Publications

Publication details [#14492]

Leclerc, Catherine. 2005. Between French and English, between ethnography and assimilation: strategies for translating Moncton’s Acadian vernacular. In Simon, Sherry, ed. Traduction engagée [Translation and social activism]. Special issue of Traduction Terminologie Rédaction (TTR) 18 (2): 161–192.
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
English

Abstract

Chiac, the hybrid vernacular spoken by Acadians in the Moncton region, is increasingly used in works of fiction. By placing it on a par with French, Acadian novelists attempt to legitimize it as the language of a modern and urban Acadia. Their task is a difficult one, to which they respond with ambivalence: Chiac inscribes a difference which marginalizes them, whereas its absence amounts to a disappearance into the French norm. As a consequence, writers using Chiac face the challenge of making room for hybridity without dissociating themselves form their francophone identity. In their encounter with Chiac, translators of Acadian literature into English face a challenge of their own. Both multilingualism and vernacular languages have been deemed untranslatable, and Chiac happens to be at once multilingual and a vernacular. The dilemma faced by these translators is hence not too far form the dilemma of writers of Chiac: how much difference should they erase, how much should they insist on it at the risk of confirming stereotypes? How can they assist and pursue attempts at legitimization? How can they avoid assimilation into English on the one hand, and ethnography on the other? This article investigates the strategies brought into lay by two translators who have tackled Chiac and its ambivalent use by Acadian novelists: Robert Majzels, translator of France Daigle, and Jo-Anne Elder, translator of Gérald Leblanc.
Source : Abstract in journal