As thick as culture… The Case of « The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons » by Ashok Ferrey Translated into French

Abstract

Translation is essentially intercultural communication. Literary works are sketches of cultural contexts. Translating literary works is a dialogue between two cultures, two languages. The original text speaks an unknown language and relates a story of an unknown land. A language is translatable. A culture is less translatable because of the compatibility issue. Things of one culture are sometimes unheard of in another culture. Here, we talk about elements that are unique to one community. Travelling from one culture to another, these might shed their thickness on the way. A literary piece of work often carries unique cultural references. This is the case of The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons (2016) by Ashok Ferrey, the Sri Lankan author of fiction. In Sri Lanka, there are three languages: Sinhala, Tamil and English and Ferrey has chosen English as his language of communication. His dialogues are often in Singlish, in “the language used by Sri Lankans who chose to use English for whatever purpose in Sri Lanka” (Gunasekera 2005: 11) Talking about ‘his’ English, Ferrey once made the following comment at an e-interview: “I always thought I was writing ‘perfect’ English till someone (an Englishman) once pointed out how idiosyncratic it actually was! I was rather gutted by it at the time, though I have now come to accept it as a fact of life. I have also realized that I love to take words and twist them mercilessly into other languages, other meanings; rather like that child who tries to hammer a square block into a round hole” (2016). Let’s keep in mind that Ferrey’s novels are written in a composed English that expresses more than what it appears to do. It ‘delivers’ Sri Lanka in it. His stories take place in Sri Lanka. KodivinaPeiris is the local exorcist who chases away the demons that possess the poor villagers. The story takes place in a Walauwa. The protagonist’s mother, Kumarihamy, lives in the Walauwa. To a foreigner, the words that are highlighted are mere proper nouns. But they are not mere proper nouns to a Sri Lankan. These are words that have been borrowed from Sinhala and they carry a whole baggage of meaning with them. We have heard that “language is essentially rooted in the reality of culture […] the broader contexts of verbal utterance. An utterance becomes intelligible when its placed within its context of situation” (Malinowski 1923/1938: 305). It is interesting to see how a translator could handle this “broader context of verbal utterance”. Ferrey’s novel was translated into French, in 2018, by Alice Seelow (L’incessant bavardage des démons). This paper examines how Seelow handles the difficult task of bringing Sri Lankan culture to the French reader. It’s a dialogue between two cultures that are poles apart. Ferrey’s novel not only contains cultural particularities that are unique to Sri Lanka but it also contains humor and ideologies that can be understood only by a person who knows extremely well, certain realities of Sri Lanka. “There are a fair number of philosophical ideas in my writing: but like the court jester that I am, I take great pains to hide them, because as with jokes, if you have to explain them, they are worthless” (Ferrey 2016). Nevertheless, the novel is not devoid of humor and incidents that are typically Sri Lankan. It’s a journey towards a new country, new beliefs and a new or “strange” community with even stranger practices. When E.T. Hall talked about “Intercultural Communication” (1959), he believed that misunderstanding came more from cultural differences than from language differences. The cultural differences lay “silent”, “hidden” or “unconscious” and could go unseen to a foreign audience. In comparing the French translation with its original, we are able to detect to what extent the dialogue between Sri Lanka and France has really taken place. In the analysis, we would like to highlight two types of outcomes in a translation: cultural particularities that communicate a meaning to a foreign audience without any use of paratext and those that remain undeciphered because of the “thickness” of the cultural context. We also aim at taking the audience on a cultural tour across Sri Lanka and its hidden mysteries. We would bring out examples of certain cultural references to show that despite the effort of a translator, certain realities lay hidden and undetected forever like a treasure hidden in the deep sea after a shipwreck. This will not be a pessimistic view on translation but a positive support of the uniqueness of a cultural identity.

Bibliography

Ferrey, Ashok. The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons, Penguin Random House, India, 2016.2.

Gunasekera, Manique. The Post-Colonial Identity of Sri Lankan English, Katha Publishers, Colombo, 2005. 3.

Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language, (1959) Anchor Books Edition, New York, 1990.4. Seelow, Anne. L’incessant bavardage des démons, Mercure de France, 2018. 5.
Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility, (1995), Routledge, U.K., 2008.