Simons compares and discusses three versions of Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre: the original novel in diary form, which was published in 1900 by the French writer Octave Mirabeau and two film versions, the first in English by the French director Jean Renoir in 1946 in Hollywood and the second in French in 1964 by the Spanish director Buñuel. Simons examines how the narrative qualities of the novel have been 'translated' into film. He pays attention to problems of cultural and linguistic equivalence and transposibility as well as problems associated with the different genres: their place and status within the initial and the target cultural systems, and the implications of any differences in understanding and reception by the two audiences.