Translating into French The White Girl by Tony Birch, with its Indigenous Australian idiosyncrasies of style, context and contents

Abstract

This is a Translation & Commentary on translating into French Tony Birch's The White Girl. Since Tony Birch was trained as a boxer by his father, the metaphor of boxing seems apt here to caracterise his style, and the task of the translator. Andrew Cherterman's Truthfulness ethical principle frames the need to do justice to the novel's main topic, the plight of Aboriginal peoples confronted to hardship and violence throughout the whole history of Australia-in-the-making. Aware of the proclivity of French translations to rationalise and expand, two of Antoine Berman's twelve deforming tendancies, and buoyed by private communication with Tony Birch, the translator's roadmap is ultimately: “translate as necessary”.