Traduction d'une oeuvre de J.M.G. Le Clézio : Trois villes saintes

Our work consists of a translation of a book entitled Trois Villes saintes, written by J.M.G. Le Clézio. We deliberately chose a contemporary French writer (Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in 1940). If we were to describe his style, we would say that it consists of disordered narrative sequences, a repetitive almost hypnotic attention to minute details, and a surreal montage of sensory perceptions. Trois Villes saintes indeed presented some interesting and challenging translation dilemmas. Therefore we have intended to make a clear and explicit translation so that the reader may appreciate both form and contents. Footnotes have been established in order to identify little- known geographic locations (the action of the novel takes place in the Province of Yucatan, México), historical references to specific events in the Mayan culture, and all the quotations borrowed by Le Clézio himself, from varions ancient Mayan books, the most famous of which is El libro de Chilam Balam Chumayel. We have indeed attempted to explain every point that could be problematic; at the same time, we have tried in that exercise to respect the meaning and the level of speech used by Le Clézio. [...]