What happens when Vietnamese literature crosses linguistic borders into French, and vice versa? Two people working on that bridge—novelist and translator Thuan and French translator Yves Bouillé—shared their perspectives with BBC from Paris on the challenges that come with rendering Vietnamese into French, and French into Vietnamese.
A Market That’s Hard to Enter
Yves Bouillé, who works with a translation collective linked to a contemporary literature publishing house in France, explained that simply translating a Vietnamese book doesn’t guarantee it will see the light of day:
“The reality is that very few French publishers are willing to take on Vietnamese works in translation. Even with Riveneuve’s series on contemporary Vietnamese writing, we have to put in extraordinary effort just to get these books in front of French readers.”
The Weight of Idioms
Bouillé, who spent ten years learning Vietnamese before beginning to translate, described idioms as his biggest hurdle:
“Vietnamese uses a lot of set expressions in daily speech. If you just translate word for word from the dictionary, you completely miss the meaning. Of course, every language has idioms, but in Vietnamese they are particularly abundant.”
For him, moving from Vietnamese into French is manageable, but he believes the real nightmare lies in the reverse direction: personal pronouns.
When Pronouns Complicate the Story
That is exactly the problem for Thuan, who translates from French into her native Vietnamese.
“In Vietnamese, a woman can be ‘mẹ’ to her child, ‘vợ’ to her husband, ‘chị’ to a younger colleague, ‘cô’ to a student—and so on, depending on context. But in French, all of that collapses into just elle. There’s no nuance.”
This lack of flexibility makes Vietnamese translation especially tricky. Choosing the wrong pronoun risks altering how a character is perceived.
“If a character is slightly cruel and you call him ‘chàng,’ it sounds off. It should probably be ‘hắn,’ or maybe ‘gã ta’ or ‘y.’ Each choice shapes how readers view the character.”
Sartre’s Grandfather Becomes “Hắn”
Thuan illustrated this with her work co-translating Jean-Paul Sartre’s autobiography Les Mots (The Words). In French, Sartre simply refers to his grandfather as il. In Vietnamese, “ông ngoại” feels affectionate, almost domestic—an image at odds with the extraordinary role Sartre’s grandfather played in shaping him.
“To capture that sense of distance, I translated Sartre’s grandfather as hắn, and his mother as nàng. It shocks readers at first, but it reflects Sartre’s perception. He never truly saw his mother as a mother—she was young, naive, and sheltered, while Sartre considered himself wiser, sharper, even as a child. Calling her ‘mẹ’ wouldn’t have conveyed that.”
She cited one striking passage where Sartre wrote: “Every morning, I woke up and looked at her, asking myself: could this young woman really have given birth to me?” For Thuan, only “nàng” could express the strangeness and detachment in that relationship.
A Tale of Two Directions
When she described this struggle to Yves Bouillé, he admitted he was fortunate:
“Translating the other way, from Vietnamese into French, I don’t have to wrestle with pronouns in the same way. That problem simply doesn’t come up.”
Writer and translator Thuan at a reader event
“Vietnamese pronouns are extremely intricate and nuanced. But when I translate into French, the system is strikingly simple.”
Author and translator Thuan, who co-translated Jean-Paul Sartre’s autobiography Les Mots (The Words), often jokes about the difficulties Vietnamese pronouns pose:
“It’s funny, but some people say this is exactly why detective fiction never really took off in Vietnam. The moment a story begins with the word hắn (‘he’), readers immediately assume the character is the villain. The mystery is gone before it even starts.”
She gave an example from her work with Sartre’s text. In French, Sartre refers to his grandfather simply as il. But when rendered as ông ngoại (“maternal grandfather”) in Vietnamese, it sounded far too affectionate, making Sartre seem like an ordinary child rather than the unusual figure he was from the very beginning.
“In the end, I decided to call the grandfather hắn and his mother nàng. It may shock readers at first, but it fits Sartre’s perspective. He lost his father very young, his mother was still a teenager at the time, and he never really saw her as a mother. Sartre was sharper, more perceptive than she was. She was innocent and sheltered, while he already thought he understood the world better than her. Calling her mẹ (‘mother’) simply didn’t capture that dynamic.”
Thuan pointed to one of Sartre’s own striking lines: “Every morning when I opened my eyes, I looked at her and asked myself: could this young woman really have given birth to me?” For Thuan, only nàng conveyed the mixture of distance and strangeness in that relationship.
She later laughed with fellow translator Yves Bouillé about their contrasting struggles:
“I told Yves how hard it is to deal with pronouns when translating French into Vietnamese. He just smiled and said he was lucky—because going the other way, from Vietnamese into French, none of these issues even come up.”
“How to Handle ‘Tense’ and ‘Repetition’?”
Translators Yves Bouillé and Thuan (center) shared fascinating insights on the challenges of moving between Vietnamese and French.
Bouillé, who has translated works by several authors including Vu Dinh Giang and Thuan herself, pointed out another issue:
“Vietnamese verbs never inflect for tense. There’s no conjugation. To know whether something happens in the past, present, or future, you have to rely on adverbs or markers like ‘today’ or *‘a few hours ago.’ But once you immerse yourself in a text, the timeline gradually reveals itself through context.”
He added that repetition also poses problems:
“In Vietnamese prose, repetition doesn’t necessarily jar. It can even feel natural when spoken. But in French, repeating words the same way quickly becomes monotonous—unless the author clearly intends it, as with Thuan’s work. She repeats deliberately, and that must be respected. But with other writers, you often have to spend a lot of time rephrasing to avoid unintentional repetition.”
When asked for concrete examples, Bouillé noted how Vietnamese often strings together near-synonymous adjectives:
“Phrases like ‘hesitant, shy, not knowing what to do…’ are common. In Vietnamese, the tonal quality and rhythm can make this pleasant to read. But in French, if you translate literally, readers may think the translator can’t write. I know of Phan Huy Đường, a very courageous translator who kept all the repetitions intact, while others only preserve them when absolutely necessary.”
