Voicing the Perpetrator's Perspective Translation and Mediation in Jean Hatzfeld's Une Saison de machettes

This paper draws on discourse analysis and narrative theory to uncover the strategies exploited by authors who voice the perpetrators' perspectives on war and conflict. As an extreme form of literature on both a formal and an ethical level, perpetrators' testimonies cannot be but a 'relayed' and therefore layered story, calling for a particular mise en scene. The paper assesses the importance of mediation as re-narration in Une Saison de machettes, an account written by former war reporter Jean Hatzfeld that presents transcribed interviews with Rwandan genocidaires. An analysis of excerpts from the English and Dutch translations of Hatzfeld's book reveals the polyphonic nature of the killers' discourse and subverts the idea of a 'consonant' translation as promoted by Hatzfeld himself