Translations

TRANSLATIONS 93 Lepage, Robert, and Ex Machina. Seven Streams of the River Ota. Methuen. 148. $16·95 Lill, Wendy. The Glace Bay Miners' Museum. 1995. Goose Lane. $12.95 Melfi, Mary. Sex Therapy. Guernica. 118. $12.00 Melski, Michael. Blood on Steel. University College of Cape Breton. 122. $12.95 MightOfl, John. The Little Years. Playwrights Canada. 72. $11.95 O'Brien, Michael. Mad Boy Chronicle. Playwrights Canada. 154. $11.95 Panych, Morris. The Vigil. Talonbooks. 78. $13.95 Quan, Betty. Mother Tongue. Scirocco. 48. $10.95 Rubess, BaI).uta. Head in a Bag. Exile. 128. $14.95 - Smoke Damage. Exile. 96. $14.95 Russell-King, Caroline. From. Here to Insanity. Self-published. 56. $9.95 Shennan, Jason. The League of Nathans. Scirocco. 86. $12.95 Stars in the Sky Morning: Collective Plays of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ed Helen Peters. Killick. 532 . $24.95 Tana, Paul, and BrW10 Ramirez. Sarassine. Trans Robert Gray. Guernica. 168. $15.00 . Tremblay, Larry. Dragonfly of Chicoutimi. Les Herbes Rouges. 66. $12.95 Tremblay, Michel. Marcel Pursued by the Hounds. Trans John Van Burek and Bill Glassco. Talonbooks. 80. $13.95 Vanderhaeghe, Guy. Dancock's Dance. Blizzard. 72 . $19.95 Wagner, Colleen. The Monument. Playwrights Canada. 88. $11.95 Wilson, Sheri-D. Girl's Guide to Giving Head. Arsenal Pulp. 166. $14.95 Translations JANE KOUSTAS In his recent book, Impossible Nation: The Longingjor Homeland in Canada and Quebec (Mercury Press, 1996) [reviewed below by Ramsay Cook, 134-36], Ray Conlogue, Quebec arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail, laments English Canadians' lantipathy' towards Quebec and their 'failure to build a bicultural country.' It is not within the compass of this article to discuss his views on nationalism. However, Conloguels apparent disregard of the contribution of translation deserves comment. When he states without references, that 'when Quebec writers are translated, the style of French rhetoric is off-putting to English readers' and claims that 'Elsewhere in Canada, Quebec is represented as little more than an abstraction which occasionally becomes an annoyance/ he indicates that he has missed an important point: Quebec culture exists in English Canada thanks to translation. While it may not render the 'impossible' possible, the large collection of Quebec literature in translation does illustrate that the hvo cultural-linguistic groups are notl as Conlogue claims, '[living] our real lives, unglimpsed by the other.' Indeed his failure to acknowledge the filter 94 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 of translation in his own text signals a misrepresentation of an important issue and perhaps of the entire problem. Conlogue routinely quotes the English version of texts written in French, giving the impression that the original was in English. Furthennore, he provides nowhere, neither in the notes nor in the incomplete bibliography, the title or translator of the English edition cited. One is amazed to discover, for example, that both Marcel Rioux and Michel Brunet wrote their landmark books Les Quebecois and Le Quebec ala minute de verite in English and that Louis-Frechette wrote a bilingual edition of La legende d'un peuple. It is perhaps not surprising that a Quebec arts correspondent who is so unaware of the value and contribution of translation views the future of the nation with such pessimism. It is in the face ofsuch misrepresentation ofthe importance of French to English translation that this article will discuss recent contributions and consider the'glimpses' into Quebec culture they provide. Lawrence Venuti notes: Translation ... is a constant forward movement of approach to another cultural space. A constant movement, because real knowledge of the other culture is never achieved, be it at the linguistic or semiotic level. And a forward movement , because it implies a goal, the consecution of sufficient data of an ideal, abstract space which is linked with the progressive advance of the civilizational frontier. (Translation, Subversion and Power) While complete knowledge of the other culture may be impossible, translation does contribute, as Venuti suggests, to the construction of an abstract space or a representation of the Other, be it only a 'glimpse.' As Andre Lefevre points out in the same volume, there may be distortion in that 'the image may be rather different from the reality in question.' But in the...