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Philip K. Dick in French: A Mutating Voice

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Science Fiction in Translation

Part of the book series: Studies in Global Science Fiction ((SGSF))

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Abstract

The massive importation of American authors from the 1950s onward has helped shape science fiction (SF) in France. Many of the texts considered as canonical in science fiction were translated before the 1990s, at a time when translators were not academically trained and when an ethics of translation per se was not implemented. As a result, numerous approximate translations or even rewritings of the original texts were released, damaging the source texts and inspiring later retranslations or revisions to restore the authors’ genuine works. This phenomenon can be easily observed through the work of Philip K. Dick, which has been regularly translated in French since the mid-1950s and extensively retranslated since the 1990s. Based on Berman’s postulate in the Retranslation Hypothesis that translated texts tend to meliorate with every retranslation, and his ethics of translation developed in Translation and the Trials of the Foreign, which denounces ethnocentric and hypertextual translations, this chapter first presents to what extent Philip K. Dick’s French first translations can be viewed as defective, then studies how retranslations can be seen as rectifications of the previous ones, and finally discusses the limits of their corrective effect, as the latest retranslations could still be perfected.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The research for this paper is based on Philip K Dick’s bibliography gathered in Collon 2005, and on the bibliography available on the website quarante-deux.org, which specializes in science fiction.

  2. 2.

    In an interview for franceinfo, Audrey Petit, editor at Livre de Poche, and Laëtitia Rondeau, a publishing assistant at the same house, said that “SF, Fantasy and Fantastic literatures represent approximately 7% of the publishing market” Boticelli (2018).

  3. 3.

    “Marsan evokes “a cultural and intellectual discrimination” (Marsan 2017, interview)” is from the same interview by Gary Nicolas.

  4. 4.

    ibid.

  5. 5.

    For instance, Fiction (1953–1990), Satelitte (1958–1962), Galaxie (1953–1959 & 1964–1977), and the more recent Galaxies-SF (1996–2007) and Bifrost created in 1996.

  6. 6.

    For example, quarante-deux.org, a very complete website created in 1994, that gathers extensive bibliographies, literary critics and articles on the topic of SF.

  7. 7.

    One of the most famous, La Grande anthologie de le science-fiction, was created by Jacques Goimard, Gérard Klein and Demètre Loakimidis in 1966 and published 42 thematic short story collections.

  8. 8.

    Several encyclopedias were published, such as L’Encyclopédie de poche de la science-fiction written by Claude Aziza and Jacques Goimard in 1986 or La Science-fiction by Gilbert Millet and Denis Labbé in 2001.

  9. 9.

    Many awards have been created over the years for a total of 12 still existing currently. The first ever created was the Jules Verne Award (1927–1933 & 1958–1963) and more recently the Extraordinaire des Utopiales Award in 2015.

  10. 10.

    « Les Belles Infidèles » refers to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary translations, whose aim was to adapt the original texts to suit French literary and social conventions as much as possible.

  11. 11.

    To this day, only 5 out of his 37 novels have not been retranslated: Ubik – Dick, Philip K, Ubik, trans. A. Dorémieux, Ailleurs et demain, Robert Laffont, 1970. A Maze of Death – Dick, Philip K, Au bout du labyrinthe, trans. A. Dorémieux, Ailleurs et demain, Robert Laffont, 1972. Deus Irae – Dick, Philip K, Deus Irae, trans. F. Cortano, Présence du futur, Denoël, 1977. A Scanner Darkly – Dick, Philip K, Substance mort, trans. R. Louit, Présence du futur, Denoël, 1978. The Dark-Haired Girl – Dick, Philip K, la Fille aux cheveux noirs, trans. G. Goullet, Folio Science-fiction, Gallimard, 2002. However, his entire body of short stories has been retranslated and, or, revised.

  12. 12.

    The first translations of Autofac (1956, Galaxie), Colony (1954, Galaxie), Expendable (1954, Fiction) and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1954, Fiction) are from unknown translators, so it is impossible to know the exact number.

  13. 13.

    So far, I have found occurrences of “conapt” in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Now Wait for Last Year, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, Precious Artifact, Retreat Syndrome, Faith of Our Fathers, The Day Mr. Computer Fell out of its Tree, and Ubik.

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  1. University of Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France

    Amélie Lespilette

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  1. Amélie Lespilette
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Correspondence to Amélie Lespilette .

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  1. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ian Campbell

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Lespilette, A. (2021). Philip K. Dick in French: A Mutating Voice. In: Campbell, I. (eds) Science Fiction in Translation. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84208-6_8

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