Language and the national allegory: translating Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore and Truth into French

Abstract

Language plays a key role in the crime novels of Peter Temple, where it serves both as a means of constructing a distinctive Australian identity and as a vehicle for expressing Temple’s critique of Australian society and its ills. A close comparative reading of his two landmark novels, The Broken Shore and Truth, and their French translations highlights the significance of their linguistic features and the challenges they pose to translators. By focusing on particular aspects of Temple’s style, the lexicon he favours and his use of the Australian vernacular, notably swear words, we can see how crucial language is to his construction of the national allegory – and the impact that differing translation strategies and practices can have on the representation of that national allegory for a different target audience.