Translating Caryl Phillips. Downriver Genealogies

Written from the perspective of a practising translator this chapter raises the question of the relative paucity of translations into French of Caryl Phillips’ works. It examines some of the difficulties his writing may raise and how they can be overcome. To do so it first looks at how an excellent French translator Pierre Furlan negotiated the text of Crossing the River (1993), and next relies on suggested translations by the author of the article for two other novels. It considers the shift in approach from the early highly metaphoric novels to the later more realistic ones and highlights common stumbling blocks (which are also common in the sense of frequently encountered) such as the need to adapt to various contexts and modulate register accordingly. None of this, however, is insuperable, but rather calls for those still absent translations.