{"id":4713,"date":"2017-03-09T14:56:36","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T19:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groups.etown.edu\/news\/?p=4713"},"modified":"2017-03-09T17:01:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T22:01:31","slug":"e-towns-newsome-translates-french-war-novel-invasion-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/2017\/03\/09\/e-towns-newsome-translates-french-war-novel-invasion-14\/","title":{"rendered":"E-town\u2019s Newsome stirs interest in translation of French war novel \u2018Invasion 14\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"full<\/a><\/p>\n

Brian Newsome\u2019s translation and annotated edition of \u201cInvasion 14,\u201d a 1935 novel by Maxence Van der Meersch about the German occupation of northern France during World War I, has piqued the interest of academics far and wide since its publication by McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press in June 2016.<\/p>\n

In October 2016, Newsome, associate professor of history and dean for curriculum and assessment at Elizabethtown College, was invited to William Paterson University, in Wayne, N.J., as its invited lecturer for the university\u2019s History Department Lecture Series on World War I.<\/p>\n

Also, last fall, Newsome presented \u201cReflections on Regime Change in the Oeuvre of Maxence Van der Meersch\u201d for the Western Society for French History in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvasion 14\u201d is an antiwar story closely based on Van der Meersch\u2019s personal war experience as well as survivor testimony and documentary research, said Newsome, who encountered the works of Van der Meersch as he was conducting research on interwar France.<\/p>\n

\n

There was much more to this process than I\u2019d anticipated.\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After reading one of Van der Meersch\u2019s novels, he \u201cwent back and read more of his work\u201d and, he said, he liked \u201cInvasion 14\u201d enough to use it as a teaching tool in his classes \u201cif only there were a good translation.\u201d With this objective in mind, the French-fluent professor took on the project himself.<\/p>\n

In 1937, just two years after Van der Meersch\u2019s book was published, English novelist Gerard Hopkins attempted a translation but traded accuracy and art for speed, Newsome said. \u201cHe missed the deeper meaning.\u201d Hopkins occasionally attributed dialogue to the wrong characters and routinely dropped complete phrases. His \u201cliberal hand undermined the nuances,\u201d Newsome said, and, in some cases, completely changed the meaning of the storyline.<\/p>\n

The E-town professor wanted his work to \u201cbalance a literal translation with the beauty of the language,\u201d he said, referring to the rhythm and the imagery of the French original. \u201cI wanted to bring all of those elements together as a package to English-language readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the centennial of World War I at hand\u2014the war started July 28, 1914, and ended Nov. 11, 1918\u2014Newsome set about researching and writing his translation.<\/p>\n

The book is set along the Franco-Belgian border, with the front lines just miles away and the sound of shelling almost always in the background. Yet the novel is not about combat, Newsome said. It focuses on the experiences of the French civilians living under occupation and the German soldiers who ruled over them.<\/p>\n

Newsome said he spent much time in France, reading through the reams of notebooks Van der Meersch kept as he penned his novel. The insights thereby gained, Newsome said, helped him better understand the mindset of the original author and helped him unravel the complexities of \u201cInvasion 14.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was much more to this process than I\u2019d anticipated,\u201d Newsome said, noting he gained a deeper appreciation of the occupation, interwar literature and the intricacies of translation.<\/p>\n

More recently, Newsome and George Robb, professor of history at William Paterson, co-edited articles and an introduction to \u201cRethinking World War I: Occupation, Liberation, and Reconstruction,\u201d for a special winter issue of Historical Reflections\/R\u00e9flexions historiques. The issue is devoted to recent scholarship on World War I and features articles by noted historians include Elizabethtown College\u2019s own Carl Strikwerda, president and professor of history.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Newsome\u2019s translation and annotated edition of \u201cInvasion 14,\u201d a 1935 novel by Maxence Van der Meersch about the German occupation of northern France during World War I, has piqued the interest of academics far and wide since its publication by McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press in June 2016. In October 2016, Newsome, associate professor of history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":4715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[178,764],"tags":[490,1128,743],"class_list":["post-4713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","category-research-and-academics","tag-achievements-2","tag-feature","tag-history","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4713"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5817,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713\/revisions\/5817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}