Translations

TRANSLATIONS 39' mene de conscience collective, les auteurs ont continue d'evaeuer ou de marginaliser les debats politiques, l'engagement social, la contestation, les preoccupations metaphysiques aussi. Ces dramaturges ont opte pour une tMmatique demeurant eclectique certes, diversifiee et pluraliste comme Ie public qu'ils veulent rejoindre et toucher; mais, comme theme recurrent dominant, ils ont adopte en chreur/creur et en Ie modulant dans tous les registres, l'eternel refrain amoureux: amour, vie quotidienne, fantasmes, Ie couple, rapports aux autres, etc. Derriere la pudeur ou I'enormite du rire, avec les accents ecorches d'une passion a sens unique, avec les caleuls machiaveliques des rapports de force ala Choderlos de Lados, avec la maladresse de sentiments trop forts ne sachant pas ou plus comment rejoindre I'autre, Ie theatre quebecois conjugue atous les temps et sur tous les tons, Ie difficile, troublant et enivrant art d'aimer. La revolution sera interieure ou elle ne sera pas; la liberation s'eHectue d'abord au niveau des emotions et du corps que I'on apprend, comme un pays intime, ahabiter. Translations KATHY MEZEI 'What is translation here but an attempt to read all that's there?' writes Daphne Marlatt in Ellipse 29/30. Translation is a reading and a writing, a writing that should be the most intense and joyful reading of another's words, a reading so insistent that it must be written. Literary translators are now not only turning their hands to texts from Quebec that urgently demand to be translated, but they are also self-consciously reflecting upon the art of translation, exploring the anatomy and process of translation. Ellipse, '8 x 8 la traduction a I'epreuvelexperiment in translation: 29/30 (1982) is just such a descent into the heart of translation. It is, in editor Richard GigUere's words, 'une sorte de "tournoi de traduction,'" or in the words of Colin Browne, the guest editor, a 'transpiration.' In his introduction, which blends theory with the actual experience before him, Browne describes the process: Each of our poems has been translated eight times, and four of them disappear entirelyf their cycles tenninated through frustration, only to reappear as new creatures. ,.. several of the poems retain their essence and are enriched, becoming at the same time elements of ongoing dialogues about the processes they're enduring. ." We began with eight original poems, the only stipulation being that they should not be longer than thirty lines. The four French-writing poets were Michel Beaulieu, Cecile Cloutier, Michel Gay, and Andre Roy; the four English-writers being Alexander Hutchison, Daphne Marlatt, Steve McCaffery, and George Stanley. (pp 14- 15) 392 LEITERS IN CANADA 1983 Each of the poems is thus translated eight times, and this unfolding is fascinating to follow - the translations, on occasion, are quite faithful to their predecessors, yet at the same time strongly revelatory of the translating poet's characteristic style and preoccupations (e.g., Beaulieu's concern with lyric movement, Marlatt's with semantics), and on other occasions completely break down. Steve McCaffery reacts to Cecile Cloutier's rendition, this the fourth reworking of Andre Roy's 'La Theorie des Fesses et la Grace,' with a prose harangue on the signification of certain words and expressions in the poem. Annoyed, frustrated, Michel Gay responds with his own poem: les bonnes manieres parlons-en le travail ou les strategies des petits exces et des glands.... conduding with 'parlons-en de la litterature'" ... ". & de quelques autres pertes' (p 127). Daphne Marlatt then politely translates this and returns it to Andre Roy, who no doubt was bemused by the utter transformation of his original poem. There are moments of brilliance, when McCaffery, for example, responds to Michel Gay's 'cette duree, Ie temps que ,a prend pour ...' with "'this diary" (the french duree all this "wear & time"), the time it / takes ...' - which Beaulieu adroitly renders as '''ce journal" (du Fran,ais journee toute cette usure du temps), Ie temps il faut ...' To pursue these readings is arduous and time-consuming, and as George Stanley writes upon receiving the translation of his 'January': To traverse from english to French & then traipse back to english, this eating away at sense, is the term required...