Article – Words Without Borders: “Every Choice We Make Is Political”: Natasha Lehrer on Translating “Consent” and “I Hate Men”

Words Without Borders article particularly relevant in Australia at the moment…..

Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning literary translator from French to English. She recently translated Consent, Vanessa Springora’s memoir of her teenage relationship with the writer Gabriel Matzneff, which sent shock waves through France and triggered a rape investigation; and Pauline Harmange’s bestseller I Hate Men, a book-length essay that found unexpected success after an employee of the French ministry for gender equality attempted to have it banned. In this interview, conducted via email, Lehrer discusses the influence of these books on French society, her “winding” career path, and translation as “a profound and political act of decentering the self.”

Madeleine Feeny (MF): Vanessa Springora’s memoir Consent is both a courageous exposé and a stunning literary achievement that challenges the establishment on its own terms. Following its publication and that of Camille Kouchner’s book La Familia Grande, French MPs have unanimously approved new legislation decreeing fifteen the age of consent. What other lasting impact do you think the book will have?

Natasha Lehrer (NL): It was fascinating, amazing really, that the book was used by the legislature in January to argue for the crime of statutory rape to be brought into law. I can’t think of another example of a cultural artifact being used to create new legislation (I’m prepared to be corrected about this). Hopefully January’s draft bill will become actual law sooner rather than later. Consent created a huge stir in France and has rightly been garlanded with praise for being a superb literary achievement in its own right. But the country has a very long way to go in terms of protecting women and children from sexual violence. The current, complicated legal requirement for establishing that sex was nonconsensual—even in the instance of the grooming and gang rape of a child [as seen in the case of Julie, which mobilized women’s groups to demonstrate against a judicial “culture of misogyny”]—means that men frequently get away with being found guilty of the much less serious crime of sexual assault, which entails a sentence of seven years in jail, rather than rape, which carries a twenty-year sentence. In addition to that, we’re in the middle of an epidemic of domestic violence. One hundred and forty-nine women were murdered by their partners or ex-partners in France in 2019, which is one woman every 2.5 days. To put that in some kind of perspective, the overall rate of femicide (the murder of a woman by a partner, ex-partner, or family member) in France is roughly 30% higher than in the UK, for a population that is almost exactly the same size. Two books, however brilliant and brave, will not change a deeply patriarchal culture. There must be political will.

Read full article at  https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/every-choice-we-make-is-political-natasha-lehrer-on-translating-consent-and?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20April%2014%2C%202021&utm_term=lithub_master_list