Translating Blackness in Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings
Translating Blackness in Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings
Introduction
“He want to know what someone like she could ever know about people like we, and about these rocks, and about these flowers, and about the language of bees’ - Kei Miller
This paper will analyse translation choices of Valerie Malfoy in the French translation of the most translated Jamaican book to date (World Map of the Most Translated Books by Country, 2021); Marlon James’ seminal novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. In particular, it will establish the ways in which translation decisions domesticate elements specific to Caribbean Blackness in order to prioritise western Francophone audiences, resulting in a disinheritance of Black Caribbean cultural expression.
Firstly, I will reflect on the context that brought this novel, Jamaican writers and Jamaican literature, a newfound spotlight in western literary spaces. I will address domestication with regards to postcolonial translation discussions and the ways in which it puts white audiences first. Through a comparative literary analysis of Jamaican Creole and racial language, elements specific to Caribbean Blackness, I will address the ways in which cultural disinheritance of Black Caribbean expression occurs. Lastly, I will advocate best translation practices that use foreignisation strategies to outline a translating Blackness framework that centres Blackness as a way to produce more accurate, sensitive and knowledgeable translations.
The ‘Great Jamaican Novel’
In 2015, a Booker prize Jury deliberated for less than two hours before voting unanimously to crown Marlon James the first Jamaican recipient of the prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings. Described as “The most thrilling and radical winner in years'' - the novel takes place on several continents over 3 decades, fictionalising the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. Through 72 characters, the self-proclaimed post-post colonialist writer gives voice to some of the most marginalised in Jamaica utilising Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole [JC] as a way to counter the exhaustion that comes from constantly reading books where you can’t see anyone like yourself in them (File, 2022).
As a Black Gay Jamaican author currently in the midst of writing what he jokingly describes as “The African Game of Thrones”, (Miller, 2022), a fantasy trilogy, the importance of Black voices is not lost on James or writers of his time. Indeed, 3 years after his Booker prize win fellow Queer Jamaican writer Kei Miller brought once again the international gaze to Jamaican writers and literature with his now infamous essay The White Women and The Language of Bees. The essay now part of his latest book Things I Have Withheld addressed not only racist ideologies faced by Black Caribbean writers but also critiqued the ways namely white Caribbean women writers employ language when writing Black Caribbean voices/characters. It is within this context that we must confront the importance not only of Black writers writing Black characters but interrogate the way these characters are rendered in translation, by whom and for whom.
Domestication: Putting White Audiences First
Although often employed to describe an opposing translation strategy to foreignisation, domestication is to the same degree, a concept often used in conjunction with foreignisation (Paloposki, 2010, p.40) Developed by Venuti as a means to examine the ethics of translation, domestication is often understood as ‘adaptation of the cultural context or of cultural-specific terms’(Paloposki, 2010, p.40). This adaptation is said to ‘favour fluent and transparent strategies which result in acculturation’ (Paloposki, 2010, p.40) put simply it can be described as an ethnocentric approach that makes a source text intelligible to target text audiences - who are prioritised-, tells us who the target audiences are and renders the translator invisible.
If then we think of “translations as facts of the target culture” (Baer, 2014, pp.333-346), readers of domesticated translations or translations in which domestication dominates, understand a literary text through ethnocentric and in the case of Marlon James’ novel a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal lens (hooks, 1984). Moreover, the fact that domestication is said to prioritise fluency can cause cultural assimilation which as Glover notes can “...create hierarchies of value wherein ‘lesser’ cultures are mis-read as lacking or deficient-and subsequently deemed worthy or not of protection and harm”(Glover, 2019 p.25-26). With reference to the translation of Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole into French these hierarchies concern not only language - as a minority of anglophone Caribbean literature is translated into French- but also culture.
It is therefore essential that we question the prioritisation of white French audiences in the translation of the work of a self-proclaimed post-post colonialist Black Jamaican author.
Blackness VS Babylon: A Comparative Literary Analysis (100 words)
As Kaiama Glover points out in her reflections on “Blackness” in French: On Translation, Haiti, and the Matter of Race famed Martinican writer and theorist Édouard Glissant sets out an important point of reflection for the translator of Caribbean literature. In his work Le Discours Antillais Glissant asserts that peoples from “small countries' ' affirm “the right to opacity” - the right to illegibility or, better, to untranslatability (Glover, 2019 p.25-26).
Glissant’s observation of Caribbean experience as a point of departure is therefore necessary in order to understand domestication in the translation of Caribbean literature and identify how it puts western Francophone audiences first in the translation of Jamaican Creole, and racial language in A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Parler une langue, c’est assumer un monde, une culture: Translation of Jamaican Creole and Racial Language
The prioritisation of Blackness in translation through decisions that seek to empower the original text - those that uphold opacity and therefore favour foreignisation, can be described as making translations challenging for readers - who are defined typically as white and middle class - and makes them undesirable to publishers (Glover, 2019 p.25-26). Thus it is unsurprising that Jamaican Creole has all but been abandoned in the French Translation of A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Tristan, me no know how you fi dead. You, you deh right yah so.
je sais pas, moi. Toi, t’es bien là.
Throughout the translation, JC is rendered into French discounting the similarities that it shares with other Creole languages and dismissing the inter Caribbean exchange this could serve. Such an act of violence not only detracts from the characters whose language expression is JC in the book but centres white French readers over those within the Caribbean region and moreover the diaspora.
The fact that “[JC] developed out of contact situations of domination (English) and conquest (West African languages), under the exigences of European expansionism and international commerce” serves to underline how in the original it discloses characters social positionings and the language of thoughts (Bryan, 2004). Although, as Beverly Bryan observes in her article Jamaican Creole: In The Process of Becoming JC is becoming more accepted, but it still continues to be seen not only as the least prestigious language, but also fitting into a particular theory of language, which means that it is the kind of language most vulnerable to social and linguistic pressures (Bryan, 2004). Thus the act of allowing fluency to take precedence, in other words allowing another European language to dominate in the target can be described as the perpetuation of the notion of translation as a literary equivalent of colonisation (Chamberlain, 1988 p 7).
Whatsmore is in rendering JC into French it is once more being positioned according to a colonial antecedent, in the original that being anglophone and in the target being francophone. French is employed as a civilising language and this results in a loss of empowerment not only for the characters voices but also Caribbean readers.
Whilst it must be noted that some attempts have been made to respect opacity and employ foreignisation evidenced in the 51 word glossary of a variety of creole terminology and the capitalisation of pronouns such as ‘Me’, the motivation behind calling attention to these expressions remains unclear. Their choice is seemingly sporadic with examples ranging from guzum, pum-pum, obeah to terminology specific to understanding Rasta Culture such as Jah Rastafari, I & I, Shitstem. Moreover, their employment is inconsistent as they are occasionally translated directly into French as seen with I & I in the following excerpt:
I and I come in two minute ago.
Je suis arrivé y a deux minutes, mon frère.
Indeed when foreignisation is employed - as evidenced with selected JC terms in the glossary - its usage is characterised by domestication in the destruction of rhythm and linguistic pattern. Rather than ‘preserving the cultural context’ (Paloposki, 2010, p.40) they work to commandeer JC patterns of speech disempowering the nation language in the original, leaving the translation void of the dialogue that JC creates between history and the modern world (Bryan, 2004). The favouring of fluency through the employment of domestication and the aimless use of foreignisation strategies are demonstrative of how the translation prioritises accessibility for readers in the former and an exoticisation through use of the latter.
In the translation of racial language, specifically expressions that make reference to pigmentocracy, domestication is noticeable in the omission of racial descriptors. In the following excerpt the term ‘red’ is omitted:
I once asked my Sunday school teacher, if heaven is the place of eternal life, and hell is the opposite of heaven, what does that make hell? A place for dirty red boys like you she said.
Un jour, J’ai demandé à la dame du catéchisme : si le paradis c’est la vie éternelle, et l’enfer le contraire du paradis, alors qu’est ce que l’enfer ? Un endroit pour les sales gamins comme toi, a-t-elle répondu.
In omitting the term ‘red’ in the target the translation not only construes our understanding of the character and their interaction with their teacher - the character Sir Arthur George Jennings is a politician who has been murdered - but it also enacts a destruction of underlying networks of signification. The term red alludes to the character’s proximity to whiteness, whiteness in Jamaica is linked to class and although there has been upward mobility of those described as Black into the middle classes - the elite is still almost all white (white being inclusive of those labelled red, mixed-raced, browning, Syrian/Lebanese etc) (Robinson-Walcott, 2009). White in Jamaica is equal to, white, light (which includes red) or brown. By prioritising white audiences’ understanding, the translation results in a disinheritance of cultural insight, specific to Caribbean Blackness.
Whilst, some attempts have been made to render racial language in the target as seen in the following excerpt with the term browning:
In Jamaica you have to make sure you breed properly. Nice little light browning who not too dry up, so that your child will get good milk and have good hair.
En Jamaïque, faut bien choisir avant de se reproduire. Une jolie petite nénette claire de peau, pas trop desséchée pour que ton gosse ait du bon lait et de beaux cheveaux.
They are domesticated insofar as the cultural context is adapted and superimposes itself onto the original expression as a means to make the text accessible to white western francophone audiences. In forgoing the foreignisation of browning which in Jamaica denotes not simply phenotype but something that it is inseparable from manners, background, education and culture (Robinson-Walcott, 2009) the translation disrupts underlying networks of signification, that being the terms Caribbean context.
On the basis of this brief analysis it is not enough to advocate for foreignisation strategies in the translating of Blackness, but essential that its translation also engages with a Translating Blackness framework. In the case of JC and racial language, this would argue that all Creole terminology and nation language expression should remain the same in the target, in essence respecting the original cultural context. A glossary should be utilised to allow readers to understand terms whilst honouring their opacity. Where opacity leaves translation or explanation impossible a translator's note should be included to explain how and why such terms were rendered as they were in the target. Lastly, in looking to decenter white audiences linguistic equivalences found in francophone Creole expressions should be called upon. In social media spaces this is already occurring as illustrated with the translation of JC lyrics into Martinican Creole by social commentators such as Specta Say So. As such the prioritisation of regional and diasporic audiences as per a Translating Blackness framework coupled with the employment of foreignisation strategies can result in arguably more accurate, knowledgeable and sensitive translations of Black Caribbean literature.
A Translating Blackness Framework
In regards to A Brief History of Seven Killings we can identify several approaches that can inform a translating Blackness framework:
Regional and shared language adaptation - as previously mentioned rather than emphasising fluency in the translation of JC inter-Caribbean communication could take precedence and therefore utilising other creole languages as a way to translate JC would not only serves to help preserve Caribbean culture but also prioritise diasporic communication
Recognition and respect of expressions - building on the first point, this would enforce opacity and encourage readers to ‘foster more self-conscious reading practices (Baer, 2014, pp.333-346)
An Understanding of Blackness and its role in cultures and communities - more often than not translators drafted for literary translations are not required to showcase historical or cultural understanding but simply their linguistic knowledge. Take for example much decorated translator of Haitian literature Jeanine Herman who stated that she ‘made choices that make texts the most accessible and have a nice ring to them’ and also admitted that before undertaking the translation of Kettly Mars’ Savage Seasons she had not heard of the Haitian classics . . . I was not at all familiar with Haitian culture or literature . . .
‘The dynamics of translation in a Caribbean frame must be inscribed within the region’s histories and their afterlives; and these dynamics tend to suggest inequality and friction more than any senses of free flow and equivalence’ (Glover, 2019 p.25-26). A translating Blackness framework can therefore work to counter this inequality and friction decentering white audiences and ultimately whiteness.
It is important to state that this framework is still under construction and is by no means an assured solution but this paper serves to demonstrate its necessity and how centering Blackness can reform translation practice as we know it.
Conclusion
As Jamaica moves to ‘...fulfil its true ambitions as an independent, developed and prosperous country’ (Andrew, 2022) now more than ever its literature must be seen as a form of political action. In this vein we must consider how its literature is being translated and disseminated and advocate for a translating Blackness framework. This tangible step towards ensuring that Jamaica’s stories and people do not shrink through domestication for a dominant but global minority audience is the key to ensuring that first and foremost Caribbean cultures are made legible to one another through accurate, knowledgeable and sensitive translations.