My Nights with Emma (and Thérèse Raquin)

This article examines the delights and pitfalls of translation, specifically with reference to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Flaubert’s novel has the reputation of posing particular challenges, although challenge is true of even the simplest sentences in the source language. Rhythm is central to the novel, regarded by Flaubert as ‘a poem’, and this is where its main challenge lies. The novel is likened not to a ‘metal construction’ but to a ‘panther’. How does one keep it breathing? Examples are given of particular difficulties associated with adapting Flaubert and Zola’s works for the English language, and the author suggests distinctions between original creation and translation, drawing on his own experience as a novelist. While Zola’s prose is very different from Flaubert’s, its particular characteristics yield, for the translator, similar excitements and frustrations. The article concludes with an unanswerable open question: do different language-speakers actually read in the same way?