As an exception to the rule, the most prolific translator of Flemish novels into French during the interwar period was of French-speaking origin (see Meylaerts 1999, 2004a). Roger Kervyn de Marcke ten Driessche belonged to the majority culture for which he translated, so at first sight would not have to care about minority opposition to certain translational norms. Kervyn was a typical upper-class adult of the period. Born in Ghent (Flanders) in 1896, he lived mostly in Brussels. Son of a French-speaking Flemish aristocrat and a Dutch mother, he was raised in French, totally in accordance with the sociolinguistic habitus of the time. Still, from his early childhood on, he also learned Dutch through his mother's family, through contacts with domestic servants and in the streets of Brussels. He lived in a smart Brussels neighborhood but near the Marolles, the most famous working-class quarter of the city, known for its picturesque mixture of Dutch and French dialects. Kervyn went to a very prestigious French-language secondary school where Dutch was forbidden. All these aspects would have contributed to his internalization of the superiority of French language and culture. At the same time, he was exceptionally in contact with the bilingual world of the Marolles. After secondary school, Kervyn studied law at the French-language University of Brussels. Very quickly he abandoned this profession to become a writer (thanks to the possibilities allowed by the family fortune). Kervyn belonged to the elites who cherished the French-speaking nation and opposed Flemish emancipation. His works and his correspondence contain evidence of these dispositions.

Kervyn nevertheless became the most important translator of Flemish regionalist novels during the interwar period. Although an aristocrat, he had enough knowledge to translate from Dutch, a language at the time mostly ignored if not disapproved of by his social milieu. At the same time, Dutch was finding its way into the institutions of the nation-state. Kervyn’s translations then proved to be highly successful. The translator shared to a large extent the sociolinguistic and cultural habitus of his target public, and brilliantly interpreted its aesthetic tastes. He perfectly followed the preliminary norm of selecting Flemish regionalist novels. Moreover, as an example of the socio-stylistics of habitus-governed translating (Simeoni 1998), Kervyn constructed a continuous mixture of literary language with more colloquial and vulgar registers, and did so beyond the speech of the characters. More colloquial and thus perceived as more "simply Flemish" than his bilingual Flemish colleagues' version of this operational norm, popular undertone was highly appreciated by the French-speaking readers. Often it had a picturesque, comic side-effect, again in harmony with the dispositions of the target public, only asking for more of the same. At times Kervyn also ventured into the "Marollien" dialect in his translations. As a mixture of Dutch and French, it was the only dialect that might fulfill the patriotic function of the translations. However, this initiative was blocked by Flemish authors like Claes, for the reason mentioned above.

At the height of his success Kervyn stopped translating. Why does a successful translator quit the job? How individual and how collective is such a decision? From 1932, the year in which his reputation as a translator was firmly established, Kervyn expressed increasing disdain for the type of literature he felt obliged to translate. The translator wanted to go beyond the expectations of his public and dreamed of translating "modern" Flemish authors. All his attempts failed, since his readers and publishers swore by "simply Flemish" novels. His personal aesthetic evolution, perhaps due to more elaborate contact with Flemish literature, preceded in part the more conservative literary and sociolinguistic habitus of his readers. Still, next to this individual intercultural habitus, more collective, structural factors influenced the individual’s decision. About the same period, Kervyn was particularly upset with some very negative reviews of his translations, written by Flemish critics in the French-language press. The fact that these Flemish critics used the dominant language did not necessarily imply internalizing the dominant perceptions of translation and intercultural contacts. The Flemish bilinguals condemned both the unilateral selection criteria (preliminary norm) and the style of the translations (operational norms) for giving a one-sided rustic, condescending, old-fashioned image of Flanders and of Flemish literature, confirming the perceived superiority of the French-language literature and nation. They sought a more

modern selection in a less popular style. Although his personal preferences went in the same direction, Kervyn felt caught between two opposites. He stopped translating at the moment when the gap was growing between his personal history and the collective history of his public, and there was an increase in the collective weight of the emancipating intercultural Flemish. The end of his translating was effectively co-determined by the internalization of divergent source and target structures, as well as their problematic intersection. It was the end of a success story.

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