Madame Bovary

This is a brand new translation of Madame Bovary, exclusive to Kindle. There are various translations already available, but the quality varies widely, from the awestruck literal (Marx-Aveling) to the far-too-free (Hopkins), the ploddingly accurate academic (Wall and Davis) to the slightly odd (Thorpe). This new one is notable not only for what it is not, but for what it is. Imagine the best joke in the world: you know it is because the teller has just told you so. But if it’s told badly, you don’t laugh, and you wonder what the fuss was all about. Yet the joke, like Everest and Madame Bovary, is still there. It’s up to the translator to tell it properly. And by the way, Flaubert is funny. Not so much lol, more quietly, constantly ironic like Jane Austen, Thackeray and the best Dickens.
You don’t need more than A-level French, a fat dictionary and a thesaurus to translate Flaubert. But you’ll be useless without a good English style of your own and a remorseless attention to detail and that word so beloved of academia, meaning. An unimaginative effort will not only short-change the reader in the most lyrical passages, such as when Flaubert is describing Emma’s state of mind and unfulfilled desires, but all throughout the text. A tiny example early in the book was selected by Julian Barnes in an essay: Charles’ childhood is being related. Flaubert says: Et, il poussait comme un chêne. Most translators have that as “And, he grew like an oak” which is literally accurate, but too generalised. Just as accurate is my “What’s more, he shot up like an oak.” Pousser genuinely also means to shoot up. Now which of these is more vivid? Too insignificant to spend time over in translation? Really? Which gives you more pleasure to read? Again, towards the end, Homais the pharmacist and the priest are arguing over religion. The priest is a plain-spoken country cleric, and swears: Sabre de bois! You won’t find this in any normal dictionary, and to translate it literally as sabre of wood is meaningless in English, so you have to find some equivalent that isn’t blasphemous. He is a priest, after all. I eventually went for “Hell’s teeth!” Feel free to think up your own, but I suggest that “Hang it!” chosen by another translator is very lame.
Many Kindle reviewers say they were put off the book because Emma is unlikeable, but she isn’t a goodie-goodie heroine like Jane Eyre or Colette. She’s maybe the first anti-heroine, hence the furore when it was first published. All Flaubert asks is that you sympathise with her. Nor is it over-long, stuffed with superfluous digressions like so many 19C novels. As Mozart said when Frederick the Great remarked “Too many notes!”, there are just as many as are needed. Thus Flaubert’s words.
He was a self-confessed metaphor junkie, but English is much more figuratively playful than French. I’ve had fun translating him and now it’s your turn. So if you want a good read, to get close to the spirit of Flaubert in an accurate but lively translation, to see what the fuss is all about, then read mine and enjoy.
By the way, there are no annotations because I don’t have access to academic research. But frankly, they just get in the way, disrupt the flow. The only one I regret not giving you is right at the beginning and has no bearing on the main narrative except to establish Charles as a social wretch. In class, he’s asked his name. The teacher asks him twice to repeat it. He bellows out Charbovari! And the class erupts in a riot. Why? Because it’s so near a contemporary slang term for a riot and I’ve forgotten it, so, sorry. That was a fat lot of use. But to think that the name of Charles Bovary came about for the sake of a weak joke on the first page! Typical of Flaubert’s idiosyncratic mind.
Edith Grossman is credited with the most definitive, readable version of that vast tome Don Quixote; she is an academic yet has refused to include any annotations for that very reason of flow. I’m in good company.