La squale follows the arrival of Désirée in the cité where Toussaint and his fellow
gang members reside. Alongside Désirée’s story, we see how Toussaint and his gang treat women in the banlieue; the film opens with a scene in which Toussaint and the other members of his gang rape a young woman in what might be described as a ‘gang ritual’. Désirée falls for Toussaint, and they enter into a relationship until she walks in on him trying to rape another girl from school, Yasmine. Désirée manages to stop Toussaint, threatening him with a knife, but Yasmine runs away and Toussaint beats Désirée. At this point, Désirée has already learned that she is pregnant with Toussaint’s child, and following his treatment of her, decides to exact revenge. She sets Toussaint up to make it appear that he has turned on his gang. They confront Toussaint and stab him to death. Désirée and Yasmine develop an unexpected friendship, and the film ends with them lying on a beach in Brighton, Désirée stating that if the baby is a girl, they will keep her, but if it’s a boy, they will have an abortion. The theme of the treatment of women, and relationships between women and men thus runs right through to the final moments of the film.
Considering these key themes, there are already certain translation issues which can be identified at this point. Gang rapes are referred to in the banlieues as les
tournantes – and also by the phrase faire tourner une fille; the same expression
might be used to describe the passing around of a joint.374 Herein lies the first
translation issue, this is a central theme in the film and the translation of terminology pertaining to gang rape is key in conveying attitudes towards it within the banlieue. The additional themes of gang activity and drug dealing could be linked to Goudaillier’s discussion of linguistic themes for which the banlieusards seem to have a particularly rich vocabulary, and this is reflected in the film’s
373 IMDb, ‘La Haine (1995) - IMDb’ <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247/> [accessed 31 October 2017].
374 Goudaillier, p. 283; Philippe Normand, Dictionnaire Des Mots Des Flics et Des Voyous (Paris: Balland, 2010), p. 327.
dialogues.375 This could pose a challenge in terms of the representation of this
diverse vocabulary in translation, since the richness of vocabulary related to these themes is a culturally-specific feature of the langage de banlieue.
The film also demonstrates the racial diversity within France’s banlieues: Toussaint and Désirée are black, and Yasmine is of North African origin, as are a number of the members of Toussaint’s gang. Two of the members of Désirée’s group of friends are also black, and racial tension is evident in the film, during a scene in which Désirée and her friends visit a beauty shop in central Paris and notice that much of the makeup on offer is designed for fair skin. References to race and religion are common within the banlieue subculture; Doran notes that youths have a number of ways to refer to race, religion and immigration status among themselves, and that this is a way for ‘them to treat ethnicity as a valid and normal component of self- and other-identification’.376 It will become
apparent that this can pose a problem in translation, given the lack of equivalent terms as positive references to race and religion in British English.
Another element of the film that could be a challenge in translation is the significance of certain names, some of which rely on cultural knowledge that may not be available to viewers in the British context. Toussaint, a key character in the film, shares a name with the ‘…heroic leader of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture’.377 He was able to ‘mastermind resistance against the
French, British and Spanish, to deliver emancipation from slavery, and to lay the foundations for what would be the second independent state in the Americas.’378
Louverture therefore represents struggle against dominant powers, both in terms of the colonial powers and slavery. Toussaint’s name arguably adds a further element of exclusion from and struggle against France which may be lost to viewers (both in France and the UK) without the necessary cultural knowledge to extract the additional meaning. In addition, although the given name of the film’s protagonist, Désirée, does still convey ideas of desire in English her nickname La
squale, does not hold any meaning for non-French speaking viewers. The film is
375 Goudaillier, p. 17. 376 Doran, p. 503.
377 Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg, Toussaint Louverture : A Black Jacobin in the Age of
Revolutions (London: PlutoPress, 2017), p. 1.
so named after the scene in which one member of a girl gang which will later become Désirée’s friends states ‘Elle s’est pris pour une squale!’ [She thinks she’s a shark], which is subtitled as ‘Thinks she’s bad’. This translation does indicate the suggestion is that Désirée is perhaps a little ‘too big for her boots’, and that she needs taking down a peg or two. However, this is the phrase from which the name of the film is taken, and the title was not translated. The title thus has no significance for a British audience, as they do not see the term ‘squale’ in any of the subtitles.379 Where the marketing of the film for the Anglophone context is
concerned, translating the name could have been advantageous, as viewers would have been aware that Désirée was the main focus of the film as soon as she was introduced. An alternative would have been to give the film a different title in English, which could have been adapted appropriately to appeal in the UK context.