FOOD FOR THE
N.R.F.
669
a publisher, whose editor showed me in a copy of
Gentry
the transla–
tion of a few excerpts from the
Dictionnaire
and extended an invita–
tion to do the whole.
The published fragment showed an enviable courage and was
not without merit, though it contained some easily avoidable errors.
To call Political Economy "a science without guts" (instead of "heart–
less") and to confuse "parents" with "relatives" when the injunction
was to avoid seeing them, suggested a newcomer to the craft of trans–
lating, if not to Flaubert. I began to sort my notes, ponder the title,
and (to lessen my own fallibility) I started rereading
Bouvard et
Pecuchet,
the Correspondence, the works of Descharmes, Steegmuller,
Dumesnil and others, not excluding good old Tarver
(Life and Letters
of Flaubert),
despite his penchant for what I have called "translator's
English."
When it came to getting the Dictionary down on paper, the par–
ticular problems had fused into the general one of how often to take
liberties. They had to be frequent and great because the book itself
is a sort of bare exhibition of stupidity, without internal or external
commentary. Each definition is like a biologist's slide: to see the point
of it one must know what was in the observer's mind when he pre–
pared it. The French reader has trouble too, though less, because
he can often compare what he expects with what the definition leaves
out. The translation must therefore supply (or substitute) a context
not found within the original, and at the same time keep matching
its brevity and commonplaceness. No one could hope to win every
trick of such
.a
game. Add to this challenge Flaubert's extravagant
playing on words, allusions, and ideas, and anyone will concede the
right to transmute as a means to translating. A simple case is that of
message-"nobler
than 'letter' " says Flaubert. True in French but cer–
tainly not in English. Obviously what is wanted is "missive." For the
same reason, modified by others,
banquet
must become "reunion";
coup de
]
arnac,
"Parthian shot"; and
folliculaire,
"newshound." The
ultimate question was whether
Idees rer;ues
in the title should or should
not be rendered as "Received Ideas." The term certainly e.'{ists in Eng–
lish; almost every dictionary records it in the desired sense. But it
somehow needs surrounding matter to be perfectly clear: it will not
do in a title; it has to be:
Accepted Ideas.
Entrenched behind isolated words and phrases, the literalist may
