Bouchercon Day 2: The juxtaposition

After a one-year absence, DBB is 
pleased to present the return of the 
annual Christa Faust picture

Today's favorite moment at Bouchercon 2012 in Cleveland, other than the photo at right, came during the "Cop vs. Constable" panel, which offered crime writers from the U.K., Australia, Denmark, and the U.S. talking about how laws, social attitudes, and police practices differ between countries and how this affects their writing.

Michael Robotham, acting as participating moderator, asked Michael Connelly: "Can you explain to the rest of the world the O.J. Simpson verdict?" A discussion of law, celebrity, and money ensued.

Not ten minutes before that question, I'd been riding in an elevator with Marcia Clark, a prosecutor in the Simpson trial, who, whether because of the trial's outcome or otherwise, has turned to writing mystery novels. I heard no gnashing of teeth or rending of garments at Robotham's query so I presume Clark was not in the room at the time. But I wonder how she'd have reacted to the discussion or what she'd have said if she'd have taken part.

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One day til my "Murder Is Everywhere" panel Saturday (with one substitution due to a family emergency).  View the complete Bouchercon schedule.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Out of English, into French: A translation question

I hadn't read Michael Connelly before. Now I'm reading him in French in preparation for my panel at Bouchercon 2009.

Deuil Interdit (The Closers in the original version) brings Harry Bosch back to the Los Angeles Police Department after a three-year retirement. Among other things, I learned in the opening chapter that the French word for badge is badge.

Elsewhere, the police chief asks Harry if he had heard talk of the décret dit de consentement (roughly decree — that is, of consent) under which the department now operates. The term has the air of something the translator thought needed explaining to French readers, and I presume it means consent decree. This raises an interesting question: When translating legal and other technical terms, how does one strike a balance between fidelity to the original sense, and comprehensibility to readers in the target language?

(Michael Connelly's French translator, Robert Pépin, will be a member of my panel on crime fiction and translation at Bouchercon 2009.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Unreal!

A few months ago, one Pat Miller alerted me to a passage from Michael Connelly's novel The Overlook:

"[Harry] Bosch was not adept in a digital world and readily acknowledged this. He had mastered his own cell phone but it was a basic model that made and received calls, stored numbers in a directory, and did nothing else — as far as he knew."

Elsewhere, Bosch is bemused by a BlackBerry.

Donald Westlake was also puzzled by a phenomenon of modern life: reality TV. His latest and, sadly, last Dortmunder novel, Get Real, involves Dortmunder and his gang with a producer who wants to make a show about the gang planning and executing a burglary. Westlake being Westlake, he mixes fun with the puzzlement:

"`Where do you want to do this, your office?'

"`No. We've got a rehearsal space downtown, we— '

"`Wait a minute,' Stan said. `You got a rehearsal space for reality shows?'"

I like Connelly's attitude, and I like Westlake's. Each is a happy medium between uncritical surrender and curmudgeonly rejection. A more bitterly funny Westlake comes through as well, the Westlake who wrote The Ax and who, despite being beloved of some conservative pundits, was given to profound sympathy with American workers. Here's the reality show's producer explaining to his assistant why she (the assistant) is not a writer even though she scripts "suggestions" for the reality show's stars:

"Because The Stand is a reality show, and reality shows do not have actors and writers because they do not need actors and writers. We are a very low-budget show because we do not need actors and writers. If you were a writer, Marcy, you would have to be in the union, and you would cost us a whole lot more because of health insurance and a pension plan, which would make you too expensive for our budget, and we would very reluctantly have to let you go and replace you with another twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college. You're young and healthy. You don't want all those encumbrances, health insurance and pension plans."

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BlackBerries, cell phones and reality TV. What other aspects of pop culture do your favorite crime writers make fun of or scratch their heads over?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009