Translating sex scenes can be a tricky business and surely, like most translating, is usually something of a solitary pursuit. But not if it is the subject of a translation duel, a daunting public jousting-with-words that adds a whole new layer of opportunities for disaster and humiliation – but, also, for some thrills and fun.
My friend and colleague Polly McLean and I are taking part in just such a duel this Friday evening (8 March) at the London Review Bookshop. The text we have each translated in camera, and over which we will be jousting, has been written for the occasion by young French author Emma Becker, and her remit was to write a short story about sex. The passage she produced is an extraordinary act of ventriloquism because she narrates – in sometimes shockingly misogynistic terms – from the point of view of a man about making love to his girlfriend when she's in a filthy mood before her period.
Now, surely even those who think translating is for anoraks can appreciate that translating sex might be rather fun, and it's even more fun if you have to defend your choice of words – your gasps and grunts, your cocks, etc – in the face of someone else's similar but oh-so-different version. Many differences will arise from one of the great pitfalls of translating sex from French: the French language has a treacherously neutral and non-gender specific term for genitalia – "le sexe". All the English options are clinical and anatomical, graphic and rude, or coy and affectionate. It's only too easy to turn a coolly erotic Gallicism into a ploddingly Anglo-Saxon medical report, or utter filth.
But this isn't just a case of I'll show her mine so she has to show me hers. We're doing this in front of a live audience. It's bad enough having to compare parts with another translator (and finding that some of hers might be rather prettier than some of mine), but what if I actually get something wrong? What if my faking isn't as credible as hers? What if I haven't had enough sex to understand who's putting what where? Must go and do some more research …
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