Playing with Words and Rhythms in Khālī jagah: Translating a Hindi Novel and its Texture into French

Abstract

The novel Khālī jagah (2006) by the Hindi writer Geetanjali Shree mainly focuses on the topics of violence, loss, and quest for identity in the contemporary world. In this text – and in others too, but maybe here more than elsewhere – the author makes use of a very hybrid and idiomatic Hindi. Moreover, she repeatedly plays with iterations and alliterations, assonances and consonances, onomatopoeias and neologisms, and creates a particular syntax that might be described as dismembered, dislocated, and breathless. To these elements must also be added the inclusion of excerpts from folk songs as well as the essential role played by silences and unsaid things. If all these features are to be taken into account when translating such a narrative – as its content is tightly coupled to its form – it makes for a highly complex and challenging task.

After providing a very brief summary of Khālī jagah, I will first highlight a few rhythmic and translation related issues, before analysing in detail some excerpts from the novel, in order to explain the choices I have made for its French translation (Une place vide, Infolio, 2018) and compare some of the results with an English translation primarily focused on the content (The Empty Space, Harper Perennial, 2011).