Les Belles Étrangères: Canadians in Paris

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO FROM CANADA WITH LIT.: EIGHT POSTCARDS Mavis Gallant, Nancy Huston, Roberston Davies, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alistair MacLeod As Cronin suggests, the postcard provides an interesting metaphor for translation. In addition to obscuring any obstacles encountered during the journey, the postcard usually presents a very limited and frequently stereotypical glance of a foreign land. Like literature in translation, it offers the target culture a snapshot version, or very narrow glimpse, of another culture. Similarly, like postcards that sometimes produce an artsy, artificial, and hence somewhat distorted picture (sunset doctored by colour, fisheye lens view, posed shots), translations may propose, either because of their conception by translators unfamiliar with the source culture or through a reading that, while conforming to the horizon of expectations of the target culture, contorts the text, a somewhat inaccurate picture. Eight contemporary authors —Mavis Gallant, Nancy Huston, Robertson Davies, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Alistair MacLeod—offer very different perspectives from which to study response to translation. Furthermore, the authors are representative of major trends in this context. Canadian born and Paris based, Gallant and Huston approach writing for and about the Other from seemingly diametricallyopposed standpoints, thus providing very different standpoints from which to consider the French appreciation ofCanadian writing. Recognizedas a trailblazer for Canadian writers abroad and as one of its most successful ambassadors, Robertson Davies paved the way for writers such as Carol Shields and earned a place for CanLit on the French literary scene. Shields was a participant in the Belles Étrangères festival, and her talent was compared to that of Davies. Furthermore, like Jane Urquhart, she brought the French reading public, particularly women, a different type of fiction, identified by her publisher as women's and "healing'' writing with a focus on the family. A detailed study of Shields' work in translation provides the opportunity to identify translation strategies typical of French continental translation practice. Margaret Atwood's tremendous and long-standing success in France, as well as her place among "les grandes dames" (Atwood,Munro, 41 42 I Les Belles Étrangères: Canadians in Paris Laurence), make her of particular interest. Also, Atwood represents market-savvy, well-represented, and hence well-connected writers such as Timothy Findley, whose active participation on the French literary scene earned them a particular status. Active and aggressive agents, regular engagements, and excellent publicity keep them in the eye of the French public. Like that of Neil Bissoondath, M. G. Vassanji, Shyam Selvadurai, or Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje's ethnic, immigrant, new world, or post-colonial perspective continues to interest French readers. The decidedly more regionally based work of Alistair MacLeod, like that of David Adams Richards, Jack Hodgins and others, appeals to readers looking for landscape. The translation of Ann-Marie MacDonald's widely successful first novel provides valuable insight into the challenges posed by translation and cultural transfer. Thus, while the present chapter by no means purports to be exhaustive, it does provide, through the studyof eight contemporary authors whose translation experiencein Francevaries widely, different and largely representative perspectives from which to consider the complex position(ing) of the translator, translated literature, and CanLit in France.31 The value of these writers as symbolic capital, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu,willnot be explored, as to do sowould involve charting the activities of all of the agents involved in cultural production in both source and target culture. It would also necessitate analysing the strategies of all players, including the writers, as they vie, unconsciously or not, for a choiceposition on the playing field ofculturalproduction.32 As instructive assuch astudy could be,itwould constitute asignificant detour from the central purpose here, which is the consideration of translation as a condition of, and response to, the horizon of expectations of a defined interpretive community. While it is recognized, as Bourdieu claims, that reputations are not forcibly the result of any intrinsic greatness33 but instead the product ofentire sets ofrelationships among producers, artists, critics, and so forth, the present focus is on the position of the Canadian writer vis-à-vis the horizon of expectations of the French interpretive community. Therefore, this study concentrates on the critical reception of these works. While it is recognized that reviewers are not necessarily representative of the entire readership, it is evident that prestigious publications such as LeMonde, Figaro, and LeNouvel Observateur, and their critics, Nicole Zand, Christine Jordis, and Frédéric Vitoux, for example, play an important...