French Translation Competition 2021

The Winners of our French Translation Competition 2021

Congratulations to the 10 winners of our French Translation Competition! They are (in alphabetical order):

• Haneen Ali, Watford Grammar School for Girls
• Sadie Aspinall, Bablake and King Henry VIII School
• Lucy Fan, Guildford High School
• Thomas Hilditch, Eton College
• Barnaby Keogh, Bolton School Boys’ Division
• Benjamin McCarthy, Caistor Grammar School
• Penelope Ogieriakhi, James Allen’s Girls’ School
• Martha O’Shea, High Storrs School
• Nicole Sergeant, Sleaford Joint Sixth Form
• Alexandra Wishart, Bedford Modern School

We received over 130 entries for the competition and very much enjoyed reading them! As ever, the overall standard was impressively high. Many thanks to all of you who entered the competition.

A fair copy of the translation, based largely on the best entries, is available below, followed by a few remarks on the main translation issues that arose in it.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide feedback on individual entries.

Merci encore une fois et bonne chance pour vos examens !
Dr David McCallam and Colleagues in French & Francophone Studies

Text

Delphine de Vigan, Les Enfants sont rois (Paris: Gallimard, 2021)

This thriller from the author of No et moi (2007) was published earlier this year. It centres on the young Kimmy Diore, an Instagram and Youtube child-star with a following of millions whose everyday moments are filmed and posted by her reality-TV-obsessed mother, Mélanie.

The passage below flashes back to the moment in 2001 when Mélanie, like millions of her compatriots, got hooked on reality-TV thanks to Loft Story (the French version of Big Brother), which became a social phenomenon in the early 2000s.

But now Kimmy has gone missing and Clara, the young policewoman leading the desperate investigation, is drawn into the young girl’s bizarre, networked universe…

A short description and discussion of the book on Europe 1 can be found here (4 mins)

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Le 5 juillet 2001, jour de la finale de Loft Story, Mélanie Claux, ses parents et sa sœur Sandra étaient installés à leur place habituelle devant la télévision. Depuis le 26 avril, date de lancement du jeu, la famille Claux n’avait raté aucun prime time du jeudi.

À quelques minutes de leur libération, après soixante-dix jours enfermés dans un espace clos de murs – une villa en préfabriqué, un faux jardin et un vrai poulailler –, les quatre derniers candidats avaient été réunis dans le vaste salon, les deux garçons serrés côte à côte sur le canapé blanc, les deux filles assises de part et d’autre dans les fauteuils assortis. L’animateur, dont la carrière venait de prendre une tournure aussi phénoménale qu’inattendue, rappela avec exaltation que le moment crucial, tant espéré, était – enfin – arrivé : « Je pars de dix et à zéro vous êtes dehors ! » Il demanda une dernière fois si le public était prêt à l’accompagner, puis entama le décompte, « dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq », soutenu par un chœur docile et puissant. Les candidats se pressèrent vers la sortie, leur valise à la main, « quatre, trois, deux, un, zéro ! ». La porte s’ouvrit comme sous l’effet d’un appel d’air, des acclamations fusèrent.

À présent, l’animateur s’époumonait pour couvrir le bruit de la foule massée à l’extérieur et la clameur du public impatient, retenu depuis plus d’une heure à l’intérieur du studio. « Ils sont dehors ! Ils arrivent ! Soixante-dix jours et retour sur terre pour Laure, Loana, Christophe et Jean-Édouard ! »

(261 words)

Translation

On 5^th July 2001, the day of the Loft Story finale, Mélanie Claux, her parents and her sister Sandra were sat in their usual place in front of the television. Since the show’s launch on 26^th April, the Claux family hadn’t missed a single Thursday prime-time episode.

Only minutes away from being released, after seventy days shut up inside the compound – a prefab villa, a fake garden and a real chicken coop – the last four contestants had been reunited in the vast lounge, the two boys huddled together on the white sofa, the two girls sitting either side of them in matching armchairs. The host, whose career had taken a turn as unexpected as it was sensational, reminded everyone excitedly that the much anticipated climax had – finally – arrived: ‘I’ll start from ten and when I get to zero you’re out!’ He asked the audience one last time if they were ready to join in, then started the countdown, ‘ten, nine, eight, seven six’, accompanied by an obedient, energetic chorus. The contestants rushed towards the exit, suitcases in hand, ‘four, three, two, one, zero!’ The door swung open as though caught by a gust of wind and cheers erupted.

Now the host was shouting himself hoarse to be heard over the noise of the crowd massed outside and the clamour of the impatient audience who had been kept waiting for over an hour inside the studio. ‘They’re out! They’re here! After seventy days, it’s back to Earth for Laure, Loana, Christophe and Jean-Édouard!’

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Some remarks on the translation

The margins were quite fine between the very good translations (quite a lot of these) and the excellent ones. The main thing was getting the translated text as idiomatic as possible. This involved a number of issues:

Accurate vocabulary (espace clos de murs, chœur docile, appel d’air, s’époumonait)

Tenses (étaient installés, avaient été réunis, je pars de, venait de prendre, s’époumonait)

Register (use of contractions in English, such as hadn’t, I’ll start, they’re out)

Avoiding too literal translations (recalled with exaltation, powerful and docile choir)

Avoiding overtranslation (parked themselves, squished together, ecstatically)

Word order (last four contestants, the much hoped-for, critical moment)

Spelling (draught/draft, coop/coup)

Some issues were less clear-cut. For example, should the ‘deux garçons… deux filles’ be rendered as boys/girls or as (young) men/women? A débattre…

About the competition

The prize

The authors of the ten best entries will each receive a prize of a £25 book token and an invitation to take part in a special virtual Translation Workshop organized by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield, involving French academics, Masters students in Translation Studies and alumni who work in translation-related fields. The Workshop will be held on Wed 15 December 2021.

The judges

The translations were read and judged by a panel of French experts from the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield.