Translation in Canada 1534-1984

Neal Johnson was Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Guelph, Ontario.

Jean Delisle is a specialist in the history and pedagogy of translation at the University of Ottawa’s School of Translators and Interpreters. It is as an historian that he has produced the present work. It is not a “how to do it” book; it is concerned with neither the theory nor the techniques of translation, nor with its tools (dictionaries, glossaries, and the like), nor with debates over language questions. What it does provide is a history and bibliography of a topic which, although highly specialized, is one that has had importance for Canada from the earliest days. This is a source book, meant to be consulted rather than read. As such it will be invaluable to people doing research on the history of translation in Canada, the development of the profession, or the place it occupies in Canadian society.

As is befitting such a work in Canada, the original French texts of the author’s introductions have been expertly translated into English. The reader is reminded as well of a more often forgotten fact of Canada’s linguistic past: for the first century and a half of its existence, translation in our nation was not between English and French, but between French and Indian languages.

The book consists of three parts: a historical outline, a descriptive bibliography, and an analytical bibliography. The bibliographies list 2,472 titles of books, documents, newspaper articles, and articles in periodicals; the second bibliography gives the exact reference for each title listed in the first.

It emerges clearly from this wealth of documentation that although literary translation has never been a tradition in Canada, the translation of pragmatic texts has long been an important part of the cement that holds our country together.