A rewrite of Roald Dahl’s books, like the one undertaken in Britain to remove terms that might be considered offensive, is not on the cards in France, according to the children’s author’s French publisher. known worldwide.
“This rewrite only concerns Great Britain. We have never modified the texts of Roald Dahl and, to date, it is not planned, ”a spokeswoman for Gallimard Jeunesse told AFP.
The affair was revealed on Friday by the conservative British daily Daily Telegraph. The rights holders have undertaken to smooth the language of all the children’s novels by the beloved author of several generations. The Puffin editions (Penguin Random House group) will now publish a different text from the original. “When reprinting books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used and update other things like the cover and the layout,” the holder said. -word of the company that manages the work, the Roald Dahl Story Company.
The number of modified terms is vast, touching on issues considered sensitive: race and ethnicity, gender, weight, physical appearance, mental health, violence, etc. An “enormously big” character has become “enormous”. A “crazy thing” has become a “weird thing”.
“Benevolent Irreverence”
“This is nonsense censorship,” wrote writer Salman Rushdie on Twitter. “If Dahl offends us, let’s not reprint it,” said another successful children’s author, Philip Pulmann, when interviewed by the BBC. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak believes the words should be “preserved” rather than “touched up”, his spokesman told reporters.
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) began to be translated into French in the 1960s. Gallimard published James and the Giant Peach in 1966, and Charlie and the chocolate factory in 1967, to then reissue them regularly. Less known to the general public than in the English-speaking world, it is nonetheless a very popular classic in France, with all its children’s titles available in the Folio collection.
“A rewritten Roald Dahl novel is no longer a Roald Dahl novel,” said translator and columnist Bérengère Viennot on the online media. Slate. The cultural weekly Telerama pointed out the “risk of erasing the benevolent irreverence” of the author with caustic humor.
literary culture
In France, the public has a very severe judgment on the alterations of works already published. This was evident in the dropping of titles of novels containing the word “nigger”, which caused some consternation.
ten little niggers by Agatha Christie in 2020 and The Negro of Narcissus by Joseph Conrad in 2022 suffered a similar fate: these British book titles were deleted in favor of others, chosen during the author’s lifetime for publication in the United States, where the term was banned for its connotation racist. Now available in bookstores They were ten of Christie, and children of the sea by Konrad.
Moreover, no French publishing house has recourse to the services of a sensitivity readera proofreader tasked specifically with detecting offensive terms or passages in forthcoming books.
The Roald Dahl Story Company now belongs to the American giant Netflix, known for its preference for so-called “inclusive” fiction. But the director of Gallimard Jeunesse, Hedwige Pasquet, indicated that all the editors who translate Roald Dahl would have the possibility of maintaining the original text if they prefer. “The Roald Dahl Story Company has acknowledged having worked for the English market. They want to respect the culture [littéraire] of each country,” she told the French daily Le Figaro.
According to her, rewriting this author “would make his texts lose their flavor”. “However, the spirit of Roald Dahl is a little ironic, very lively. »