Dirty Words and ‘Fancy Trash’: Translating French Obscenity

In 1967 Susan Sontag asserted that France's erotic literary tradition 'proves almost unassimilable for English and American readers−except as "mere" pornography, inexplicably fancy trash'.1 Since then sexually graphic French texts have become far more assimilated into anglophone academia but the attitude to which Sontag refers continues to influence the way these works are presented. Given the concentration of classic erotic texts belonging to the French literary tradition, let alone the influence these texts have had on subsequent art and thought, recognition of the issues surrounding obscene literature deserves a place in French Studies. Part of this process is an awareness of the way these texts present challenges to translation. Translation means more than transforming words from one language to another. As George Steiner notes: 'Any model of communication is at the same time a model of trans-lation … no two historical epochs, no social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same thing'.2 Translation therefore, encompasses interpretation across time and culture and, in terms of language alone, a word's dictionary definition does not include all its perpetually changing historical, political, cultural, figurative, and dialectical connotations. For these reasons, translation inevitably alters a text, causing shifts in register, or bringing to it anachronistic ideas and associations unintended by the author. To compensate, translation theory offers the idea of 'equivalence'.3