Culture in Transit: Translating the Literature of Quebec

Ronald R. Henry is director of the School of Translators and
Interpreters at Laurentian University.

This is a collection of two interviews and 12 essays by
French-to-English translators (e.g., Linda Gaboriau, Sheila Fischman,
Barbara Godard, Philp Stratford, and Kathy Mezei) of Québécois
literature. Billed by the editor as views on why one translates, rather
than how, these most recent perspectives are personal and insightful.
Michel Tremblay, Roch Carrier, Anne Dandurand, Nicole Brossard, Jacques
Ferron, Antonine Maillet, and Dany Laferriиre are among the popular
authors who have been translated by the contributors.

The literature of this culture in transit has also been moving from
homogeneous to pluralistic. According to Simon, it is also “probably
true that feminism [has] to some extent usurped the power of cultural
nationalism as the prime motivator of literary commerce within
Canada.” Still, in Canada’s long history of culture in translation,
it is the peculiar brands of the French language spoken and written here
that continue to haunt the art. Actually, it is in these
registers—from Tremblay’s joual to the Rabelaisian Acadian of
Maillet through Ferron’s playful mischief—where foreign standards
are gleefully, resolutely, and seditiously broken, that one discovers
ouиredéare. Rendering the language in simpler times, a paternal
William Henry Drummond could spell leetle Bateese’s haccent, but is it
now just genteel or esthetically correct to disregard Tremblay’s
working-class tongue as “something missing in the translation”? Or
does Glaswegian Scot sound like The Real Wurld?

This book was clearly assembled as an academic vehicle for options on
culture in transfer. But read it now—before it becomes standard
curriculum fare.