Poemes du Soir/ Evening Poems

I had a wonderful time today analysing some of the books I found yesterday. Probably my favourite is called Poemes du Soir (Evening Poems, Heredia & Dentan, 2016) which is a collection of 9 poems presented in both French in Latin script and Arabic in Arabic script. The dilemma of how to give equal weight to both languages is to a large extent avoided because of the different conventions associated with each script. Latin script is traditionally written and read left to right, and Arabic script, right to left.

http://whiteravens.ijb.de/book/600

Before you read the details in the next few paragraphs (which may or may not make sense without the actual book in front of you), let me describe the book first. Basically, when you hold the book in your hands, ready to read from left to right as we usually do with most European language books,  the cover facing you is all in French. And you can read the whole book in this left to right manner. But if you hold the book as your would for a typical Arabic book, that front cover is all in Arabic (the back cover for a European language) and you can read the book from right to left as well.

On the front cover, reading left to right of Poemes de Soir, the title and authors and publisher’s names are presented in the French language using Latin script. The front cover reading right to left (i.e., the back cover if you’re used to reading European language books) presents the cover with the title, authors’ and publisher’s name in Arabic script written from right to left. The front inner pages giving the author and illustrator bio and a poem about a white moon in French is given in the leftmost inner pages, followed on the next page by publishing information and a full title page, also in French. The same information in Arabic is given  in the right-most inner pages (i.e., the pages just inside the Arabic language cover). All that is missing in the Arabic inner pages is the publisher information.

Again and again, it is this publisher information which is the key indicator of the dominant language in the country where a book is published, and this example is quite clear: the only indication that this publisher is based in France is that the publisher’s information is given only in Latin script in French in the left-most inner pages of the book, and the barcode and price for the book (conventionally at the back of the book) are on the right-most inner pages where Arabic script is dominant.

In the body of the book, the text and illustration interact in a number of ways, from the conventional illustration on one page and text on blank facing page, to integration into blank spaces within the illustrations, often white text on black background, with black, white and yellow the dominant colours throughout. On each full page spread the two languages are presented back-to-back (almost looking like a butterfly) most of the time (7/9 pages), and then always with French on the right and Arabic on the left. This is an interesting decision. Given that the Latin script reads left to right and Arabic right to left, you  may have expected the opposite order of presentation (i.e., French on left and Arabic on right). But when you consider that Latin script is justified to the left and Arabic to the right, the straight line between the two starting places makes the chosen order the perfect choice. I realise it would really help you to see some images here, but I don’t yet have scans nor permission to use them.

            For the two poems which do not follow this back-to-back (or butterfly) placement of languages, (Bruits du Soir  and Si t’as peur), it is clear this is done as there is not sufficient space within the illustration for two languages side-by-side. For the poem which comes first if you’re reading the book from left to right (Bruits du Soir) French is on top and so appears to be given primacy. For the poem which comes first if reading from right to left (Si t’as peur), the Arabic script comes on the top of the page, and the French underneath. So it seems that a great deal of care has been taken to be fair in the equal status given in the presentation of the two scripts. The publisher Le Port a Jauni (based in Marseilles where there is a large Arabic-speaking population) established in 2015, describes itself as specialising in producing French-Arabic bilingual books. Their website explains that their books are designed “to play with the double meaning of reading in French and in Arabic” (La Port a Jauni, 2017). In my opinion they do that very well.

I’m not sure if any of this makes sense without the actual book in front of you, but suffice it to say, it is innovative and very thoughtfully done, and I was enthralled for many hours picking it all apart (I’m odd, I know).

What will I find tomorrow?