with Julie Rose
We are delighted to welcome translator Julie Rose to Omnimystery News today.
Julie Rose is the translator (from French to English) of the cli-fi thriller The Greenland Breach by Bernard Besson (Le French Book; October 2013 ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with her to talk about her work.
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Omnimystery News: We've interviewed many authors but you have the honor of being the first translator we've had the opportunity to talk to. Tell us a little more about yourself.
Julie Rose: I've translated many theoretical and critical books, written by demanding French thinkers, and I love and need that connection. But, before this, I've also done a populist novel by Alexandre Dumas, père, and Victor Hugo's mammoth Les Misérables. Dumas' Knight of Maison-Rouge is an action novel and, so, also a thriller, of sorts; and Les Misérables has to rate as one of the first and best crime thrillers, among all the other things that wonderful novel is.
I chose to translate The Greenland Breach because I couldn't put it down. It has that essential quality of a successful thriller: you have to know what happens next — whodunit and why. It was a lot of fun and so liberating, but serious at the same time. What could be more serious than catastrophic climate change and the geopolitical fallout?
OMN: What specifically, as a translator, did you find most interesting about The Greenland Breach?
JR: What's really striking about the book is its theatricality. Besson is a kind of playwright: he has a great feel for dramatic structure and how to chop up the action and build tension. But the theatricality also lies in the way scenes are set up and their visual power. We're left with quite overwhelming images. Some things still take my breath away, months after finishing the translation.
OMN: What do you see your primary role to be when translating a book?
JR: In any translation the overrriding task is to reproduce the author's "voice" — style — as accurately as you can in your own words: it's a double act. What happened here was that the writing sometimes needed to be trimmed a little so that nothing got in the way of the action and the sharpness of the focus. It wasn't "edited" so much as fine-tuned.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as a translator?
JR: Let yourself go! I mean this in two senses: let go of your self — BE the author you're translating; and be bold — make that creative leap. The only thing that can be the same as the original is the original. So don't be timid, don't be reverential. You'll kill the thing you love that way.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery/thriller translator and thus I am also …".
JR: "I am a mystery/thriller translator and thus I am also a realist". Fact is, crime mysteries and thrillers deal in reality, they nail a good chunk of it and define the era. Naturally, the best do this in good, precise prose that can also be poetic: there is no opposition between realism and an imaginative grasp of language.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
JR: I read all the Russian classics in translation when I was twelve. I may well have been burn-out by thirteen, as then, when I could, I read Le Grand Meaulnes, over and over again.
OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?
JR: I read thrillers, at night, both for pleasure and to relax. That may sound strange, but I'm working on language all day, solving riddles of meaning. I need other kinds of riddles to solve — although I almost never try to solve them. I just go with the flow, but it's totally absorbing: an adrenalized package of reality and an otherworld, at the same time. The thrillers I read have to be very good quality. Then you're getting the lot: a good read, wonderful language, a sense of learning about the world, however bleak or illusory that may be.
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Julie Rose has translated some of France's most highly prized writers, both classical and contemporary and is best known for her critically acclaimed translation of Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Misérables. Rose has always been an avid reader of crime fiction.
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The Greenland Breach
Bernard Besson
Translated by Julie Rose
A Cli-Fi Spy Novel
The Arctic ice caps are breaking up. Europe and the East Coast of the Unites States brace for a tidal wave. Meanwhile, former French intelligence officer John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained, steamy Eurasian partner, Victoire, and their computer-genius sidekick, Luc, pick up an ordinary freelance assignment that quickly leads them into the heart of an international conspiracy. Off the coast of Greenland, a ship belonging to the French geological research firm Terre Noire is in serious trouble. The murder of an important scientist jeopardizes evacuation. Is it related to the firm's explorations? Is the rival Canadian-based scientific and economic development corporation, Northland Group, involved?
On land another killer is roaming the icy peaks after researchers, while a huge crevasse splits Greenland apart. What are the connections? In the glacial silence of the great north, a merciless war is being waged. Global warming and subsequent natural disasters hide international rivalries over discoveries that will change the future of humanity.
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