The idiolect that has been crafted by Antony Burgess in his writing – taking into account that such a language never existed is in fact both innovative and peculiar. Burgess did not mimic any register or slang and neither did he intend to show what factual processes were occurring in the language. Rather, English was made to experience a penetration that it has never undergone before. It was the dialect used by Burgess which is heavily dependent on the American slang used by Spanish teenagers that served as a guiding principle to the Spanish Translator employee Feliciano Puerto. If Burgess presumed that English would resemble other languages one day, the combination of English and other languages does not point to this fact. The language and the plot of A Clockwork Orange (growing cruelty and audacity of youth hoodlums) are treated by the translator as valid forecasts about what is to be expected in our modern society and Alex’s dialect is indicative of this, as it serves as a prophecy that transfers the novel to our cultural environment.
Because of Burgess’s use of innovative stylistic devices, he turns out to be a considerably difficult author to both translators and readers and not surprisingly few readers attempt to read his works. What made Antony Burgess a cult writer was Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange for the cinema. In 1962 when Burgess’s career was at its dawn his work could already be divided into periods, which explains the previous statement. The division of the periods is as follows: the first period was named “the exotic period,” the second one was named “repatriate,” and the third – fantastic, which means A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed belong to the third period. Of all these periods, the readership throughout the world is most familiar with the “fantastic period”. We are certainly misled about Burgess’s literary heritage by the limited selection of his works which were published and translated. As it was difficult to get the right to publish his books, most translators had to use Certified New York Translator corporations. This being hard to do, though, they ignored the rest of his works and directed their efforts on only one novel. Owing to the fact that only certain novels of his have been translated he is unfairly regarded as the author of one book – A Clockwork Orange. Unfortunately, Burgess’s vast heritage is either neglected or translated badly; for example One Hand Clapping was ideologically manipulated, while A Clockwork Orange had to go through some arguably appropriate linguistic experiments.
As The Wanting Seed is difficult to find and its view of the future is rather controversial, while A Clockwork Orange tastes like a forbidden fruit as it was censored for the underground world of ultra-violence, it is worth taking into account the fact that Burgess is considered an alternative author. Masterfully rendered into French by the French Translator, One Hand Clapping is a novel that will present interest to those who want to learn about the manipulative machine that uses literature for propaganda. Though Burgess stood outside the mainstream, he can still be considered as an author of experimental fiction, and all of the above mentioned factors point to this.