Lost In The Bridge Between Languages

As I read through A Simple Soul both in French and in English I realized that there were some subtle differences between the original and the translation. These are things I would find very hard to translate and I understand why the person that did this would leave ambiguous. An example of this appears on the first chapter here: " … et elle quitta sa maison de Saint Melaine pur en habiter une autre moins dispendieuse, ayant appartenu à ses ancêtre et placée derrière les halles" (6). This was translated to this: "then she left her house in Saint-Melaine, and moved into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her ancestors and stood back of the market-place" (Chapter 1). The word "les halles" literally means a covered market but it also refers (to an implied level) to a market place where fresh fruits and other recently harvested foods are sold. Although this omission doesn't affect style or the meaning of the sentence greatly, it proves the point that such omissions do exist even in the best translations.

There is however en element in French that is lost once it is translated on to English: the Passè Simple. The first example of this would be here: "Dès la cinquataine, elle ne marqua plus acun âge…" (7) This was translated to: "After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age…" (Chapter 1) Although the general meaning of this phrase remains the passé simple (Marqua) is not completely translated. Literally it would be close to using "I went" or "it marked" but in meaning it closer to using "I have gone" or "it has marked" in the sense that the former gives a different stylistic feeling. This explains why the verb in that sentence (and expression) was put as "she had passed" to attempt and give a similar stylistic feeling but passé simple is still very different to that past-tense in English. It is almost completely forgotten in a day to day language and it mostly survives in literature. Not only does using this past-tense give the impression of formality but it can also be compared to the feeling reading Shakespeare gives, by making a modern public like us understand this is a piece from another time. Although this is my attempt at an approximation of an equivalent in English such a thing doesn't exist. I thought this was very important since it made me realize that as translation goes small details like this that add to the writer's style are lost and thus we are only getting a partial idea of what the author's style was even if the meaning of the book remains the same.