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| | ==Translation notes== | | ==Translation notes== |
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| − | ===''Keksekça?'' et/and ''Kekçaa?''===
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| − | The plausibility that Hugo's direct-from-speech transliteration was avant-garde is suggested by its treatment by translators. The 19th century English translators didn't translate Hugo's direct-to-speech transliterations. Neither "Keksekça?" nor its meaning "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela?" are translated into English in either the 1862 Wraxall or the 1887 Hapgood English translations.<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Les Misérables, Volume 2''. Trans. Sir Frederick Charles Lascelles Wraxall (3rd Baronet). London: Hurst and Blackett, Publisher, 1862. Digitized by Google, original from Oxford University's Bibliotheca Bodleiana. https://books.google.com/books?id=TuQBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false </ref><ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Les Misérables''. Trans. Isabel F. Hapgood. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1887. A Project Gutenberg Ebook. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm#link2HCH0148 </ref> The other transliteration, "Kekçaa?", and its formal explication, "qu'est-ce que cela a?", also remain as is. An 1876 translation cited by Google Books as by C. E. Wilbour, omits Hugo's direct-from-speech transliterations, making a smoother reading experience, but losing Hugo's "but wait I haven't told you everything yet" style that makes Hugo's local-world-epoch story so delicious.<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Les Misérables: Jean Valjean''. Trans. Charles Edwin Wilbour. London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, Warwick House, Paternoster Row, 1876. Digitized by Google, originally from Oxford University's Bodleian Library. https://books.google.com/books?id=qhwGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false </ref>
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| − | Fahnestock and MacAfee translate the direct-from-speech transliterations the way Wright translates Queneau's (see textual note, below).
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| − | ''Keksekça?'' becomes ''Whazzachuaver''
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| − | ''Kekçaa?'' becomes ''Whazzematruthat''<ref>Hugo, Victor. ''Les Misérables''. Trans. Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee. New York: Signet Classics, Penguin Group, 2013, p. 948, 951. </ref>
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| | ==Textual notes== | | ==Textual notes== |
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| | ===The Abbéy of Ascend-with-Regret=== | | ===The Abbéy of Ascend-with-Regret=== |
| | The scaffold. <ref name="hapgood"></ref> | | The scaffold. <ref name="hapgood"></ref> |
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| − | ===''Keksekça?'' and ''Kekçaa?'' (direct-from-speech transliteration)===
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| − | "Doukipudonkton, se demanda Gabriel excédé" opens Raymond Queneau's dazzling 1959 novel ''Zazie dans le métro''.<ref>Queneau, Raymond. ''Zazie dans le métro''. Folio, Editions Gallimard, 1959. p. 11.</ref> Barbara Wright translates Queneau's direct-from-speech transliteration of Gabriel's question as "Howcanyastinksotho."<ref>Queneau, Raymond. ''Zazie''. Trans. Barbara Wright. Bantam Books: Toronto, 1968. p. 1</ref> This direct-from-speech transliteration, made famous more recently by Irvine Welsh with ''Train Spotting'', shows up a century before ''Zazie dans le métro'' in ''Les Misérables''.
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| − | Having read almost none of ''Les Misérables'' in French I am uncertain if the direct-from-speech transliterations appear only in the second half, but the two interrogatives of Gavroche the street kid, only pages apart (in Vol. 4, Bk. 6, Ch. 2), are
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| − | ''Keksekça?''
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| − | Using Fahnestock and MacAfee's English translation as a guide, ''Keksekça?'' and ''Kekçaa?'' seem to be the first instances in the novel, as if Hugo discovered this new dialogic method well into the writing.
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| − | ''Les Misérables'''s narrator explains this dialogic method after the second transliteration:
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| − | ''Ceci est encore un mot de la langue que personne n'écrit et que tout le monde parle.''
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| − | That is, ''This is another word of the language no one writes but everyone speaks.''
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| − | The need for in-text explanation suggests a new literary method.
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| | ==Citations== | | ==Citations== |
| | <references /> | | <references /> |
