Shelf Unbound October/November 2013 October 2013 | Page 14

distorting the narrative voice of either
text with a “male gaze.” However,
it’s important to point out that the
two novels are very different in this
respect. Exit is written in the first person, and the narrator/protagonist is a
woman, whereas Kolia is narrated by
an omniscient third person, whose
“gender” is neutral, and its protagonist is male.
I was surprised to learn that Exit
was the subject of a feminist analysis
of gender and translation as
part of a master’s program
at the Sorbonne in Paris
last year—and pleasantly
surprised that my translation came out relatively
unscathed, although I did
get my fingers slapped for a
few “political” infractions.
Shelf: Take this passage, for example, from Kolia: “There are smells
that lodge in the memory and
linger on the skin. The stench
of the camp shithouses and the
foul odour of the dead bodies
that were discovered in the spring
trailed behind him into the free
world. A body returning from the

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camps can never be clean.” You
seem to pay particular attention
to rhythm and flow. Is it possible
to translate rhythm and flow from
another language or do you have
to invent them anew in English?
Hamilton: Good question. French
and English have very different
rhythm and stress patterns, at both
the word level and the sentence level.
French is a syllable-timed language
whereas English is stress-timed. This
places a significant constraint
on the translator’s ability to
reproduce the rhythms of
French prose in English.
Nonetheless, the overall
“flow” of the text can be
approximated fairly well.
Sentence length, rhythm and
stress all play a crucial role in establishing voice and register, so I do pay
particular attention to these.
Shelf: As you mentioned, the original version of this novel, titled
L’homme blanc, won the Governor
General’s Award for literary fiction.
What about the novel, do you think,
made it stand out to the judges?
Hamilton: What makes Kolia so