Writing Between the Lines: Portraits of Canadian Anglophone Translators

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Agnes Whitfield is a poet and translator who teaches at the School of
Translation at York University. In this book, with the help of 11
specialists in francophone literature and translation, she presents
engaging and well-crafted portraits of 12 Canadians who have translated
into English literary works that were originally published (in French)
in Quebec. It is a field often described as a bridge between two
solitudes, or, as Whitfield puts it, the “facilitation of
intercultural communication.” In her introduction, she points out that
many of the profiled translators have in common a certain
“otherness,” including a childhood spent outside Canada or a
“family heritage of inter-linguistic difference.” One of the earlier
profiles is Sherry Simon’s portrait of lawyer William Hume Blake, who
translated Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1921). Writing Between
the Lines will no doubt become compulsory reading in schools of
translation, but the book will also appeal to anyone who is interested
in both francophone and anglophone Canadian writing.