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328 LETTERS IN CANADA 1997 - The Queen ofQueen Street. Nuage. 96. $12.95 James, JoAnne. Three Quest Plays for Children. Red Deer. 128. $12.95 Lynde, Denise, ed. Voices from the Landwash. Playwrights Canada. 418. $29.95 MacDougall, Lee. High Life Scirocco. 96. $12.95 Maclvor, Daniel. The Soldier Dreams. Scirocco. 56. $12.95 Madvor, Daniel, with Daniel Brooks. Here Lies He11ry.Playwrights Canada. 1996.56. $12.95 MacLeod, Joan. 2000. Talon. 128. $13.95 Moodie, Andrew. Riot. Scirocco. g6. $12.95 O'Neill, Chris, and Ken Schwartz. Westray: The Long Way Home. Blizzard. 64. $10.95 Packer, Miriam. Piece Work. Guernica. 138. $12.00 Ross, Ian. FareWei Scirocco. 96. $12.95 Sears, Djanet Harlem Duet. Scirocco. 118. $12.95 Shamas, Sandra. Sa11dra Shamas: A Trilogy ofPerformances. Mercury. 154.$17.95 Sherman, Jason. None Is Too Many. Canadian Theatre Review 93 - Reading Hebron. Playwrights Canada. 1996. 110. $12.95 - Tlu Retreat. Playwrights Canada. 1gg6. 118. $12.95 Thompson, Judith. Sled. Playwrights Canada. 132. $12.95 Van Fossen, Rachel, and Darryl Wildcat. Ka'nza'mo'pi cikmze Gathering. Canadian Tlteatre Review go Varma, Rahul. Counter Offence. Playwrights Canada. 104. $12.95 Verdecchia, Guillermo. The Terrible but Incomplete Jotlrnals offohn D.Canadian Theatre Review 92 Verdecchia, Guillermo, and Marcus Youssef. A Li11e in the Sand. Talon. 128.$13.95 Walker, George F. Suburban Motel. Talon. 320. $14.95 Translations JANE KOUSTAS In a highly informative and carefully written article on translation in the latest edition of the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, John O'Connor outlines the history of translation in Canada and signals its important and vital contribution to Canadian letters. He discusses not only the quality and quantity of books translated, underlining high and low points, but the development of translation scholarship in this country. Throughout his article, which traces the history of French to English translation from the publication of the first translation of Les Anciens Canadiens, O'Connor emphasizes the numerous challenges faced by the Canadian translation community. Political and financial pressure, for example, has very much shaped translation practice in Canada. Thus, while it is very much a scholarly tribute to translators and their work, 0'Connor's article concludes with a lament about the lack of institutional and financial support that has led to the near-demise of publishers such as Coach House. TRANSLATIONS 329 In addition to the difficulty of finding adequate financial support and appropriate, willing publishers, translators must tackle the challenge of demanding and complex texts. As the 1997 selection of texts indicates, today's translators confront French-language literature diverse in both form. and content that demands a sophisticated understanding of the language and the culture which produced the texts. From the almost book-length run-on sentence which forms Marie-Claire Blais's Soifs to Claire De's amputated prose in 1953: Chronique d'une naissance annoncee, literature and scholarly works in French pose translation problems as unique as the books themselves. It no longer suffices to translate from a sentimental attachment for French Canada as did W.H. Blake, translator of Maria Chapdelaine: contemporary Quebec writing is international literature for a world audience. A benevolent effort to 'approach Quebec with a tolerant and unbigoted mind' as Blake wrote in 1915, is not enough, especially since, in most cases, the Quebec context is entirely absent. Indeed, intertextuality, r·ooted in world literature in both form and content, shapes several of the. novels discussed below. By referring to Baudelaire, Kafka, Goldberg, and others, authors rely on their readers' awareness of these influences. Can the translator, who addresses a different public, do likewise? Furthermore, the use of intertexuality is only one of numerous literary devices the translator confronts. Several recent novels are complex explorations of the writing process and involve, for example, frequent changes in narrative voice and verb tense, throwing into disarray the conventional markers found in traditional storytelling. Intertexuality may be combined with intratexuality in a self-reflective novel in which the writing of the novel and the writer become the subject of the text. The translator must preserve this deliberate conflation without losing the English-language reader entirely. Thus, while early translators can be lauded for their ground-breaking efforts...

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