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| The book on the road at Heathrow airport. |
Note: It’s summertime, which usually means
books and book reviews, and here is our first one of the summer. Dagy reviews a
French-language book below. Judy has nothing to contribute because she doesn’t
speak French. FYI: This English-language review includes a few sections in French.
Instead of attacking
my oversized ZEIT newspaper on my recent flight from Heathrow to Vegas, I
decided to read Jenny Sigot Müller’s debut novel (not self-published, but by an
actual publisher!) “Entre deux voix” (Between
two voices). It was mostly a good read and it saved me angry looks from the
poor person stuck on the middle seat next to me who would have certainly disliked
having my huge paper spill over into her tray table.
While the cover says
“Journal d’une jeune interprète de conférence” (journal of a young conference interpreter), the
book reads much more like a novel than a private journal, and it could have
benefited from a catchier title. Even though this is a journal, the author, a practicing conference interpreter in
Switzerland, decided to keep the reader in the dark about the mysterious
“agency” that usually hires her, which struck me as odd. Puzzlingly, she receives faxes from them for
her assignments, even though the novel is clearly set in modern tech times, and as far as I know, the fax went extinct in 2000, but I digress.
The author also does not disclose the clients she ends up working with. One of them is most
certainly Red Bull, but the author never mentions the brand. While this is
certainly understandable from an actual conference interpreter’s ethical
perspective, it leaves too many blanks for the uninitiated reader. This is,
after all, a work of fiction. Or not, as mentioned above.
Speaking about
outsiders to the profession: Even though I sincerely hope that the general
public will reach for this book in the bookstore, they might find it doesn’t
provide sufficient background information about the industry. For instance, the author doesn't explain what a source text is or what the difference between consecutive and simultaneous might be. It isn’t
until very late in the book that the reader even learns the narrator's working languages (English and French; any others?).
As probably most
novice authors do, the author did fall into several traps, mostly in terms of
style (je hurle de toutes mes forces;
j’éteins la lampe d’un geste déterminé). Wittingly or not, she oscillates
between overly dramatic passages (especially when describing her very first
interpreting assignment), staccato-like writing and traditional prose. What struck me as troubling was that
an interpreter who’s clearly aware of the power of language would use the
generic masculine when talking about interpreters in general: Et l’interprète a une autre voix, qu’il
revêt une fois le micro allumé, etc.
Most authors seem to
think that no novel is complete without the typical love story (or budding love
story) thrown in, but the story line in this book is so contrived and kitschy that
the book would certainly be better off without it.
Luckily, there were
other traps that the author successfully avoided, such as celebrating the
greatness of interpreters in general. Instead, the plot is mostly about the
one-sided rivalry deliberately created by an experienced interpreter and the
poor up-and-coming interpreter (narrator) who finds herself facing extreme
hostility for no apparent reason and struggling to cope with that situation.
Overall, a few flaws aside, this was a good read. Even though it
will not be a contender for the Pulitzer prize, industry professionals will
certainly enjoy reading it. Here's the author's website, and of course, the book is also available on Amazon.
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