The Stranger (Camus novel)
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The Stranger, or The Outsider, (from the French L’Étranger, 1942) is a novel by Albert Camus. It is one of the best-known examples of absurdist fiction.
English translations from the French
The Librairie Gallimard first published the original French-language novel in 1942. British author Stuart Gilbert first translated L’Étranger to English in 1946; for more than thirty years his version was read as the standard English translation. In 1982, the British publisher Hamish Hamilton published a second translation, by Joseph Laredo, that Penguin Books bought in 1983 and reprinted in the Penguin Classics line in 2000. In 1988, a third translation, by the American Matthew Ward, was published, by Random House Inc., in the Vintage International line of Vintage Books. Because Camus was influenced by the American literary style, the 1988 translation was Americanised.
The three translations differ much in tone; Gilbert's translation is formal, notable in the initiating sentence of the first chapter. The French original is: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J'ai reçu un télégramme de l'asile: Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. Cela ne veut rien dire. C'était peut-être hier". Maman is informal French for the informal English Mum/Mommy/Mom.
Gilbert's 1946 translation is: "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday."
Laredo's 1982 translation is: "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have been yesterday."
Ward's 1988 translation is: "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday."
Each carries certain connotations that could affect the reader's interpretation of the book. In the first two translations, Meursault is given a cold stature; the third translation shows curiosity rather than indifference towards Mother's death, which is close to the original French.
A critical difference of translation is in the connotation of the original French emotion in the story's key sentence: "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe" in Gilbert's versus Laredo's "I laid my heart open to the gentle indifference of the universe" (original French: la tendre indifférence du monde = literally, "the tender indifference of the world"). The ending lines between the two aforementioned translations differ as well, from "on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration," to " with cries of hatred", respectively, a significant scene that serves as a foil to the prior "indifference of the world". In French, the triad is "cris de haine", which Ward's transliteral interpretation is closest to in terms of phonics. Gilbert's interpretation takes the liberty of juxtaposing "execration" with "execution".
Translations of the title
In French, "étranger" can mean: "foreign", "overseas", "unknown", "extraneous", "outsider", "stranger", "alien", "unconnected", and "irrelevant". Perhaps the seemingly obvious French/English cognate: L’Étranger --> "estranged" most etymologically connotes Camus' essential ontological theme in this work.
Meursault is existentially estranged and does not understand the necessity of adhering to the stock gestures and emotions in everyday life. This estrangement is his downfall in the very end. As he is oblivious of the motifs he lives, he is unencumbered by any meaning exterior to his sensory experience, a character trait rendering him "foreign," "disconnected" and "alien" to his contemporaries.
