Dermot Bolger's novel The Family on Paradise Pier is a family saga recounting the life of three characters whose evolution is hindered by a problematic attitude to their own identity. Eva, Art and Brendan come from a well-off Protestant family in Donegal at the beginning of the 20th century. Growing up, all three of them come to reject their family's social identity each in their way, and throughout the novel their own identity will consistently build itself in opposition to their social class of origin. As they cannot identify with it any longer, they try to relate to other groups, shaping their own personality in opposition to their original group by identifying with a new one. They seek another form of identity elsewhere, be it political, professional or spiritual, Russian, Spanish or British. In doing so they cut themselves off from their class, but will never be fully accepted in the new group they wish to integrate. They will remain forever excluded in spite of their best efforts to fit in, “with one foot in and one foot out of everything”.

Thus, issues of identity and otherness are central to this novel – individual as well as national identity, but also cultural, political, religious and sexual identity and alterity. In my presentation, I will therefore endeavour to analyse the way in which these issue arise in the novel, before focusing on the French translation of a few specific expressions of identity and otherness. Indeed, given their significance in the source text, it is essential to ask ourselves how the translators tackled such expressions so as to convey these issues in the best possible way into a different language and culture, for a readership that is not familiar with questions specific to Ireland, or only to a certain degree. How can the positive or negative connotations that underlie certain terms and expressions in the source text be rendered in French when they will hold little or no meaning for a francophone reader? How can we transpose the way in which characters in the novel are socially branded by their accent, education or outfit? If some of these codes and identity norms are common to both cultures, many of them are not. It is necessary then to wonder whether to make these references and identity markers more explicit for target readers or not, a question I propose to address in this presentation.