Adapting and retranslating Maigret (1930-2024). Using quantitative data and peritext analysis to visualize the transmedia circulation of Georges Simenon’s work

Georges Simenon signed under his name some 300 works, including novels, short stories, and autobiographic literature. According to Index Translationum, he is the most translated writer after Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne, with new (re)translations seeing still the light in several languages (see Kampa in German or Penguin in English). The aim of this paper is to look at the translations of Simenon’s work, a corpus that extends across almost a century (1930-2024). More precisely, we will analyze the « cross fertilization and interchange” (Bianchi & Zanettin 2018: 801) between translation, audiovisual adaptation and retranslation of Georges Simenon’s popular fiction and underly the role played by audiovisual adaptations in the international circulation of the work, posing that “genre narratives in one medium contribute[s] to the dissemination and audience appreciation of the same narratives in other media” (Bianchi & Zanettin 2018: 801). To do that, we will build on quantitative data and visualization tools combined with the analysis of some peritexts (covers, back covers, pre and postfaces). The corpus will allow us to examine editorial strategies and discourses aiming at legitimizing translations, as well as to ask whether retranslations of popular fiction offer more visibility to translators and translation, as it is the case with the retranslation of classics, where “the translator abandons transparency […] or humility” in order to explain “his retranslation work” (Colombat 2004: 2). In that context, Simenon’s romans durs will offer a very interesting contrasting point to the Maigrets.