TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This translation project began with an unabashed love of the book – a vibrant, generous novel by one of the most celebrated authors in contemporary France. This love, however, was not initially mine: Naissance d’un pont was introduced to me at a party one night in 2010, the year it was published to accolades in France. I have many things to thank David Gressot for, but above all for the introduction and for his exuberance about this author’s style – it proved infectious.

And the translation proved to be a terrific challenge. Maylis de Kerangal is a brilliant and difficult author, one so masterfully in control of her craft that she is comfortable taking a number of risks with language and syntax, including the omission of articles, prepositions, and punctuation, and the invention of words or new uses for them. Her stunning vocabulary gives even native French speakers frequent cause to turn to the dictionary. She draws upon antiquated terminology and contemporary slang – sometimes within the same sentence. Beyond deciphering the splendid labyrinths of her writing (an adventure for any reader), my greatest challenge in translating this novel was to avoid flattening her singular use of language.

One of the most refreshing aspects of de Kerangal’s writing is that she frequently invents new relationships between words that are not accustomed to being placed side by side. Walkie-talkies are crocheted (crochetaient) to ears, a couple is inside love (dans l’amour), Diderot breathes widely (largement), eyes screech (crissent) over someone. Because we tend unconsciously towards the familiar (perhaps in all things), and also because dictionaries often give multiple options, I had to be vigilant in order not to normalize word pairings in translation. If there was a choice between an unusual word and a more commonplace one, it was nearly always truer to the original to keep the first; and even when it might stand out as odd or surprising, this is what I chose to do, because the jolt of the unexpected is what makes her writing so compelling. I also had to resist explaining things that were left richly unexplained in French. At times the work was like panning for gold – “keeping watch for the marvellous sparkle” of meaning as I dug through dense lines, and then sifted through the English approximations that swirled around until I found a similar glint.

My aim was also to keep the echo of the French by maintaining as many cultural references as possible. References to landmarks, monuments, and figures from pop culture mostly were kept as is. There were times, though, when a reference would have been obscure if left as it appeared in the original. In the first site meeting, for example, when describing the two types of soil, harder on the surface but soft underneath, Diderot speaks about le coup de la frangipane (literally, “the marzipan trick”). This refers to the Galette des Rois – a cake with a flaky crust and soft marzipan filling, traditionally served during the Christmas season and near Lent or Carnival. Any French person would understand this reference, but to most of Anglophone North America, “the marzipan trick” would be a mystery. I chose in this case to call it “the trick of the cream filling” – which I suppose could call to mind either éclairs or cream-filled doughnuts, the latter being more of an across-the-board cultural reference in the English-speaking world.

I am deeply grateful to David, who was so generously available throughout the process for queries and proofreading; I can’t count the number of times he answered the questions, “Is this strange? How strange is it?” This translation owes a tremendous amount to him. Thank you also to Hugh Hazelton and Daisy Connon for advice from the English side of things, to the Collège international des traducteurs and the Centre national du livre for making it possible for me to spend time in France working on the translation; warm thanks to my fellow translators at the residency in Arles – in particular, my neighbour, Charlotte Woillez, for her wisdom in last-minute sessions, and especially Patrick Honnoré, whose patience and insight were unmatched. Essentially, it took a village to help me find my way to this Birth of a Bridge, and I was so fortunate to have a rich and multilingual village around me.

Thank you to the wonderful team at Talonbooks, particularly my editor Ann-Marie Metten, for all their thoughtfulness and hard work bringing this English version into being; and thanks to Maylis de Kerangal herself, for her effusiveness and encouragement in response to my questions.

Everything about this author’s writing pushes the reader (and translator) to widen her thoughts, to stretch her use of language; nothing is banal or by rote. And within the bounds of this fantastical, haywire work of fiction, this sort of epic tale of globalization, as de Kerangal says – objects and cities are personified, it snows in California, and jackals and bronze-eyed lynx descend at dawn. A fiercely original book.