Laëtitia Saint-Loubert is a French translator and an early-career researcher whose much-anticipated book on Caribbean literary translation is being published this fall. Titled The Caribbean in Translation: Remapping Thresholds of Dislocation, it explores 20th- and 21st-century Caribbean literature in translation and aims to shine a new light on a range of works, while promoting a “rethinking” of translation theory from a Caribbean perspective.
The book is based on Saint-Loubert’s doctoral dissertation which won the Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Comparative Literature.
The book is based on Saint-Loubert’s doctoral dissertation which won the Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Comparative Literature.
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| Book by Laëtitia Saint-Loubert. |
The award came as Saint-Loubert completed a PhD in Caribbean Studies at the
University of Warwick, in the UK, in 2018, after two Master’s degrees in
literary translation at the Université Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, France
- where she “came to develop a passion for Caribbean literature”.
Her
current research “continues to investigate Caribbean literature in translation
and focuses on bibliodiversity and non-vertical modes of circulation for
Caribbean and Indian Ocean literatures”, she told SWAN.
She has translated a number of Caribbean texts, including a short
story by Guadeloupe-based writer Gisèle Pineau and an essay on Puerto Rican
impressionist Francisco Oller for a trilingual project (Spanish, English, French). The Pineau story - "A Little Fire of No Consequence / Un Petit Feu Sans Conséquence" - appeared in the journal Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature & Culture based at the University of Tennessee.
Saint-Loubert said she’s also in talks to translate a novel by a Jamaican writer into French,
and she’s interested in working with Caribbean-based publishers to promote intraregional
circulation of Caribbean literature. The following interview was conducted by
email and telephone.
SWAN:
You speak English, German and Spanish, in addition to your mother tongue
French. How did your interest and proficiency in these languages develop?
LAËTITIA
SAINT-LOUBERT (LS-L): I
grew up in a fairly monolingual, French environment but have always loved other
languages and cultures. When I turned 16, I left France to participate in an
exchange programme in the US, where I studied and lived with a host family for
a year. This experience was crucial in a number of ways, as it opened up whole
new horizons that allowed me to start conceptualizing and dreaming (of) the
world differently.
I
started learning German in middle school and later did an Erasmus year abroad
in Germany, before completing two MAs in Literary Translation in France, one in
English and one in German.
I
came to Spanish much later, as an adult. I was very fortunate during my PhD at the
University Warwick to be given the opportunity to attend classes in the
Department of Hispanic Studies, and to later conduct a research project in
Puerto Rico, where I was completely immersed in the local culture and language.
This was my first time in the Caribbean.
I
have since been based in La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, where people speak
French and Reunionese Creole. Unfortunately, I do not speak any French Creoles
fluently, but have a basic understanding of Kréol rényoné and Kreyòl ayisyen
(Haitian Creole).
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| Scholar Laëtitia Saint-Loubert. |
LS-L: I always wanted to live “in
translation”. When I was in high school, I wanted to become an interpreter.
Years later, when I studied conference interpreting, I realized that it wasn’t
for me. I was more of a literary person and decided to major in literary
translation to combine my two passions, literature and translation.
I
started developing an interest in postcolonial literature during my year abroad
in Germany, where I concomitantly studied GDR literature and art movements. It
was then that I started familiarizing myself with writers of French expression
from the Caribbean, writers that I had never heard of before in my country,
despite my initial background in literature. When I returned to France, during
my second MA in Literary Translation, I began working on the French translation
of a Jamaican novel for which I felt the need to further immerse myself in
Antillean writing to try and do the text justice.
I
would say that my interest in literature from other countries, including the
various Francospheres, comes from a profound love of cross-cultural encounters
and a deep need to interrogate the power differentials in transnational
literary circulation. This is one of the reasons why it was important for me to
do a PhD in Caribbean Studies and in a different academic setting - in
this case, the UK. I wanted to keep shifting my referential framework and look
at translation and literature from a somewhat different angle and location. This
is also the reason why I felt it was essential to carry out research in
the Caribbean to address issues of (in)visibility and access in the circulation
of Caribbean literature in the region and beyond.
SWAN:
Your doctoral dissertation explored 20th- and 21st-century Caribbean literature
in translation. Why did you choose this topic?
LS-L: The Caribbean in Translation: Remapping
Thresholds of Dislocation was born out of a desire to work at the intersection
of Caribbean and translation studies. I wanted to look at the transnational
circulation of contemporary Caribbean literature from a comparative lens,
across the region’s multiple languages, cultures and literary genealogies. To
do that, I chose the theoretical concept of the threshold which I connected to
Glissantian theory and transoceanic theoretical concepts from the Pacific and the
Indian Ocean to explore the aesthetic, sociocultural and political aspects of
Caribbean writing in translation. My aim was to challenge vertical models of
global literary traffic and to invite readers to envisage alternative pathways
of cultural exchange from archipelagic latitudes, beyond a binary North-South
axis.
SWAN: What do you hope readers will gain from this
work, especially as regards the sphere of translation globally?
LS-L:
For readers with little knowledge of the region, its diaspora and their
literary production, I hope the book somewhat contributes to placing the rich,
multilingual field of Caribbean literature on the world map. For those who are
more familiar with Caribbean texts, I hope the book helps bring into focus the
need for more interdisciplinary studies to initiate further cross-cultural and
cross-linguistic dialogues.
With
regards to the sphere of global translations, I hope that looking at
transnational literary circulation from a Caribbean perspective contributes to
increasing translations from and into minoritized languages, and to addressing
asymmetrical flows in global literary circulation, so that we can all engage in
more equitable and sustainable modes of exchange.
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| Saint-Loubert translated an essay on Puerto Rican artist Oller. |
LS-L:
Translation is foundational to Caribbean and world literature. Without
translation, we would not be able to access works originally written in a
language we are not fluent in. In that sense, I see translation as not only a
part of the afterlife of a text, but also as part of its making and its
genesis, even. After all, any form of writing is the translation of inner
thoughts and ideas put down into words. With regards to our day and age, I
think that untranslatability is an indispensable part of translation, something
that ought to be stressed in the globalized world we live in, so that
translation is seen as a driving force of linguistic and cultural diversity.
This is why I believe that rethinking translation theory and practice from a
Caribbean perspective is essential.
SWAN:
France is one of the countries with the highest number of translated books.
What, in your view, are some of the reasons for this?
LS-L:
France has a longstanding tradition of translation that can be explained by its
strong literary culture. Nowadays, French literary translators can benefit from
professional support and guidance from the Association des Traducteurs
Littéraires de France and publishers can also obtain funding for translations,
which I think contributes to the presence of translated books in the French
literary market. That said, translation is still perceived as an additional
cost, which a lot of publishers can’t afford, and that makes it even more
difficult for less visible texts and writers to enter the French literary
scene. If there is indeed a number of translated books in France, especially
when we compare figures in the US and the UK, most of these translations are
still carried out from European languages, and mostly from English, thereby
confirming inequalities in the transnational circuitry of literature.
SWAN:
What can writers, scholars and the publishing industry do to further support
and promote translation?
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| Writers / presenters at a literary festival in France. |
SWAN:
What advice would you give to students who wish to become translators, and what
are the main challenges in the field?
LS-L:
In all honesty, I’ve found it very difficult to earn a living as a literary
translator. I’ve had to diversify my skills and work as a freelance and
in-house translator for various companies, doing technical and commercial
translations and learning how to use CAT tools, which eventually led me to
doing more literary translation. To students who wish to become translators, I
would say, however, that with a good deal of perseverance and hard work, all
good things come to those who wait.
SWAN:
You are currently in talks to translate a Jamaican writer’s novel into French.
How do you approach the translation of Creole?
LS-L:
I’m very excited about this project which I started working on many years ago
as an MA student. At the time, I knew less about Caribbean literature, and
going back to this translation makes me approach the original quite
differently.
From
the beginning, I did not wish to transplant the original Jamaican voices onto
another French regional soundscape, let alone silence them. It was equally
important for me not to turn Jamaican patois into an ethnolect that would be
based on the systematic elision of r’s at the end of words or syllables, a
contentious strategy that has been used in French translations to “imitate”
black speech patterns. Rather, I’ve come to look at the presence of Creole and
the oral dimension of the original as features of a unique Caribbean voice, one
that has its own idiosyncratic characteristics, but that also dialogues with
other Caribbean voices, with which it shares commonalities. The idea, with this
translation, which I hope will be published in the Caribbean, is rather to
recreate a sense of pan-Caribbean linguistic and literary continuum. In so
doing, I hope francophone readers can get a sense of the polyphone and porous
nature of the “French” voice in the translation.
SWAN:
How do you regard the current increased interest in translation, and what are
your plans for future projects?
LS-L:
I’m very pleased to note a certain interest in translation and hope that
Caribbean literature and Caribbean Studies at large will benefit from this
trend. I would certainly be very happy to continue contributing in any way that
I can to the circulation of Caribbean texts in the region and beyond. I think
that this is particularly important for the circulation of Caribbean
theoretical texts, for instance. Otherwise, besides doing a joint-translation
of a Reunionese novel into English with a friend of mine, I am currently
working on a new research project that examines the book industry and/in the
Caribbean ecosystem from a decolonial perspective. (Copyright
SWAN)
This
series is being done in association with The Caribbean Translation Project, an
initiative to promote the translation of literature from and about the
Caribbean. (Twitter: @CaribTranslate)
