A case study in indirect translation : a translation into French of two short stories from Joe Friggieri’s ‘Nismagħhom Jgħidu’ via Clare Vassallo’s English translation, with an analysis of the implications of indirect translation

Abstract

This dissertation deals with Indirect translation (ITr) from Maltese Literature into French-language Literature. A culture is always associated with a language. Translation is a binary technique: the two parties are the author and the translator. In ITr, the procedure involves at least three agents, the author (SR), the translator 1 (T1) and the translator 2 (T2). Indirect translation is a translation that has for source text a translation. Can an indirect translator convey ethically Maltese culture based on an ultimate English relay translation? In my study, I translate two Maltese short stories, The Tree and The Engagement, from Straight To The Point And Other Stories by Joe Friggieri, a Maltese author and published in 2018. My case study consists of translating both short stories from English into French based on Clare Vassallo’s translations, from Maltese into English, published by Kate Group in 2019. This method research based on Laura Ivaska’s theory examines the genetic, the features and the culture-bound norms of the relay translation (Ivaska 2020). The different stages entail, firstly, analysing all the materials collected such as peritexts, profiles and interviews which help the indirect translator to define the author’s voice and visualize his style. Secondly, personal research has been carried out on features of Maltese culture that were related to the author’s world. And thirdly, I investigated whether ITr is an ethical process in Translation Studies.