French Translation Competition 2023
We are delighted to announce the seventh University of Sheffield French Translation Competition for Year 12 and Year 13 students in the UK.
Thank you for your entries. This competition is now closed.
About the competition
Students of French in Years 12 and 13 in the UK are invited to submit their translation of the original short French text below. Only one translation per student is permitted.
About the Text
Laure Murat, Proust, roman familial (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2023)
Shortlisted for this year’s Goncourt Prize, Laure Murat’s ‘family romance’ is part-novel, part-autobiography, part-literary study. It draws on her own aristocratic background in a family that descends from both the Bonapartes and the court favourites of the Bourbons. Her family name is that of Napoleon’s most dashing, dandyish marshal, and one-time King of Naples, Joachim Murat. So this is no ‘misery memoir’. Nonetheless, the book shows how, intellectually and emotionally at least, privilege can be almost as stifling as poverty, especially if you challenge its prevailing gender roles and sexual norms. So Murat recounts how her encounter with Marcel Proust’s masterpiece A la recherche du temps perdu both recalled her to the closed elite of her childhood, and gave her the means to break free from it.
For a short presentation (3 mins) of the book by Laure Murat, see here.
Text to Translate
Il m’a fallu des années pour comprendre une chose très simple. Elle m’a sauté aux yeux lorsqu’un soir, regardant un épisode de Downton Abbey, j’ai découvert la scène où le maître d’hôtel sort un mètre devant la table dressée pour le dîner afin de mesurer la distance entre la fourchette et le couteau et de s’assurer que l’écart entre les couverts est le même pour chaque convive.
Ce geste dérisoire, accompli avec une solennité sacramentelle, a suscité en moi une curiosité dont sur le moment je comprenais mal l’intensité, et encore moins le motif. Pourquoi, allongée devant un écran de télévision à Los Angeles où j’habite, à neuf mille kilomètres du Vieux Continent et si loin de la Belle Époque, m’arrêter sur un détail aussi anodin, presque subliminal, sans aucune valeur dans l’intrigue ? Je sentais confusément que se manifestait, à travers ce mesurage absurde et appliqué, un signe lointain venu du passé, de l’enfance. Mais quoi ? Ce geste ne m’évoquait rien de précis, aucun souvenir particulier. Dans sa simplicité et sa modicité, il a pourtant fini par faire remonter tout un monde des confins de ma mémoire, une figure archaïque, en me montrant de la façon la plus élémentaire que le milieu où j’avais grandi dépendait tout entier et littéralement de son image, son être de surface : l’aristocratie est un monde de pures formes. Plus je creusais, plus je comprenais que cette scène minuscule métaphorisait le principe sur lequel toute une caste se tenait en équilibre, à la manière d’une pyramide qui repose sur sa pointe.
[…]
(259 words)
The prize
The authors of the ten best entries will each receive a prize of a £25 Amazon voucher and an invitation to take part in a special 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 online in January 2024.
The judges
The translations will be read and judged by a panel of French experts from the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield.
How to enter
The competition is open to students of French in Years 12 and 13 in the UK. Please translate the text above by Laure Murat. Translations should be the original work of individual students and should be uploaded via the Competition Entry Form. You must complete the form AND upload your entry via the link on the form or your entry may not be considered.
Winners will be notified by Wednesday 13 December 2023.
A fair copy of the translation, based on the best entries, will be available on this website in January 2024. Unfortunately, we cannot provide feedback on individual entries.
Bonne chance!
Dr David McCallam and Colleagues in French & Francophone Studies