Translating nice try into Bien joué! - Going for the Paris end of Shane Maloney's Melbourne

Abstract

Notwithstanding its universal appeal, crime fiction frequently emerges as a vehicle for the expression of national identity. However, since the global readership of crime novels inevitably leads to their translation into other languages, the question arises as to what then happens to the national or cultural identity they project. Taking as a case study one of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan novels, this article proposes a comparative analysis of the original text in Australian English and its French translation. It aims to identify the strategies used by the translators when confronted with the task of translating for a French readership the culturally specific features that characterize the novel's Melbourne setting, focusing on three fundamental dimensions: the spatial, the sociological and the cultural.