Caribbean French: Ernest Pépin's «L'Écran Rouge»

Abstract

When approaching the translation of a literary text written in a geolectal variety, one of the major difficulties that arises is how to deal with diatopisms, among them those related to realia or culturemes laden with specific references and connotations and lacking a lexical equivalent in another language. Translation strategies adopted when faced with these types of words can be characterised as polar opposites: privileging the transfer of semantic information or, on the other hand, seeking to preserve their identity by maintaining, as far as is possible, the non-denotative elements they contain. To illustrate this problem, we examine the short novel L’Écran Rouge (1998) by Ernest Pépin, an author from Guadeloupe who, in all his works, uses the Caribbean vernacular variety of French. We also examine the translation of the novel into Spanish, La Pantalla Roja, published in 2001 by the Cuban essayist and translator Lourdes Arencibia. Our purpose is to analyze and comment on some representative examples and to offer, where appropriate, other possible translation proposals.