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My very first trade in publishing was translating American books for the French market, now, forty years later I have come full circle and translate for MS BookS Publishing all-time favorite French classics for the American -and world- market.
Boule de Suif, a skillful philosophical blend of fact and fiction, appeared for the first time in Les Soirées de Médan, a selective collection of six short stories, published on April 15, 1880; and, in my humble opinion this is one of the greatest ever written. Checkov wrote some great ones too but Guy de Maupassant is acclaimed as the master of the short story form, one of the fathers of the modern short story, and this is his masterpiece. While Checkov started writing short stories for financial gains, Guy de Maupassant, greatly influenced by Voltaire, wrote his stories as statements against human dysfunction.
As mentioned in my other MS BookS Publishing's forewords, I find too many translations disrespectful of the author's text. I particularly found ambiguous Victorian translations of these two short stories, where any mention of sex is summarily paraphrased, adulterated, or not translated at all. These stories were written for a sophisticated, mature audience! so why treat them as children stories? Victorian era translations are an abomination (any bodily functions often not mentioned; any text alluding to coitus, paraphrased; curse words adulterated into silly expressions); any serious novel translated during that period should be re-translated for the millennium.
Why did I choose Butterball as the title? The dictionary defines butterball as any plump person: Short and plump. A real butterball! but that's on a par with pleasingly plump. [1940s+ -- The simile as fat as a butterball dates back to the mid-1800s] Boule de Suif is a play on the word suif / tallow or the hard fatty substance of animal fat separated by melting it from the meat, and used to make candles, soap, and often used to make gravy! So not a bad thing, really! In America butterball has become a term to indicate quality and pleasantly plump; and that's exactly how Guy de Maupassant describes his heroine. In a Russian adaptation of the story, the title was written as Angel and Sinners. I like that title! It describes accurately the people of the story. Boule de Suif is a heroine in the tradition of Joan of Arc and others who sacrificed themselves to save people who, sadly enough, might not deserve to be saved.
In Mademoiselle Fifi, why did I translate faisait la mine into redress of grievance? Though faire la mine means to pout in French, it could also mean making things explode as they do in the mining industry; I chose to translate it as redress of grievance (and is not a war just a redress of grievance against another country?) because in this story I use it as Mademoiselle Fifi's redress of grievance against his commandant who refuses to let him ring the church bell.
Enjoy!

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