Revue internationale de Traduction Moderne

Translating Trauma And Polyphony: Reconfiguring Genocide Memory In Fiona Mclaughlin's English Translation Of Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, Le Livre Des Ossements

Auteurs : Ulrich Douo .

Résumé

This article examines Fiona McLaughlin’s English translation of Boubacar Boris Diop’s Murambi, le livre des ossements as a site of memorial mediation through which the memory of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is reconfigured for an Anglophone readership. Drawing on trauma studies (Caruth; LaCapra), dialogism (Bakhtin), translation studies (Venuti), and memory studies (Assmann; Erll), the study explores how the translation negotiates the novel’s polyphonic structure, fragmented testimonies, and representations of genocidal violence. Through a comparative analysis of selected passages from the French source text and the English translation, the article demonstrates that translation functions not merely as linguistic transfer but as a process of memorial reconfiguration. Particular attention is paid to the rendering of survivors’ testimonies, perpetrators’ discourse, radio propaganda, and culturally marked expressions. The analysis shows that the translation preserves significant dimensions of narrative instability while simultaneously adapting the text to new interpretive horizons. Building on these observations, the article proposes the concept of traumatic opacity to describe a translational condition in which partial intelligibility, disorientation, and resistance to closure remain integral to the representation of traumatic memory. The study argues that translated literature can function as a transnational archive through which histories of violence circulate, acquire new meanings, and participate in global memory cultures. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates on translation, trauma, and the international circulation of historical memory.

Mots clés

trauma translation ; polyphony ; genocide memory ; traumatic opacity ; transnational memory