Editing The Stranger (Camus novel) (section)

==== Difference between translations ====
A critical difference among these translations is the expression of emotion in the sentence towards the close of the novel: "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe" in Gilbert's translation, versus Laredo's "I laid my heart open to the gentle indifference of the universe" (original French: {{lang|fr|la tendre indifférence du monde}}; literally, "the tender indifference of the world"). The Penguin Classics 2000 reprint of Laredo's translation has "gentle" changed to "benign". Smith's 2012 translation uses the literal translation, "tender", stating in her Translator's Note that using "benign" "fails to capture the paradoxical nuance of 'tender'".

The ending lines differ as well: Gilbert translates 'on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration', which contrasts with Laredo's and Smith's translation of 'greet me with cries of hatred'. This passage describes a scene that would serve as a foil to the prior 'indifference of the world'. In French, the phrase is {{lang|fr|cris de haine}}. Ward translates this as 'with cries of hate'. Gilbert juxtaposes 'execration' with 'execution'.

{{lang|fr|Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte}} is the opening sentence of the novel. English translations have rendered the first sentence as 'Mother died today', 'Maman died today', or a variant thereof. In 2012, Ryan Bloom argued that it should be translated as 'Today, Maman died'. He believes this better expresses the character of Meursault, as developed in the novel, as someone who 'lives for the moment', 'does not consciously dwell on the past', and 'does not worry about the future'.<ref name="bloom">{{cite news | url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be | title=Lost in Translation: What the First Line of ''The Stranger'' Should Be | magazine=The New Yorker | author=Ryan Bloom | date=11 May 2012 | access-date=3 July 2016}}</ref>