Translating Traumatic Memories: What is Forgotten in the English Translation of Mercè Rodoreda’s El carrer de les Camèlies?

This working paper explores trauma, memory, translation, and loss. The paper discusses the extent to which traumatic events impact memory retelling and the ways in which this can be conveyed in literary fiction, exploring how this also affects the narrative and its portrayal in translation. Through the analysis of extracts from the novel El carrer de les Camèlies by Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda (1908–83) and its English translation, the paper considers how the retelling of traumatic memories impacts a text, leading to repetition, fragmentation, and the breakdown of a linear narrative. Rodoreda’s work depicts women as victims of trauma and male violence, often against the background of the Spanish Civil War, with female protagonists who struggle to come to terms with or voice their experiences of trauma. Both personal and collective trauma is apparent within the texts, which are engaged with to varying degrees in translation. The paper will focus firstly on how trauma and its memory affect the literary narrative, considering then how this is conveyed and retold in translation. By drawing on the work of Siobhan Brownlie on memory studies and translation, and Sharon Deane-Cox and Helena Buffery on the role of the translator and the representation of trauma in translation, I consider how the English-language versions of Rodoreda’s work attempt to (re)create or (re)narrate the traumatic memories of the source text, and whether this contributes to a sense of loss.