Our association and writing residency HĂ–FN invited, Sunday the 15th of April 2012,
about 40 guests to a friendly buffet followed with a public conversation between two translators:
FriĂ°rik Rafnsson and Brice Matthieussent.
(You might want to... listen!... In this case... here a link)
Friðrik Rafnsson is Icelandic; he has been the President of the Alliance Française in Iceland since 2006; he is also a translator:
• Milan Kundera: Insoutenable légèreté de l'être, La valse aux adieux , Le livre du rire et de l'oubli,
L'immortalité , La lenteur, L'identité, L'art du roman, L'ignorance, Risibles amours et La vie est ailleurs ,
La Plaisanterie et Une rencontre
• Denis Diderot: Jacques le fataliste et son maitre et Le neveu de Rameau .
• Michel Houellebecq: Les particules élémentaires et Plateforme ;
sélectionné comme la meilleure traduction de l’année 2002 par les libraires
islandais)
• Pascal Quignard: Tous les matins du monde
• Dai Sijie: Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise
• Tahar Ben Jelloun: Le racisme expliqué à ma fille
• Serge Kahn: Charcot - Explorateur des mers, navigateur des pôles
• Aline Feuvrier-Boulanger: Mon coeur qui bat n’est pas le mien
• Benoit Duteurtre: La jeune fille et la cigarette
• Eva Joly : Les héros ordinaires
• Irène Némirovsky : Suite française
... not counting more than 40 short stories: (Flaubert, Sallenave, Quignard...),
plays (Vian, Yourcenar...), essays and reviews about literature, philosophy and history.
Brice Matthieussent is French; he is in charge of the collection « Fictives » at Christian Bourgois éditions. He teaches Aesthetics at the Art School of Marseilles. He is as well a translator:
Paul Bowles: Les mains sont bleues : RĂ©cits de voyage, In absentia
Charles Bukowski: Factotum, Au sud de nulle part : contes souterrains
John Fante: Pleins de vie, Les compagnons de la grappe, Bandini, Mon chien stupide, La route de Los Angeles, RĂŞves de Bunker Hill/size
size=2Richard Ford: Ma mère, Le bout du rouleau
Jim Harrison: Retour en terre, L'été où il faillit mourir, En marge: mémoires, Aventures d'un gourmand vagabond, En route vers l'Ouest, Lointains & Ghâzals, Lettres à Essenine, La Route du retour, Julip
Denis Jonhson: Rêves de train, Un pendu ressuscité, Des étoiles à midi Déjà mort : roman gothique californien...
Jack Kerouac:Visions de Cody, Vanité de Duluoz: une éducation aventureuse
Thomas McGuane: Outsider, Rien que du ciel bleu
Robert McLiam Wilson: Les Dépossédés, La Douleur de Manfred
Thomas Pynchon: Mason & Dixon
Gore Vidal: Création
Melanie Wallace: La Vigilante, Sauvages
… (a non exhaustive list)
… and many d'essays, and a first novel : Vengeance du traducteur (The translator's revenge), pubished in 2009
For more than 2 hours and a half, the guests, (grown-ups as much as children),
and the translators had time enough to meet,
play(!), chat, drink and eat...
Our "favourite" wind in Marseilles, the Mistral, rather playful an frisky early in the morning, had dropped away;
The sky and sea were ABSOLUTELY BLUE... and, of course, a beaming sun....
THE MENU??
below, on the left, Brice Matthieussent, in front of him, FriĂ°rik Rafnsson
It was more than 3 pm when the guests and translators got together indoors...
may be a slightly confined space (!), which enabled though a pleasant, direct and intimate relation between all.
Jean Cristofol, a philosopher, on the left, played the role of the moderator
A lively and captivating discussion between the translators and the audience;
from left to right, Jean Cristofol, FriĂ°rik Rafnsson, Brice Matthieussent
At the end of the day, an offering from the children
We wanted to share, above and beyond the 40 persons invited then,
this very special moment, public BUT intimist,
which allowed us to compare two points of view by way of two personalities, two native tongues (Icelandic and French) speakers
highly concerned with translating...
François Parra , sound artist,
HĂ–FN unfailing friend and partner since the very beginning,
offers us an almost uncut recording
which will give you a chance to discover HĂ–FN sound atmosphere thhat very day
and make your way into the maze of questioning that those two translators are submitted to,
as they do not really "do their job" but develop a neverending passion.
Écouter: link