A rewrite of Roald Dahl’s books, as undertaken in Britain to remove terms that might be considered offensive, is not on the agenda in France, according to the author’s French publisher world famous youth. “This rewrite only concerns Great Britain. We have never modified the texts of Roald Dahl and, to date, it is not planned, ”a spokeswoman for Gallimard Jeunesse told AFP.
The case was revealed on Friday by a conservative British daily, the Daily Telegraph. The rights holders have undertaken to smooth the language of all the children’s novels by the beloved author of several generations. The Puffin editions (Penguin Random House group) will now publish a different text from the original.
“When reprinting books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used and update other things like the cover and the layout,” the holder said. -word of the company that manages the work, Roald Dahl Story Company.
The number of modified terms is vast, touching on issues considered sensitive: race and ethnicity, gender, weight, physical appearance, mental health, violence, etc. An “enormously big” character, for example, has become “enormous”.
“Benevolent Irreverence”
“This is nonsense censorship,” writer Salman Rushdie wrote on Twitter. “If Dahl offends us, let’s not reprint it,” said another successful children’s author, Philip Pullman, when interviewed by the BBC.
Roald Dahl began to be translated into French in the 1960s. Gallimard published James and the Giant Peachin 1966, and Charlie and the chocolate factory, in 1967, to then reissue them regularly. Less known to the general public than in the English-speaking world, it is nonetheless a very popular classic in France, with all its children’s titles available in the Folio collection.
“A rewritten Roald Dahl novel is no longer a Roald Dahl novel,” said translator and columnist Bérengère Viennot on the online media. Slate. Telerama pointed out the “risk of erasing the benevolent irreverence” of the author with caustic humor.
A rare practice in France
In France, the literary culture passes a very severe judgment on the alterations of works already published. This was evident in the dropping of titles of novels containing the word “nigger”, which caused some consternation. ten little niggers by Agatha Christie, in 2020, and The Negro of Narcissus by Joseph Conrad, in 2022, suffered a similar fate: these British book titles were deleted in favor of others, chosen during the author’s lifetime for publication in the United States, where the term was banned for its racist connotation. Now available in bookstores They were ten of ChristieAnd children of the sea by Konrad.
No French publishing house uses the services of a “sensitivity reader”, a proofreader specifically responsible for detecting offensive terms or passages in books to be published.
The director of Gallimard Jeunesse, Hedwige Pasquet, indicated that all the editors who translate Roald Dahl would have the possibility of keeping the original text if they prefer. “The Roald Dahl Company has acknowledged having worked for the English market. They want to respect the culture of each country,” she told the daily. Le Figaro. According to her, rewriting this author “makes his texts lose their flavor. However, the spirit of Roald Dahl is a little ironic, very lively. »