Nancy Huston Translating the Unreadable in Trois fois Septembre and Plainsong

ABSTRACT

Despite claims that translating her writing is “épouvantable,” Franco-Canadian author Nancy Huston produces more self-translations than nearly any other writer today. Critics have studied the uniqueness of her bilingual oeuvre, often focusing on themes of gender, exile, and globalization. The present essay considers translation as an organizing principle in two novels from the period in which Huston first began composing in English: Trois fois septembre (never published in English) and Plainsong (Cantique des plaines in French). Both novels center on the diary of a deceased character interpreted for the reader by a protagonist. I argue the relationship between the novels and these diaries can be understood as analogous to that between original and translation. The diary, like an original text, inspires and shapes the narrative while remaining inaccessible for the novel’s reader. Huston thus effectively blurs the border between translating a story and translation as story.

Keywords:

• Nancy Huston
• diary
• self-translation
• pseudo-translation
• translation
• Trois fois septembre
• Plainsong
• Cantique des plaines

Notes

1 Her three most recent novels—Le Club des miracles relatifs, Lèvres de pierre, and Rien d’autre que cette félicité—have not yet been published in English.

2 The metacommentaries on translation occur on the following pages. In parentheses I have indicated a keyword indicating the word or expression in question: 24 (interpret), 32 (misspelling), 39 (nutmeg), 42 (raunchy), 44 (floor), 78 (jews-harp), 80 (love lost), 94 (cup runneth over), 111 (break a leg), 118 (whippoorwill), 120 (leaf leaves), 138 (WASP), 140 (pound the pavements), 144 (psychiatrist), 145 (grunts), 165 (my rifle swung low), 167 (dildos), 176 (thunderstruck), 188 (French intrusion), 201 (hair), 202 (facts of life).

3 My use of “invisible translation” refers to the notion as defined by Lawrence Venuti, notably in his book The Translator’s Invisibility. He argues that what we prize above all else in translation is a notion of fluency, or an illusion of transparency, in which all traces of alterity or foreignness are erased with the ultimate goal of the translator being effectively invisible. He advocates for bringing translators out of the shadows and appreciating the foreignness of the texts in order to have a more authentic, if not ethical, engagement with them. Selena’s translations are not exactly visible, but her presence as a figure is.

4 Huston, in an epistolary text she co-wrote with Leïla Sebbar, Lettres parisiennes : Histoires d’exil, reveals affection for her accent and the distance it provides her: “mais mon accent, au fond, j’y tiens. Il traduit la friction entre moi-même et la société qui m’entoure, et cette friction m’est plus que précieuse, indispensable” (15).

5 Among translation theorists there is some agreement with Huston’s claim that self-translation constitutes rewriting. Notably on this side are André Lefevere and Susan Bassnet, who makes this case in her chapter “The Self-translator as Rewriter” in Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture, where she outlines the ways that the freedom afforded to self-translators allows them to transform their voice in the new language.

6 For more on this see Frank Davey’s chapter “Big, Bad, and Little Known: The Anglophone Canadian Nancy Huston” in Marta Dvořák and Jane Koustas’ Vision/Division.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trask Roberts

Trask Roberts is a PhD candidate in the department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting scholar at the Université Paris Diderot. His research focuses on twentieth-century French literature and translation theory.