Winning Work

Un lit de malade, six pieds de long

Masaoka Shiki, Les Belles Lettres, 2016

Masaoka Shiki’s “The Six-foot Sickbed” is a work which can be placed among “modern day classics.” Mr. Lozerand has translated this eccentric work splendidly. In addition to accurately reproducing the original work using high-quality French, he perceives the undulations and changes in rhythm the text possesses with sensitivity and successfully maintains the balance between sections overflowing with humor and sections with depth. On top of that, his editorial work with a wealth of notes is also highly esteemed. The commentary, which is long even according to the translator, is a form of essay itself and it presents a very interesting viewpoint on the value of the text.
Although very little of Masaoka Shiki’s work has been translated into French up to now, the content has been decidedly unsatisfactory. In other words, it would not be an exaggeration to say that French readers have gone to this day without reading Shiki’s works of prose. The significance of that is that this Un lit de malade, six pieds de long not only has the splendor of uniting the original author and the translator, but it also leaves behind the big achievement of filling in an omission in the history of Japanese literature and French translation.
So it follows that the French selection committee has decided to award the 22nd Japanese-French Translated Literature Award to Emmanuel Lozerand, who translated Masaoka Shiki, Un lit de malade, six pieds de long (“The Six-foot Sickbed”).