Tellwell triplets: Giving birth to the same book three times
My publishing experience with Tellwell Talent has been unique: I’ve witnessed three radically different versions of the “same” book emerge squalling and wailing into the literary universe and collaborated with three different “midwives.”
My book is available in English, in French, and in audiobook form, and I translated the original English book into French myself.
Let’s imagine an interrogation of such an author who has reached these heights of folly….
What inspired you to write the book in the first place?
The introductory vignette of my book and the very first tale address exactly this question!
I worked as a radio writer/ broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in Quebec City, Canada, for 10 years, between 1987 and 1997, honing storytelling skills through a weekly recounting of personal and often satirical tales of everyday life, which a number of listeners urged me to publish. My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny is a belated response to those requests and includes an array of freshly-minted humorous and edgy sketches besides.
The book, my first, was prompted by a sense of urgency. I feel like my own shelf life is about to expire!
Over the last several years, and particularly since I reached the age of 70, nearly three years ago, I’ve become acutely aware of how little time I have left before disappearing like an evanescent soap bubble. Pop! Gone! Moreover, for me, the surreal dystopia that suddenly emerged full-blown from the depths of a preternatural realm of nightmare in March 2020 has served to foreground the haunting fragility and fleeting nature of life itself.
These days, each time that I listen to a favorite piece of music, re-watch a beloved film, or re-read a personally meaningful book or article, I’m acutely aware that this may be the last time around. A bizarre and unsettling experience, which is both profound and strangely banal.
Memories are of course consciously prompted by a sort of mental rewind button, or arrive on their own, stimulated by sights, sounds, or smells. Rewinding memories and sharing them with readers – who may discover all sorts of affinities – is part of my ritualized last lap.
I’m a former college teacher and I once had a student who declared at the end of term, “My time with you has been short, but very funny.” This statement, made in passing, has come to summarize my earthly existence and was a logical choice for the title of my book. A fitting epitaph as well!
Last but not least, I’ve written this book as a legacy work for friends and family, most of all for my two clever and witty sons, Dan and David, and for Anne, my kind and gentle wife of nearly 45 years.
Why did you translate your book into French?
“You need your head examined,” my father used to tell me. ”You’re a devil for punishment.”
It’s true that the fabric of my life is woven with multitudinous strands of inexplicable masochism.
So often I love what makes me miserable and I’m miserable doing what I love.
Acting, teaching, radio broadcasting and storytelling, social activism, translating…
Take translation…please. Specifically translation of idiomatic creative writing.
I relish the challenges inherent in striving to render what is ineffable, an ultimately futile attempt to transpose a verbal repository that holds an unassailable otherness.
And yet these same challenges drive me bananas!
In my pea brain, ambivalence not Brittania rules the waves.
When I set out to write My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny, the masochistic demon lodged within my scarred psyche pushed me to translate each sketch into French.
I was soon lost in translation….with not one, but two books on my plate.
Of course, the need to have the French version of the book revised by a Francophone professional became readily apparent. Luckily, my younger son is a professional translator, educated in French. He had time to do some quick revising.
And I was so fortunate to be able to call on the services of a brilliant French language wordsmith, Hélène Charpentier, for deep revision. La traduction de ce livre a été un véritable travail d’amour. Et le fait d’avoir collaboré avec une brillante réviseuse, Hélène Charpentier, a été un privilège extraordinaire.
What are a few of the challenges of translating this creative work, or any other?
Let’s start with the title…
Hélène and I first struggled to find an appropriate rendering of the book title. Hélène’s daughter suggested, and we settled on, Le temps passé avec vous fut bref mais tordant.
A title with an idiomatic flair! I had originally put forward a much more banal rendering: Le temps que j’ai passé avec vous a été court mais tres amusant..
In comparison to Hélène’s, my suggestion went down the proverbial hatch like a lump of undigested porridge!
Trouver sa propre voix/ Finding the author’s voice (Hélène’s French comments with my English summary underneath)
Hélène: Tu le sais, puisque je te l’ai déjà dit, j’ai beaucoup aimé faire ce travail. J’ai beaucoup apprécié la subtilité de ton style, ton humour et cette incroyable auto-dérision.
Un des premiers défis : respecter cet esprit si particulier qui émane de tes mots; il fallait des fois que je réfléchisse pour savoir si ce que tu avais écrit était du français “correct”, car des fois tu utilisais des expressions peu courantes, mais qui caractérisent bien ta personnalité originale.
Hélène says here that during the revision process, she tried to respect my narrative voice, including the pervading tone of self-deprecation.
It’s only in writing this book that I discovered that I had such a voice, and when translating the book, I feared that the voice would vanish, like the chirping of a lone sparrow at the onset of winter darkness.
Jeu de mots/ Wordplay
Hélène: Autre défi : trouver des expressions françaises pour faire un jeu de mot identique à l’anglais.
Hélène was faced with the unenviable task of finding equivalents for puns and other wordplay, as was I when translating the texts.
Exemple : Le titre d’une vignette “Reigning cats and dogs…” – En anglais, c’est excellent. Toi tu avais traduit “donner sa langue au chat”, comme si tu voulais vraiment conserver le mot “chat”, mais cela n’avait pas vraiment de lien avec ce que tu avais écrit par la suite. En français, je n’ai pas réussi à trouver un jeu de mot identique. Donc, j’ai mis “les chiens ne font pas des chats”, mais évidemment, on perd la touche d’humour.
Autre exemple : “This bird was for the birds”… qui ne veut rien dire si on le traduit textuellement. Mais je pense que “une cervelle d’oiseau” traduit assez bien ce que tu veux dire tout en étant une expression typiquement française.
Autre exemple : “youth hostile” – en anglais, le jeu de mot est excellent. En français, “auberge de vieillesse”, c’est pas mal, mais on ne retrouve pas le jeu de mots qu’il a en anglais entre “hostel” et “hostile”. Je n’ai pas trouvé mieux. Je cherche encore…
Hélène describes here the impossible challenge of dealing with wordplay, including puns and authorial inventions. For example, “youth hostile” is a play on youth hostel, because in the instance described in the story, the hostel was indeed hostile to youth! There’s simply no way to capture that in French!
Idiomes du Québec et de la France/ Idioms from Quebec and from France
Hélène: Autre défi : différences linguistiques d’un pays à l ‘autre, c’est-à-dire dans notre cas, vérifier que les expressions que tu utilisais étaient plus adaptées à la France qu’au Québec, ou vice-versa. Je t’ai mis un commentaire dans la marge chaque fois.
Exemple : “shopping”, “avoir les chocottes”, etc.
Hélène is referring here to the fact that I tended to mix expressions from Quebec with expressions from France, which are not necessarily mutually comprehensible.
Références culturelles/ Cultural references
Hélène: Autre défi : les références culturelles – tout bon traducteur doit faire preuve d’une grande culture, n’est-ce pas? Malheureusement, je n’ai pas tout à fait saisi ton allusion à “Britannia”; j’en suis désolée!
Autre exemple : “cosmic muffin” qui n’évoque rien pour un public francophone… enfin pas pour moi du moins…
Autre exemple : “Miltonic Hades” – c’est okay pour Hadès, mais “miltonien” ne sera pas compris par tout les publics…
Autre exemple: “Hairy Thunderer” – Tu avais traduit “hairy” par “poilu”, mais il me semblait que “barbu” était plus approprié car je voyais très bien l’image du dieu en colère avec sa grande barbe, et je trouvais que “poilu” ne sonnait pas bien en français. Question : est-ce que “barbu” traduit bien ce que tu voulais dire?
Autre exemple : J’ai eu du mal avec “trespasses” car en anglais, le lien est parfait entre “trespassers will be prosecuted” et “forgive us our trespasses”, mais en français, ce n’est pas du tout le cas!
Autre exemple : “a true hit of Father” – ça sonne tellement bien en anglais, mais en français, je ne pouvais pas laisser une “véritable dose”…
Autre exemple : “Lather, rinse and repeat supplication time” – pas évident pour moi de deviner l’allusion à la lessive ou au shampoing – donc je ne sais pas si ce que j’ai mis correspond à ta pensée, mais en français “l’heure de la mousse, du rinçage, etc…” ne signifiait pas grand-chose.
Autre exemple : “Leaving the proverbial frying pan” – En français, “la poële à frire” n’évoque pas grand-chose.
Here Hélène lists images and references that cannot be translated, or simply don’t resonate with a French-speaking readership.
In short, my book is jam packed with cultural baggage that I want so much to share with Francophone readers, but which sometimes get lost in translation.
Mais grâce aux splendides suggestions et aux solutions astucieuses d’Hélène, la version française du livre recèle des richesses dont je n’aurais jamais rêvé.
But due to Helene’s splendid suggestions and clever solutions, the French language version of the book harbours other riches of which I never would have dreamed.
Click on the links below for more French and English discussions of translation challenges and for some funny images as well.
Pour en savoir plus sur les épreuves et les tribulations de la traduction de son propre travail créatif, cliquez ici.
You can order the French version of my book by following the links below:
Le temps passé avec vous fut bref mais tordant est maintenant disponible à la commande via ce lien :
As a Canadian company, Tellwell is, I’m sure, looking to reach more authors who write in French.
Your masochistic proclivities reached an apex when you decided to have Tellwell produce an audiobook version of My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny! What on earth could you have been thinking?
The genesis of the audiobook is twofold. Firstly, I have a wonderful friend by the name of Kelly Edmison who swears by audiobooks and informed me that he would only listen to the book, not read it. The audiobook is dedicated to him.
Secondly, many of the stories were recounted on air, so are meant to be heard, as well as read.
Overseeing the production of an audiobook was not for the faint of heart. The project took a whole year to complete!
Tellwell authors are not permitted to narrate their own Tellwell audiobooks. The highly skilled narrator whom I selected from several options provided by the publisher had to overcome numerous obstacles, not the least of which stem from the bits of French and Slovak included in a few of the stories.
I’m excited to announce that the English version of my audiobook is at long last available on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, meaning listeners can purchase it outright, use an Audible credit, or get a discount if they own the Kindle version.
Here is the amazon.ca link: My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny (Audible Audio Edition): Robert McBryde, Hans Cummings, Tellwell Talent: Amazon.ca: Audible Books & Originals
Here’s Audible: My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny Audiobook | Free with trial
And Apple:My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny (Unabridged) by Robert McBryde on Apple Books
For funny images click here: Audiobook Valentines Day Launch – Robert McBryde
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
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