Le Club des Cinq (Enid Blyton), une série entre nostalgie et modernité

The Famous Five series, written by Enid Blyton, has been translated into French several times: first in the 1950s, then in the 1970s, and finally modernized by Hachette at the beginning of the 21st century. The oldest readers, who have grown up in the meantime, are now contesting the last edition: they allege that the vocabulary is too simplistic and disagree with the politically correct values in the new text. The actual young readers like the new edition, even if the series is less popular than before. Indeed, the revised translation changed times from past to present, modernized the objects and removed discriminatory values. In fact, rewriting (new translation in this case) raises a lot of questions. If removing discrimination is possibly a good idea, it’s more difficult to allow for simple topics like food, changing roles of characters, creation of new characters… Anyway, modernization of the text divides the readers: this is why Hachette has almost simultaneously published the new edition (revised translation, 2006) and an authentic edition from 1950s (2011). Yet this is not a response to the novel’s paternity and integrity, respecting the original translation and readers. To conclude, we can say that the process of rewriting raised questions regarding the literary status of the series, its legitimacy and more broadly the legitimacy of children’s literature.