O'Driscoll, Kieran (2009) Around the world in eighty gays: retranslating Jules Verne from a queer perspective. In: CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies 2008, 18-29 August 2008, Leuven, Belgium.

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Abstract

Studies of multiple causation of literary translation outcomes (e.g. Brownlie 2003, 2006) have found that individual translators may have a significant idiosyncratic input into the form of the translated text, in tandem with other causal influences, including the source text itself, translation norms and skopoi. The nature of translatorial selfinscription and creativity may include an original deconstruction of a source text, indeed, a radical reinterpretation of same. The translator Butcher has reinterpreted Around the World in Eighty Days (1873/1995) in the context of its author Jules Verne’s life history, original manuscripts of the French novel in question, prior to subsequent expurgation by their publisher Hetzel, and textual clues themselves. Butcher's Queer Studies readings have had an important influence on his translation decisions. Examples of his translation solutions throughout this Verne novel are discussed, and are seen to purposively accentuate perceived sexual and sometimes specifically gay subtexts. This article also investigates, linguistically, the plausibility of some of Butcher's controversial reinterpretations of the Verne imaginary.