Today my translation of Claudine Jacques’ short story, “Opportunités” / “Opportunities” was published by The AALITRA Review in Melbourne. It’s about a young Frenchman who unexpectedly inherits a New Caledonian fortune, and the observations he makes of islanders who need possessions and those who don’t. “Opportunités” is from her award winning 2020 collection Caledonia Blues.…
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Twelve or so years ago when I was studying for a Master of Translation Studies degree, I read set works by the New Caledonian author Claudine Jacques, and as part of the course I visited her island for two weeks and even had lunch in her home. Choosing texts for my translation assessment was simple…
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On the unpredictable path of life I’ve ended up translating French literature from different hemispheres and different centuries. I’ve written about authors from 19th-century France who’ve taken my fancy with their fairy tales and fantasies, and now I want my readers to become acquainted with an author from 21st-century New Caledonia, Claudine Jacques. My first…
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What to do, what to do, when a small achievement cheers you but someone in the world says Bah? There are writers out there who pooh-pooh the Pushcart Prize which honours the best poetry, short fiction and essays published in the American small presses over the previous year. One such writer has a piece that…
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My latest translation to be published is a short story by the New Caledonian author, Claudine Jacques: ‘Other People’s Land’ (La Terre des autres). The editor of the journal, Sunspot Lit, very kindly offered to publish it in September for their Fall issue. The protagonist in the story is a half-Kanak half-white woman who becomes…
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