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Stuart Gilbert’s The Plague: Paraphrase or Translation?

Peter Carpenter

Who’s to say what constitutes a good translation? Many pass judgment on this or that translation without having read the original. I have been guilty of that myself. I never liked Magarshak’s translations of Dostoievsky; the English didn’t sound right to me. Then, when MacAndrew’s translations came along, I considered them excellent – without having any prior knowledge of the Russian language.

Similar judgments have been made about Gilbert’s translations of L’Étranger and La Peste. John E. Gale, for example, mentions that Edmund Wilson pronounced Gilbert’s translation of L’Étranger “an absolutely splendid job,” but not before admitting that he had not read the original [139]. A translation, however, cannot only be assessed on the basis of its readability, although this is obviously an important consideration. It must also be looked at in terms of its faithfulness to the original. As Edith Grossman puts it in Why Translation Matters: “fidelity is the noble purpose, the utopian ideal, of the literary translator…” (quoted by Hernán Iglesias Illa 1).

Now the question is: has Gilbert faithfully conveyed to English-speaking readers what Camus wrote in his great novel, La Peste?1 The answer will be based on the argument that, despite the readability of Gilbert’s work, in the final analysis it is more a paraphrase than a translation.

There are minor problems in The Plague.2 One is the presence in it of archaic words and expressions, which of course is inevitable given the rapid evolution of the English language. Nevertheless, these old, and sometimes odd, expressions do get in the way of the modern reader’s understanding. An example of an “odd” expression occurs when Gilbert attempts to translate the French “effacement” [Camus 250]. Gilbert begins by using the term “self-effacement,” which is fine. But then he adds, as a synonym, the word “dimness” [Gilbert 257]. “Dimness” might have meant something like self-effacement in the 1940s, but for a modern reader such a term makes no sense at all.

Another problem is the fact that on several occasions he omits phrases and sentences in the original. On one page he even leaves out an entire paragraph [Camus 190. Cf. Gilbert 200]. Omissions, however, are understandable, yet they do mar the work as a whole.

Less forgivable are inaccurate translations. There are several instances of this. On one page “un Arabe” [Camus 57] becomes “an Algerian” [Gilbert 52]. In another context Gilbert has the wrong character (Rambert) unseating a rowdy

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customer in a bar [145]. The honor should have gone to Tarrou, not Rambert [Camus 143]. Finally, and more seriously, Gilbert creates a totally different picture of summer evenings in Oran than that intended by Camus. Camus writes: “il faudrait de nouveau évoquer ces éternels soirs dorés et poussiéreux, qui tombait sur la cité sans arbres…” [170]. Gilbert translates: “we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets…” [174]. For Camus the evenings are eternal, whereas for Gilbert they are “dreary.” These same evenings, according to Camus, are golden and dust-laden (“dorés et poussiéreux”). Gilbert prefers to see these evenings as somehow “sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light.” Finally, Gilbert changes Camus’ treeless town (“cité sans arbres”) to “treeless streets.” It must be said, in conclusion, that not only is this translation inaccurate, it also misses the poetry in Camus’ lines.

Now let us examine the main problem in Gilbert’s translation: his penchant for embroidery. Eric DuPlessis, in his article dealing with the “restoration” of Camus’ L’Étranger, states that from the outset Gilbert made a “personal editorial choice to paraphrase and to adorn rather than to translate L’Étranger straightforwardly” [208]. He also remarks that this inclination of Gilbert’s to ornament Camus’ original text “is not limited to The Stranger. In his 1948 translation of La Peste he used the same technique…” [207 footnote].

Evidence of this tendency of Gilbert’s exists throughout The Plague. Some examples will make clear how pervasive this is.

1. La Peste: “l’eau tranquille et sombre…” [44].

The Plague: “wine-dark slumbrous sea…” [39].

This is a particularly telling example because not one word is translated literally: water (“l’eau”) becomes “sea”; peaceful (“tranquille”) becomes “slumbrous”; and, finally, dark (“sombre”) is changed to “wine-dark.”

2. La Peste: “le petit vieux aux chats…” [108].

This is a reference to an eccentric character that enjoys throwing bits of paper to cats in the lane beneath his balcony and then spitting on them. Here Camus simply dubs him the little old man with the cats. Gilbert, however, prefers: “the ancient small-game hunter” [108].

3. La Peste: “Mais il y en a qui a parlé.” [147]

The Plague: “But somebody started talking, damn him!” [150]

Damn him may be what the speaker feels, but Camus refrains from adding it. Gilbert should have too.

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4. La Peste: “un mètre cinquante…” [226].

The Plague: “a yard and a half…” [233].

Surely Gilbert might have assumed that English-speaking readers would have known something about the metric system. Besides, one meter fifty is longer than a yard and a half.

5. La Peste: “les tramways chargés de figures sombres…” [235].

The Plague: “streetcars laden with listless, dispirited passengers…” [242].

Gilbert is clearly unhappy with the simple term dark; he generally finds it necessary to elaborate and explain it. In the next example we find him doing the very same thing.

6. La Peste: “Le chien…baignait à présent dans une flaque sombre.” [276]

Here the dog, having been shot, is lying in a dark pool. For Gilbert this dark pool is transformed into a “small, dark, glistening pool.” [283]

7. La Peste: “après le tumulte de la journée, cela paraissait un peu irréel à Rieux.” [275]

For Gilbert, a bit unreal (“un peu irréel”) is a bit too simple for him, and so he does his usual embroidery and produces the following: “fantastically unreal, like something in a dream.” [282]

These examples plainly illustrate Gilbert’s propensity to elaborate and explain. However, by so doing he diminishes the power of Camus’ economical style – a style, a technique, which leaves something to the imagination of the reader. In one of the examples above, a dark pool makes a much greater impact than a small, dark, glistening one.

How, finally, does Gilbert handle the poetic passages in La Peste?3 We already saw above (p. 3) how Gilbert mishandled the poetic passage where Camus describes summer evenings in Oran. Let us then examine another passage.

La Peste: “Dans le ciel balayé et lustré par le vent, les étoiles pures brillaient et la lueur lointaine du phare y mêlait, de moment en moment, une cendre passagère.” [221]

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The Plague: “In a sky swept crystal-clear by the night wind, the stars showed like silver flakes, tarnished now and then by the yellow gleam of the revolving light.” [227]

Apart from Gilbert’s usual embroidery, his language is scarcely poetic. Take, for example, the latter part of Camus’ description: “la lueur lointaine du phare y mêlait, de moment en moment, une cendre passagère.” This is pure poetry. Now consider Gilbert’s take on this: “tarnished now and then by the yellow gleam of the revolving light.” To begin with, “tarnished” is hardly accurate. What Camus states is that the lighthouse beam adds a passing ember ( “cendre passagère”) to the starlight. This is hardly tarnishing. Also, Camus’ distant beam from the lighthouse (“la lueur lointaine du phare”) becomes, under Gilbert’s pen, the poorly translated, decidedly unpoetic, “yellow gleam of the revolving light.”

Another way in which Gilbert’s translation detracts from the poetic quality of Camus’ writing is his habit of replacing poetic metaphors with prosaic words and phrases. For example, near the end of the novel, once the plague has receded, Camus talks of the feeling of exile being extinguished under a shower (“averse”) of joy [267]. Gilbert, however, conceives of this same joy in terms of an “uprush” [274]. Later on, there’s a moment in the story where the day has turned to night. Camus writes that the night had consumed, devoured (“devoré”) the entire sky [277]. Gilbert, typically, avoids such imagery and states prosaically: “It was quite dark…” [285]. There are many other similar examples scattered throughout the novel, but enough has been said. The time has come to answer the question posed in the title of this article.

We have seen how Gilbert constantly adds to and changes what Camus has written. We have also seen how he fails to deal effectively with the poetry in Camus’ prose. Our conclusion therefore has to be that The Plague is indeed more a paraphrase than a translation. It follows, therefore, that American and Canadian readers have yet to read the novel as Camus conceived it.

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Endnotes1 We’re focusing mainly on La Peste because several writers (for example, Helen

Sebba, John E. Gale, Eric DuPlessis, James Campbell) have exposed the glaring weaknesses in L’Étranger.

2 When the phrase The Plague is used in this article, it refers to Gilbert’s translation. The phrase La Peste is, of course, a reference to the French original.

3 Camus’ “personal mode of expression,” as Sartre points out in his essay “The Outsider explained,” is “poetic prose.” [Sartre 170] This was even evident in L’Étranger, despite the fact that much of the novel’s style is based on the narrative technique of American writers such as Ernest Hemingway and James M. Cain.

Works CitedCamus, Albert. La Peste. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. Print.—. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1972. Print.DuPlessis, Eric. “The Restoration of Albert Camus’ L’Étranger in English Translation.”

Revue de littérature comparée 66.2 (1992): 205–213. Print.Gale, John E. “Does America know ‘The Stranger’? A reappraisal of a translation.”

Modern Fiction Studies 20.2 (1974): 139–147. Print.Illa, Hernán Iglesias. “Edith Grossman: On the Challenges of Translation in America.”

Trans. Fred Kobrak. PublishingPerspectives. Com. Web. 29 Aug. 2011.Sartre, Jean-Paul. “The Outsider Explained.” Critical Essays. Trans. Chris Turner.

London New York Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2010. Print.Sebba, Helen. “Stuart Gilbert’s Meursault: A Strange ‘Stranger’.” Contemporary

Literature 13.3 (1972): 334–340. Print.