The French translations of Agatha Christie will be the subject of “revisions”, in particular the removal of terms deemed offensive on the physique or the origin of characters, “thus
aligning with the other international editions”
, indicated a door. -speech of the editions of the Mask.
"The French translations of the work of Agatha Christie are subject to the usual revisions and over the years incorporate the corrections requested by Agatha Christie Limited (the company which manages the
work of the author, editor's note),
if thus aligning with other international editions”
, specifies the publisher, which is part of the Hachette group.
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At the end of March, the British daily
The Telegraph
had reported that several passages of the novels telling the investigations of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, initially published between 1920 and 1976, had been rewritten after examination by a reading committee.
In particular, the publisher has modified or removed descriptions of certain foreign characters.
As in
Death on the Nile
(1937), where the character of Mrs Allerton complained about a group of children and made fun of their noses, or in
La Mystérieuse Affaire de Styles
(1920), in which Hercule Poirot pointed out that another character was
"a Jew, of course"
.
"They were ten"
This isn't the first time an Agatha Christie title has been changed.
In 2020, the detective novel Ten
Little Niggers
, one of the most widely read and sold in the world, was renamed
They Were Ten
and the pejorative term, cited 74 times in the original version, was removed from the new edition.
Read also“Big”, “black”… How did these words become “offensive”?
Recently, changes to English author Roald Dahl's children's novels sparked outrage in the UK.
References to weight, mental health, violence, or racial issues had been redacted from works like
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
or
James and the Big Peach
.
Faced with the outcry, its publisher, Puffin UK, had assured that it would continue to publish the original versions in a special collection.
The author's French publishing house, Gallimard Jeunesse, had indicated that it would continue to publish the original versions.
The adventures of the famous British spy James Bond, written by Ian Fleming, have also been rewritten in English to remove certain passages deemed racist.
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