Translating Canada

Antonine Maillet in German: A Case Study

Antonine Maillet in German: A Case Study Klaus-Dieter Ertler University of Graz In 1979, the Paris publisher Grasset & Fasquelle brought out an Acadian novel that became instrumental in moving Acadian French / French Canadian literatures via various institutions from the periphery into the centre of attention of critics and the reading public.1 The book was entitled Pélagie-la-charrette, a rather strange title for French ears, and was written by Antonine Maillet, who had become the foremost Canadian representative of Acadian French writers with her earlier work La Sagouine (1971), the monologue of a seventy-two-year-old cleaning lady. All her subsequent novels had similar regional themes and were written in a style that, in its almost epic form, could be described as the literary version of orality. Maillet’s particular narrative form seemed to correspond to the requirements of Parisian literary specialists in the late 1970s. In 1977, her novel Les cordes-de-bois was nominated for the Goncourt Prize. Two years later Pélagie-la-charretteÀQDOO\ won the prize. Among the reasons why a francophone work not originating in France was selected to join the ranks of the winners of this prestigious prize are the highly innovative literary style of this particular work and, more importantly, the fact that Maillet had previously published literary criticism and theory that used François Rabelais and Mikhail Bakhtin to examine the particularities of Acadian French. Furthermore, 1979 was the 375th anniversary of the founding of the French settlement of Acadie, and this provided an additional reason for awarding the prize to Maillet. The Goncourt Prize always ensures international interest. In German-speaking countries, this particular award did not, however, garner much interest, nor did it lead to a German translation of the book. This lack of interest may have been due WRWKHGLIÀFXOW\RIWKHERRN·VODQJXDJHWKHVW\OHRIWKHZULWLQJRUWKHSURYLQFLDO theme. It is very likely that translators would have recognized the enormous GLIÀFXOWLHV LQYROYHG LQ WUDQVIHUULQJ WKH FRXQWOHVV $FDGLDQ UHJLRQDOLVPV DQG 1. This chapter was translated from German by Luise von Flotow. %! KLAUS-DIETER ERTLER expressions into German. Indeed, it took three years for the English translation to appear, after Philip Stratford, former professor of literature at the Université GH 0RQWUpDO XQGHUWRRN WKH ULVN\ SURMHFW DQG ÀQDOO\ SXEOLVKHG WKH ERRN LQ Garden City, New York, in 1982 as Pélagie. It required yet another combination RIDFDGHPLFDQGSXEOLVKLQJLQWHUHVWVIRUWKHÀUVW*HUPDQWUDQVODWLRQRI0DLOOHW·V book, which appeared in 2002 under the alienating title Mit der Hälfte des Herzens (“With Half a Heart”).2 ,QZKDWIROORZV,ÀUVWUHWUDFHWKHSDWKWKDWOHGWRWKH publication of the translation and then examine the German version. PERSUADING THE PUBLISHERS Since the middle of the 1990s, a number of interdisciplinary centres for Canadian Studies have been established at universities in German-speaking countries, giving rise to strong synergies and bringing into contact a series of different disciplines all focused on Canada. One such centre was set up at the Karl-Franzens-Universität in Graz, Austria, which, in collaboration with the university’s Institute for Translation Studies, developed a project to translate )UHQFK&DQDGLDQZRUNV7KHÀUVWSXEOLFDWLRQWKDWLWSURGXFHGZDVWKHFROOHFWLRQ of texts entitled Relations des Jésuites (Von Schwarzröcken und Hexenmeistern. Robes noires et sorciers: Jesuitenberichte aus Neu-Frankreich; Ertler 1997), a publication supported by Austrian government funding3 that appeared as a bilingual edition with the publishing house Reimer. The reception was notable but limited to academic circles and (literary) journals. As a second project, two Quebec novels, L’avalée des avalés by Réjean Ducharme and Les lettres chinoises by Ying Chen, were selected for translation into German, DQGWUDQVODWLRQVDPSOHVDVZHOODVMXVWLÀFDWLRQVIRUWKHSODQQHGSXEOLFDWLRQVZHUH sent off to the most likely German publishers. Simultaneously, an academic study entitled Kleine Geschichte des frankokanadischen Romans (“A Brief History of the French Canadian Novel”; Ertler 2000) and introductory academic articles (Ertler 2003) were published to sensitize the reading public to these works. The reception of these materials was rather ambivalent. While the “Brief History” was well received, publishers’ reactions to the two translation projects were far from enthusiastic. Their negative responses usually evoked the full publishing program, but now and then there was direct criticism of the texts, as the following excerpts show: 2. The German editor did not accept the translator’s proposal...