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The link between language and identity has been discussed at length in this thesis, and it follows that linguistic varieties such as the langage de banlieue are extremely culture-bound, as their usage (and understanding) depends on knowledge of a specific social or geographical context. This is one of the reasons why the use of a dialect-for-dialect approach in the translation of slang might be problematic, and will be discussed in depth in Chapter Six. However, the link between language and culture in the banlieue is very efficiently demonstrated in the critical introduction written by Goudaillier for his banlieue slang dictionary. This was discussed in Chapter One, and has been referred to a number of times since then. Goudaillier highlighted certain primary aspects of the banlieue culture or life for which the banlieusards possessed an extensive vocabulary. The topics highlighted by Goudaillier have emerged in the films studied, and are interesting because they stand out in comparison to standard French. They do, therefore,

494 ‘The extreme reduction of vowels and the intensification of consonants…’ ‘these changes can be linked to the contact between French and Magrebi languages of immigrants’.Fagyal, p. 93.

present a challenge when it comes to their translation into English, which will arguably not benefit from as wide a variety of synonyms related to them. This section will take some of these topics and the related Culture-Specific terms, and examine the translation of those terms in the three case study films in order to establish how the subtitlers dealt with this translation problem in banlieue film.

Díaz-Cintas and Remael offer a taxonomy of culture specific references which is broken down into three categories. The taxonomy they present is based on those developed by Vandeweghe in 2005 and Grit in 1997, and includes three main categories; ‘Geographical references’, ‘ethnographic references’ and ‘Socio- political references’.495 The first two categories are particularly relevant here,

and will be used in combination with those identified by Goudaillier, in order to present some examples identified in the films studied.496 The terms belonging to

Goudaillier’s categories could be described as culture specific references since, as Doran notes

On a symbolic level […] these semantic innovations and shifts within suburban youth language point to the construction of what Halliday (following Peirce) has called an alternative universe of discourse, in which it is cité youths, rather than dominant society, who hold the power to name and to categorize their local social reality.497

Thus, the terms in question belong to the banlieusards and therefore do not belong to the sphere of cultural reference of most native French speakers. Duchêne is in agreement with Doran’s suggestion and notes that this variety of language represents ‘la pensée, l’esprit d’un groupe de locuteurs, sa façon d’être et sa vision du monde.’498 This reinforces the notion of language being linked to

culture and world view suggested above. Newmark upholds this view in relation to translation, noting that

… when a speech community focuses its attention on a particular topic (this is usually called ‘cultural focus’), it spawns a plethora of words to designate its special language or terminology[…] frequently where there is a cultural focus, there is a translation problem due to the

495 _{Díaz-Cintas and Remael, p. 201.} 496 _{Goudaillier, p. 17.}

497 _{Doran, p. 502.}

498 ‘the thoughts and spirit of a group of speakers, the group’s manner of being and its world view’. Duchêne, p. 36.

cultural ‘gap’ or ‘distance’ between the source and target languages’.499

Thus, the above-mentioned topics which are a bigger part of the daily reality for the banlieusards will lead to the creation of many terms to describe the activities or phenomena, and this ‘cultural focus’ is evidenced by Goudaillier.500 In some

cases, where there is not too great a cultural gap, this may not cause translation problems - for example, if two cultures both have a big interest in a certain topic, then the translation of related terms between them may not be too challenging. However, in the case of the French banlieue specifically, there is already some distance between the banlieue subculture and language, and mainstream French culture and language.501 When that culture is then subtitled into English, the

translator may find themselves struggling to come up with as great a variety of terms related to one topic in the target language as are used in the source language dialogue. These terms will therefore inevitably pose a challenge to translators working into other languages and cultures.

The first category of culture-specific language to be addressed is that of ethnographic references, which are particularly interesting in the case of banlieue cinema, given the multicultural nature of the banlieues and the fact that youths refer to race and ethnicity in their friendship groups without this being a taboo subject. This translation challenge was introduced and discussed in Chapter One.

La haineHamaidia notes that the use of terms such as the reverlanisation of the

word beur from Arabe; reubeu/rebeu ‘expresses and reinforces solidarity between the main characters’, and this function of the language in film arguably replicates the real-life effects of the use of verlanisation to reappropriate terms for use by the members of the banlieue community.502 One particularly interesting and

challenging example of a direct reference to race can be identified in L’esquive, in the scene where Lydia shows her friend her new dress. This scene was discussed

499 _{Newmark, p. 94.} 500 _{Goudaillier, p. 17.}

501 _{Revel highlights the ‘us and them’ attitude with which many French people speak of the}

banlieues in her book ‘Qui a peur de la banlieue?’ [Who is afraid of the banlieue ?] In her case

study of the subtitles for La haine, Jäckel notes the difficulty with which many viewers understood the film’s dialogues at the Cannes film festival. Jäckel, p. 225.

earlier in this chapter, and in that same conversation, Lydia is asked where she bought the dress.

E0170 00:10:03:11 00:10:05:03

Tu l’as pris où ? Chez le noich*.

[Where did you get it?

At the Chinese’s place {verlan}.]

-Who made it? – Slant-eyes

In the first line of the subtitle, the question has been reformulated from asking where Lydia got the dress, to who made it. This reformulation of questions is a common strategy in subtitling, and is termed ‘modulation’ by Vinay and Darbelnet. It involves a grammatical change in the utterance, and can be used to make a phrase sound more idiomatic in translation.503 In subtitling, certain

variations on this strategy might be ruled out; for example, if a character is nodding, the question cannot be reformulated in such a manner that the response would be negative, as then there will be a disparity between the subtitle and the on-screen information provided in the non-verbal visual channel. In this particular example from L’esquive, the strategy allows for a reduction in text in the next line – the response need only be a name. Lydia’s response employs the verlanised form of ‘chinois’, noich.504 This is an example of a phenomenon explained by

Doran:

by creating a new set of terms for race and ethnicity through

verlanization and other means, youths were able to endow them with alternative meanings, ones that ‘belonged’ to the local community and lacked the kinds of racist and stigmatizing connotations that they might have in the dominant language.505

503 _{Vinay and Darbelnet, p. 36.} 504 _{Tengour, p. 386.}

Hence, the term used by Lydia to refer to the Chinese dressmaker - le noich – is not a pejorative one in the banlieue community. The verlanised form means that the term belongs to the people of the banlieue, who are themselves immigrants, some of them Chinese. During an ethnographic study carried out by Doran in a Parisian banlieue, the youths she studied ‘stressed that recognising “difference” within the group was less a way of emphasizing particularisms of origin than of affirming the bonds of shared membership in a multi-ethnic community’.506 Hence,

although in an Anglophone context, referring to race in such a way may be seen as a means of ‘othering’, in this context, the use of a verlanised form of chinois does not necessarily have negative connotations. It has already been established that no similar terms are identifiable in British English, at least none which are as widely used and understood. The translation here features a slang term in British English, which indicates that the characters are speaking informally. Given the clear difference in SC and TC attitudes towards race and ethnicity, this aspect of translating banlieue film is clearly very challenging. However, the translation of this reference as ‘slant-eyes’ could be questioned, as this is a derogatory and offensive term, and implies that the characters in the film do not appreciate difference, but rather see it is a negative thing.507 Perhaps a more appropriate

translation would be ‘the Chinese guy’, which, although failing to convey the

banlieue cultural phenomenon of reappropriation of race terms, would not add

further negative connotations, besides the cultural unfamiliarity of referring to race in such a manner. Another example of explicit references to race and ethnicity can be found in La squale, in the scene where the group of girls travel into Paris and visit a beauty store. One of the characters notes that the store does not hold products for ‘les renois’ [the blacks – verlanisation of ‘noir’ meaning black]. This is directly translated as ‘blacks’, but is not such a problematic example since the character is referring to her own ethnicity, and not that of someone else, thus removing some potential negative connotations from the utterance. The sequence in which this example appears will be discussed again in Chapter Six.

Where geographical references are concerned, one significant group of references within the langage de banlieue, and banlieue film (and even outside of those

506 _{Ibid. p. 503.}

areas, for example, in academic works on these topics), consists of the multiple terms with which the banlieusards refer to the place where they live. At the beginning of this thesis, it was established that there is no exact equivalent for the specific socio-cultural situation which exists in France’s banlieues, and this is the reason for which the French term has been retained in this thesis. However, some academics have used alternative English words to refer to the banlieue, instead of retaining the French term. Mével, for example, refers to the cités as ‘projects’.508 He also talks of the ‘housing estate’ where La haine is set, but refers

to the variety of language spoken in these areas as ‘banlieue French’, rather than adopting an alternative term, noting that the word itself ‘is difficult to translate’.509 The translation of this, and other related terms, in the English

subtitles for all three films is discussed below.

In the earliest of the case studies, La squale, there are a few examples of characters referring to the space of the banlieue either in relation to it being the area where they live, or the area in which they ‘work’ or conduct their ‘business’ – this is often an illicit activity such as drug dealing, for example. One such term which is used in the film is ‘secteur’:

S0747 01:06:20:22 01:06:23:15

Alors c’est ça ta cachette ? C’est mon secteur ici.

[So that’s your hideaway? It’s my ‘sector’ {slang} here.]

- So, this is your hideaway - It’s my hood.

In this case, the use of the word secteur by Toussaint is noteworthy. He is suggesting that he does not need to hide away, as the cité is his domain. Secteur would appear to have origins in military language, along with connotations of

508 Mével, ‘The Translation of Identity’, p. 49. 509 _{Ibid. p. 50.}

business; ‘secteur. 3 cour. Partie d’un front ou d’un territoire qui constitue le terrain d’opération d’une unité… 4 (après 1914 – 1918; de la langue milit.) FAM. Endroit, lieu, coin…’510 It is also used by the police, and the characters represented

in banlieue cinema have frequent contact with law enforcement. In fact, it might also be suggested that the character is using institutional language ironically. The term ‘hood’, does not have the same connotations, though since it is often used in circumstances pertaining to gang activity, perhaps the definition of the term has developed to encompass these related ideas of ‘business’. In addition, ‘my hood’ does express the ownership conveyed in the SLD. aA alternative translation which might retain the military and/or business connotations in British English would be ‘zone’, ‘district’, or even ‘sector’, though such terms might seem out of place in the speech of these youths, and perhaps draw the viewer momentarily out of the film world. ‘Hood’ is an American slang term for ‘the area in which one lives’.511 Although analysis seems to indicate a global strategy of dialect-for-

dialect replacement in the subtitling of the langage de banlieue in La squale specifically, it will be interesting to examine the translation of this and other terms related to space and place in the other case study films, as the parallels that are often drawn between the two socio-political environments mean that the French terms are frequently substituted by terms to denote low-income areas in the United States, both in film and in non-fiction texts. This is the case for secteur in La squale, which was subtitled using the same term – ‘hood’ on at least one other occasion in the film. In addition, subtitle 0714 for La squale features ‘projects’ as a translation for cité in the SLD. In Mével’s article, cité is translated as ‘projects’, and the same trend can also be seen in some newspaper articles.512

The term ‘projects’ does suggest low-income housing, but it evokes specifically US connotations.

510 _{‘Sector. 3. Part of a battlefiend or of a territory which constitutes a unit’s operating zone… 3} (after 1914-1918; from military language) Familiar. Place, area, neighbourhood…’ Paul Robert, Josette Rey-Debove, and Alain Rey, Le Nouveau Petit Robert: Dictionnaire Alphabétique et

Analogique de La Langue Française, Nouvelle Édition Du Petit Robert de Paul Robert (Paris: Le

Robert, 2007). 511 _{Green, p. 608.}

The term ‘hood’ is also employed in the subtitles for L’esquive as a translation for

cité:

E0245 00:13:27:18 00:13:29:17

Eh, mais t’as traversé toute la cité sapée comme ça, là ?

[But, you crossed the whole estate {slang} dolled up {slang} like that, there?]

You crossed the hood like that?

Thus, the subtitles for the first two case study films both demonstrate the dialect- for-dialect approach whereby AAVE is substituted for the langage de banlieue, to the extent that even some culture-specific linguistic references are transposed to those which would work in a US context. The implications of American language in the subtitles will be discussed further in Chapter Six, but this transposition of the terms to the US context does not highlight the cultural specificity of the context, which is a key aspect of the directors’ intentions when making films depicting the banlieues. Indeed, Genestal made La squale to raise awareness of the sexual violence experienced by women in the banlieues, and so the setting of the banlieues is a very important aspect of the film. The same can be said for

L’esquive, where the emphasis is very much on identity and performance as rooted

in the banlieue culture.

In contrast to the use of US English terms to subtitle references to space and place in La squale, the subtitling of these terms in Divines is dealt with slightly differently. Indeed, overall, the subtitles for Divines do not seem to feature as much American slang in general. In Benyamina’s film, references to the banlieue are often translated as ‘estate’ in the subtitles, or the need for a noun to denominate the place is eliminated in the subtitles through a reformulation of the phrase in translation. For example, in the scene where Dounia and Maimouna are watching Djigui’s dance rehearsal from their spot above the stage, Djigui is getting frustrated with the choreographer, and answers back, stating that he did not go to a dance school, that is not how he trained. Maimouna mocks him:

D0306 00:26:01:12 00:26:04:19

‘Moi je viens des quartiers, moi je viens des banlieues…’ vas-y,

ouais.

[‘I’m from the underprivileged areas, I’m from the banlieues…’ Yeah, right.]

‘I’m from a tough estate…’ Yeah, right!

The term ‘estate’ is distinctly British, in contrast to the use of ‘hood’ in the subtitles for La squale and L’esquive. There is no socio-cultural equivalent for the

banlieues in either Great Britain or the United States.513 The same could be said

for the ‘projects’ in the US, or ‘council housing estates’ in the United Kingdom, and this makes a translation strategy which might be described as Equivalence by Vinay and Darbelnet problematic, precisely because these terms are not equivalent.514 They describe what some might call ‘similar’ situations, but evoking

a very culturally-specific situation from a different culture than that represented on screen could have a number of consequences. In the case of interlingual subtitling, the TA is continuously exposed to the original soundtrack of the film, and can therefore constantly hear the foreign language. The use of culturally- specific terms in the TL could then extract the viewer briefly from the film-world, and this might affect their ability to absorb enough information during a particular sequence.

Other lexical groups which might be discussed here are references to the police and other representatives of authority, and to drugs and drug dealing. However, these terms have instead been discussed primarily in relation to other factors (e.g. the use of verlan), or are integrated with other examples. Goudaillier also highlights the abundance of terms related to sex and women within the lexicon of the langage de banlieue, but since this linguistic aspect of all three films is also a

513 _{For a discussion of the cultural specificity of the banlieue phenomenon in French, see Chapter} One.

thematic concern, the translation of language related to women and the way they are discussed (by both men and women) will be examined in more depth in Chapter Six.515