Translating America: The United States as Third Culture in Translation

Due to its geopolitical, economic, and cultural dominance in the postwar era, the United States became a common touchstone for European writers in general and French writers in particular, who came to define their literary output against the growing influence of American culture. Translating between European languages has therefore increasingly become a question of interpreting and communicating a series of kaleidoscopic images of the United States from one culture to another. Tracing the impact of American culture on postwar France and focusing more specifically on various phantasmagoric representations of California in contemporary French literature, this lecture will explore the role of the United States as a phantom third culture in translation, exceeding the linguistic influence of English as an international lingua franca.