Traductions/Translations

The context in which I put the final touches on this year’s column offers a forceful reminder of how the perception of the value of literary translation and intercultural exchange is affected by the general social and political climate. In Paris, at a conference on the international translations of Gabrielle Roy’s Bonheur d’occasion and Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, I listened to scholars from a dozen countries talk about how these books, set in post-Depression, wartime Montreal, had reached hundreds of thousands of readers throughout the world. In a European community committed to enhancing transnational dialogue, the study of literary translation itself has taken on fresh significance. The focus on the international journeys of two Canadian/Quebec works offered a welcome opportunity to explore some of the complexities of international exchange. Papers spoke to the historic and contemporary relevance of these two Canadian and Quebec books and the themes they explore: poverty, war, gender and linguistic inequalities, and intra-national and international conflict. Read in different contexts, the novels’ characters took on unexpected auras. Often perceived in Quebec criticism as a weaker character in comparison to the ambitious Jean Lévesque, Emmanuel Létourneau was cited as the archetype of a working-class hero, and Florentine Lacasse a dynamic model of proletarian revolt. Held at a time when intercultural tensions are increasing in a number of member states, the conference tapped into a new sense of urgency for examining the still unexploited potential of translation to encourage dialogue and exchange.

Back at home, however, culture and intercultural exchange themselves seemed under attack. The minority Conservative government’s pre-election decision to make drastic cuts to cultural budgets defied economic sense, given the important financial return and employment impact of cultural activities, but appeared to target a feeling in certain parts of the Canadian public that cultural activity is somehow subsidiary and unworthy of taxpayer’s support. The argument echoes that used by opponents to official language legislation in the late 1960s, that bilingualism and support for linguistic minorities was simply too expensive for the public purse. Not surprisingly, the Harper government’s anti-cultural stance has been aligned with attempts to reduce public support for linguistic minorities, or to withhold funding long enough to damage the precarious ecology of the volunteer and professional networks and associations, and the public agencies and programs that contribute to creating a climate propitious for the promotion of Canada’s linguistic duality.

Most of the translations of Bonheur d’occasion and Two Solitudes appeared in the few years following publication of the novels in 1945, in the short period propitious for peace and cultural exchange after the Second World War. Both books continued to be translated, although much less frequently, well into the 1980s and 1990s, but there were long periods when Communist censorship, the Cold War, or colonial politics discouraged translation. The ever-present threat of silence underlines how essential it is to protect and nourish an open space for cultural exchange, and how fundamental the role of translation is in enriching dialogue.

The example of Bonheur d’occasion and Two Solitudes also raises another important point. Ironically, given the iconical status both books would achieve in Canada, neither was translated here. The first English-language translation of Bonheur d’occasion was done by an American, Hannah Josephson, for a New York publishing house. The French translation of Two Solitudes, by the young Montrealer Louise Gareau Des Bois, came out in Paris, eighteen years after the original. The destiny of both originals also reveals the precariousness of the publishing milieu in both English- and French-speaking Canada at the time. MacLennan published his book in New York. After the financial difficulties of her first Montreal publisher, Roy’s primary French-language publisher became the Parisian house, Flammarion. Undoubtedly, the Paris–New York connection helped both books reach readers in other countries. However, the enormous cultural significance both novels were to achieve in Canada is due to the sustained increase in public and private commitment, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, to developing our own francophone and anglophone literary...