Jean-Patrick Manchette et la traduction

Abstract

This article examines the work of Jean-Patrick Manchette, who played an important role in the field of crime fiction during his lifetime. Thirty years after his death, Manchette remains a major reference, thanks to his novels, mainly published in the Série Noire, but also to his Chroniques, Journal, letters and interviews. However, he was also an active translator, and translation played an essential role in his career as a writer, giving him relative independence. He has introduced French readers to novels by Donald Westlake and Ross Thomas, as well as Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore. He has also written about translation, both his own and others’, and commented on his relationship with this activity. Manchette is therefore both a protagonist and a witness to the links between translation and crime stories, as this article seeks to show. The point here is to look first at the different practices Manchette has used in translation, in order to understand that his relationship to translation is plural. Manchette also defends and practises a translation ethic: he is attentive and rigorous both when translating and when being translated. Finally, his approach to translation is both critical and historical. He associates the translation of crime stories with the evolution of society when he examines the old translations of the Série Noire or the translations of his time. In his later years, he also drew on the translations to write his novels. The frontier between translation and novel creation is therefore porous.