Les Belles Étrangères: Canadians in Paris

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE TRANSLATING THE (CANADIAN)OTHER It is first necessary to briefly consider the cultural, political, and economic forces that push English-Canadian authors towards French translators and publishers and to situate this practice in the context of more than two hundred years of Canadian translation history. Translation practice between English and French Canada will be reviewed in order to better evaluate the impact, from the perspective of the AnglophoneFrancophone socio-cultural, political dynamic, and to better understand the imperative, from the point of view of authors seeking greater recognition and commercial success, of the translation and publicationof English-Canadian literature inFrance. Inhis introduction toJeanDelisle's LaTraduction au Canada/Translation in Canada, Jean-François Joly notes that the history of Canadiantranslation is closely linked to that of the nation. He states, The history of translation is closely linked to the history of the country: our profession has played a more important role in Canada than in most other countries in the 450 years covered by Dr. Delisle's investigations and it still does today.(12) From Jacques Cartier's Iroquois-French lexicon to contemporary multilingual texts, translations have been the tool of the conqueror and of the conquered as well as of the cultural bridge builder. The "founding nations," asthe twoEuropeanpowers were erroneously labelled (hencethe contemporary term "First Nations" to identify the actualfirst inhabitants), were separated by religion and legal and cultural practices, but language was always, and remains today, at the forefront of political debate. Similarly, language remains a distinctive feature of multiculturalism. Far more than a literary practice then, translation, in the Canadian context, can be seen as a reflection, if not an instrument, of prevalent social forces. Translation scholar Edwin Gentzler cites the Canadian case as an ideal example of these connections: 5 The complicated questionofCanadian identity —problemsofcolonialism, bilingualism, nationalism, cultural heritage, weak literary system, and gender issues are involved —seems to provide a useful platform from which to begin raising questions about current translation theory. (Gentzler 184) Similarly, British scholar Susan Bassnett distinguishes a "Canadian School" that considers "translation as a conceptual activity, as rupture and creation implicating relations of power" (Bassnett157). In the introduction to Translation, Power, Subversion, RománAlvarez and M. Carmen-África Vidal discuss the importance of translation as a political act: the Other4 is depicted according to certain strategies determined by the target culture, which reflect attitudes toward the source culture. They claim, Contemporary translationsare aware of the need to examine in depth the relationship betweenthe production of knowledge in a givenculture and its transmission, relocation, and reinterpretation in the target culture. This obviously has to do with the productionand ostentation ofpower and with the strategies used by this power to represent the other.(2) As noted above, this association between translation and power is particularly important in the Canadian context. Attitudes towards translation differ in the two major linguistic communities: translation into English has frequently symbolized colonization for French Canada. While English-speaking authorities immediately identified the need to translate in order to maintain and communicate their power (Sir Guy Carleton hired translator François-Joseph Cugnet in 1768), French Canada saw its language and culture relegated to the status of the Other, more often a target than a source text.Sherry Simon's Letrafic deslangues considers the presence ofEnglish and the role of translation in the ongoing political and cultural power struggle. She notes, Le dialogue des langues issu du colonialisme donne à la traduction un pouvoir symbolique considérable.Dans ce contexte, le rapportentre les langues « fortes » et les langues « assujetties » commandedes formes de transmission linguistique qui sontaussides opérations de subordination. La traductionest le lieu où se construitdans la violence, le sujet colonial. (23) English-Canadian authors' reliance on Parisian translators must be situated in the larger context of these cultural, linguistic, and political 6 ¡ Les BellesEtrangères:Canadians in Paris Translating the (Canadian) Other |77 power struggles. In Impossible Nation: Tlie Longing for a Homeland in Canada and Quebec, Ray Conlogue, former Quebec arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail, laments English-Canadians' antipathy towards Quebec and their "failure to build a bicultural country" (8-9). He carries on a long tradition of associating translation practice with questions of national, political, and cultural identity, harmony, and understanding. For example, he quotes P.J.O. Chauveau, Quebec's first prime minister, who, in a nineteenth-century essay, compared the strange, oblique glance of the Other from...