Returns on Translation: Valuing Quebec Culture

Abstract

Examining two recent events in Quebec history (the 2013–14 debate on the Charter of Values proposed by the Parti québécois, and Xavier Dolan's own subtitling of his award-winning 2104 film Mommy), this essay argues for translation as a key to exploring cultural and political history. Translation is an index of values: revealing what is valued and how, exposing the returns which particularisms can diminish or increase. Madame de Staël's 1816 essay “de l'esprit des traductions,” perhaps the first to ask these questions in the context of the circulation of wealth, provides a link between value and values through translation.

Keywords:

• Xavier Dolan
• Charter of Values
• Mommy
• Madame de Staël

Notes

1. The essay begins: “Il n'y a pas de plus éminent service à rendre à la littérature, que de transporter d'une langue à l'autre les chefs d’œuvre de l'esprit.” But de Staël immediately launches into her critique of the French manner: “Ces beautés naturalisées donnent au style national des tournures nouvelles, et des expressions plus originales. Les traductions des poètes étrangers peuvent, plus efficacement que tout autre moyen, préserver la littérature d'un pays de ces tournures banales qui sont les signes les plus certains de sa décadence. Mais pour tirer de ce travail un véritable avantage, il ne faut pas, comme les Français, donner sa propre couleur à tout ce qu'on traduit; quand même on devrait par là changer en or tout ce que l'on touche, il n'est résulterait pas moins que l'on ne pourrait pas s'en nourrir; on n'y trouverait pas des aliments nouveaux pour sa pensée, et l'on reverrait toujours le même visage avec des parures à peine différentes.”

2. A strong sense of the disparities induced and revealed by translation pervades Quebec cultural history. Any discussion related to translation is framed by the concern for the survival of the French language in North America. Translation was for a long time perceived as a threat to the integrity of the language, hasty and derivative acts of translation seen as vehicles leading to the anglicization of French. (Pierre Daviault was the most influential spokesman for this view). It was only with the cultural renewal of the 1960s, when the Quebec government began to intervene aggressively in matters of language, and especially with the Charter of the French Language in 1977, that translation received new valorization under the title of “francization.” With French declared the official language of work, businesses were required to produce large amounts of documentation and terminology in French. During the 1970s and 1980s, under the auspices of the Office de la langue française (the Quebec government agency overseeing questions of language) and in collaboration with the universities, terminology became an important area of specialization. Literary translation into French was neglected, relatively speaking, during this period of cultural emergence (1960–1980), emphasis being placed on the growth of autonomous Quebec literary and publishing institutions. Only in the area of the theatre was translation practiced extensively, although much of this translation was in fact adaptation, masking the “foreign” origin of the works, and contributing to the emergence of a new, heavily "Quebecicized" theatrical language (Brisset and Ladouceur). During the late 1970s and 1980s, a strong movement of feminist experimental writing in Quebec stimulated the desire to promote—and to theorize—activities of literary mediation, and made feminist translators active players on the literary and cultural field. As a new variation in the dialogue between Quebec and English Canada, feminist translation reactivated the political concerns of this cultural exchange. But it transformed them as well, stimulating innovative creative practices and opening up new territories of border writing (See Godbout, Merkle, Mezei et al.)

3. See Lawrence Venuti's concerns about the use of the term “untranslatable” in relation to the work of Emily Apter and Barbara Cassin (2015). Venuti feels that Translation Studies will lose a great deal by engaging with the term, while Apter considers that Comparative Literature gains in its dispute with World Literature by invoking a resistance to easy circulation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sherry Simon

Sherry Simon is a professor in the French Department at Concordia University.  She has published widely in the areas of literary, intercultural and translation studies, most recently exploring the cultural history of linguistically divided cities. Among her publications are Translating Montreal. Episodes in the Life of a Divided City (McGill-Queen's U P, 2006) and Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory (McGill-Queen's U P, 2012), both of which have appeared in French translation.  She has edited or co-edited numerous volumes, including Translation Effects: The Shaping of Modern Canadian Culture (with K. Mezei and L. von Flotow) (McGill-Queen's U P, 2014). She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Académie des lettres du Québec.