Four people, one voice

In late February, translators Isabelle Rosselin and Emmanuelle Tardif both stayed in the Translators’ House in Antwerp for two weeks. They worked together on the translation of In the Footsteps of the Burgundians by Bart Van Loo, visited places mentioned in the book and were invited to visit the author. In the months that followed, their collaboration remained intensive, culminating in a working weekend at the author’s home, where in between the many dots, commas, facts and data, a unique bond developed.

Bart: "Certainly. All four of us worked on it. My books are quite long, so they’re regularly handled by two translators. The system of collaboration with me and my wife Coraline grew during work on the French translation of ‘The Burgundians’ and ‘Napoleon’, and it has now been perfected. It’s extremely intensive, even a bit crazy really, but it’s worth it and I want to use the same method with all my French translations.”

“Isabelle Rosselin also worked with me on the two earlier translations into French. For Emmanuelle, it was her first experience with this process. The two of them translated the whole book together and then my wife and I read the translation and gave them feedback.”

Emmanuelle: “It was a unique chance to work together with Isabelle, who is one of the best translators of Dutch into French. She was the one who persuaded me to take the step towards becoming a literary translator. The subject appealed to me too; mediaeval history is close to my heart. I grew up in Lille, and I thought I knew the history of the region, but I’ve learned so much more from Bart. I’ve taken that with me into the translation I’m working on now, which to some extent keeps me in that same world: Margriete by Kathleen Vereecken.”

Isabelle: “I suggested to the publisher that we should ask Emmanuelle because I knew what she had to offer as a translator. However, we didn’t know each other personally. It was great to stay together in the Translators’ House. It meant we were able to discuss specific translation problems and challenges, but we also visited a lot of places together that were relevant to the book. As a translator, that gives you a completely different perspective. In a sense you can then translate more freely because you have an image of what’s being described in the text.”

“Emmanuelle was also the first reader of the passages I translated, and vice versa. That meant we were able to clear up a lot of things between us, and for others we then asked Bart for advice. When you stay together in the Translators’ House, you also get to see firsthand how the other person approaches translation. That’s highly instructive.”

Bart: “Isabelle and Emmanuelle sent us their work chapter by chapter. My wife and I then read the text separately before discussing it together, sentence by sentence, word by word. My wife is French and she has an excellent grounding in literature, so her contribution is extremely valuable.”

“I know my Dutch book almost by heart. When reading the French text, I sometimes come upon something that makes me think, ‘I didn’t say it like that.’ So then I look at the Dutch text and there are two possibilities: either I really didn’t say it that way, so together we look for a better way of expressing it in French, or I realise, ‘Goodness, I really did say that; it seems it wasn’t put very well.’ – and then I adjust it and make it better, tighter. It means we continually improve and strengthen each other.”

“Too big an ego would be very difficult in an undertaking like this. It’s all about forging the best possible text together. Isabelle and Emmanuelle are terrific translators – big enough to put their ego aside. With such a long collaboration, the gloves come off. You no longer say, ‘I might perhaps want to adjust this.’ No, you simply cross out a word. It’s the result that counts.”

Isabelle: “That’s right. And the collaboration went very smoothly from the start. We just wanted to make the best possible book together. Nobody took offence if someone else suggested how to improve the text. It’s also very pleasant to work with someone who understands what translation involves, someone who knows that it’s not just a matter of systematically replacing Dutch words with French words, who knows how intensive translation is.”

Bart: “It’s quite tough, but it also creates an intense bond. The last working weekend, for the fine-tuning, was in early June. Isabelle and Emmanuelle spent the weekend at our house, and we worked every day from morning to evening.”

Emmanuelle: “We divided up the pages and worked separately at first. It’s very quiet where Bart lives, and we all spread out around the garden, in the corner room, or on the sofa to read. After that we came together to discuss things and make the final decisions. In the last version of the manuscript, we had to make corrections on almost every page, a huge job.”

Bart: “That weekend, we didn’t just work hard, we ate good meals, accompanied by good wine, and had wonderful conversations. We all danced to French folk music that I hadn’t heard before – that forges a bond.”

Isabelle: “I agree completely. As I said, Emmanuelle and I didn’t know each other personally before this project. By collaborating intensively, in person as well as digitally, we formed a close relationship. A few days from now, Emmanuelle will be visiting me, along with her husband, on their way back from holiday. It’s quite unique.”

“Coraline’s contribution to this translation was important too. She’s French, comes from Burgundy and is of course very familiar with Bart’s work, but she has a bit more distance from it than the author himself. She often played a key role in the communication between Bart and us, making sure that we understood each other as well as possible, catching every nuance so that we could arrive at the best possible translation.”

Bart: “It was Coraline who found a French title for The Burgundians all those years ago. The French publisher, Flammarion, wouldn’t hear of ‘Les Bourguignons’ – to them it sounded far too gastronomical – and then Coraline came up with ‘Les Téméraires’. There’s only one Téméraire in history and that’s Charles the Bold. My wife thought: why don’t we put that in the plural; then we’ll have something that can stand next to iconic terms like ‘les rois maudits’ (the accursed kings) or ‘les Templiers’ (the Knights Templar). That brilliant bit of inventiveness undoubtedly contributed to the great success of the translation.”

Bart: “It was an almost athletic undertaking. There’s not just a lot of text, more than 800 illustrated pages, it’s also very specific. It’s packed with information and, at the same time, it’s written in my characteristic style.”

Isabelle: “I personally found it one of the most difficult books I’ve ever translated. On the one hand you have all the information, all the facts, but the book is far more than that. Bart has his own style, with plenty of humour, and he succeeds in showing the reader that the historical characters are real people too. That’s what makes the book so captivating.”

Bart: "Translators like Emmanuelle and Isabelle are immensely talented; you could say overqualified and unfortunately underpaid professionals. What they’ve done with ‘In the Footsteps’ is truly impressive. And they’re great people too. That’s important, because I only want to work with pleasant people – pleasant people who produce excellent work, naturally.”

Isabelle: “A project like ‘In the Footsteps of the Burgundians’ is like climbing a mountain. When you’re halfway up you sometimes think, ‘What on earth have I taken on?’ but once you’re at the top it feels so good. Such a positive and constructive collaboration is enormously enjoyable and, what's more, extremely rare. I found it fantastic.”

Emmanuelle: “Indeed. It was a huge challenge, but the result is good and the friendships that came out of it make it all the more special.”

Bart: “I became who I am by lapping up French culture and history. What’s more, French has become like a second mother tongue over the years. I do my theatre tour in French as well as in Dutch and soon, as with The Burgundians, there will be a podcast about ‘In the Footsteps of the Burgundians’ on La Première (RTBF). In addition to that, my work is often about subjects that are relevant to a French-speaking readership. The fact that a translation makes my books accessible to French readers is extremely important to me.”

“A French translation can also give rise to all kinds of other things. When Flammarion signed up to the French edition of Napoleon, for instance, I asked for the French text to be read first by historian Loris Chavanette, a specialist in the field of Napoleon and the French Revolution. Based on the French edition, I then made quite a few changes in the Dutch text. The availability of a French translation also set things in motion for the German and English editions. The publishers didn’t want to rely on people writing reader’s reports; they wanted to be able to read the book themselves. After all, they already had books about Napoleon on their lists and were a bit wary of publishing ‘yet another book about the emperor’. But when they read it, they were both exceptionally excited, independently of each other. Our huge efforts weren’t wasted, because without the French translation, German and English readers would never have been able to read Napoleon. The Shadow of the Revolution.”

The French translation of In the Footsteps of the Burgundians was published by Flammarion on 15 October 2025 as ‘Le Tour de la Grande Bourgogne. Sur les traces des Téméraires’.