Translating song in Annie Ernaux’s <i>Les Années</i>

That Annie Ernaux intends her writing as a work of sociology is well established. Yet while much has been made of the role of photographs in that sociological project, comparatively little attention has been paid to Ernaux’s concomitant interest in sound. The allusions to songs, singers, and song titles strewn throughout Les Années [ The Years ] form part of an effort within the work, and elsewhere in Ernaux’s oeuvre, to document – or rather record – the soundscape of the author’s life. Since the songs cited in Les Années are specific to Ernaux’s milieu, i.e., twentieth-century France, they present a distinct challenge for her translators. Considering a few examples of song allusions in Les Années , I ask how these might be translated into English, how they have been translated by Ernaux’s most recent translator, Alison L. Strayer, and what the impact of Strayer’s translation is on the project of Les Années.