Cover not available
Article published In:
Heterolingualism in/and Translation
Edited by Reine Meylaerts
[Target 18:1] 2006
► pp. 17–47

Refraction and recognition

Literary multilingualism in translation

| University of Ottawa
Texts foregrounding different languages pose unusual challenges for translators and translation scholars alike. This article seeks to provide some insights into what happens to multilingual literature in translation. First, Antoine Berman’s writings on translation are used to reframe questions of semantic loss in terms of the ideological underpinnings of translation as a cultural practice. This leads to a wider consideration of contextual aspects involved in the “refraction” of foreign languages, such as the translating literature’s relative position in the “World Republic of Letters” (Casanova). Drawing on a Canadian case-study (Marie-Claire Blais in English translation), it is suggested that asymmetrical relations between dominating and dominated literatures need not be negative per se, but can lead to the recognition of minority writers.
Keywords: multilingualism and literature, translation, minorities in literature, French-Canadian Literature (1900–1999), Marie-Claire Blais, Ralph Manheim, Ray Ellenwood, Antoine Berman, Pierre Bourdieu, Pascale Casanova
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.What happens to multilingualism in translation?
    • 1.1Heterolingualism unbound
    • 1.2Textual matters: Erasing (exotic) differences
    • 1.3Contextual matters: Asymmetrical transfers, unequal exchanges
  • 2.Marie-Claire Blais in English
    • 2.1Literary translation, a Canadian institution
    • 2.2The debate over joual
    • 2.3Manheim’s domesticating translation
    • 2.4Ellenwood’s foreignizing translation
  • 3.Concluding remarks: Refraction or recognition?
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 December 2006
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18.1.03gru
References (78)
References
Baker, Mona, ed. 1998. Routledge encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhaïl M. 1981. The dialogic imagination: Four essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trs. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Berman, Antoine. 1985. “La traduction comme épreuve de l’étranger”. Texte 41. 67–81.Google Scholar
. 1999. La traduction et la lettre ou l’auberge du lointain. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
. 2004. “Translation and the trials of the foreign”. Venuti 2004 : 276–289.[Translation of Berman 1985.]Google Scholar
Biron, Michel. 2000. L’absence du maître: Saint-Denys Garneau, Ferron, Ducharme. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blais, Marie-Claire. 1973. Un joualonais, sa joualonie. Montréal-Ottawa: Éditions du Jour.Google Scholar
. 1974. St. Lawrence blues, tr. Ralph Manheim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
. 1978. Les nuits de l’Underground. Montréal: Alain Stanké.Google Scholar
. 1979. Nights in the underground: An exploration of love, tr. Ray Ellenwood. Toronto: General Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. “The genesis of the concepts of habitus and of field”, tr. Channa New¬man. Sociocriticism 21. 11–24.Google Scholar
. 1993. The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. [New York]: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field, tr. Susan Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1998. Practical reason: On the theory of action. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. 1965. Tres tristes tigres. Barcelona: Seix Barral.Google Scholar
. 1971. Three trapped tigers, trs. Donald Gardner and Suzanne Jill Levine, in collaboration with the author. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. 1999. La République mondiale des Lettres. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
. 2002. “Consécration et accumulation de capital littéraire. La traduction comme échange inégal”. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1441. 7–20.Google Scholar
. 2004. The world republic of letters, tr. M. B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Literature as a world”. New left review 311. 71–90.Google Scholar
Davies, Gillian. 1975. “Review of The wolf and St. Lawrence blues, by Marie-Claire Blais”. The fiddlehead 1041. 128–133.Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk and Rainier Grutman, eds. 2005. Fictionalising translation and multilingualism, special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia (New Series) 41.Google Scholar
Delisle, Jean. 1998. “Canadian tradition”. Baker 1998 : 356–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellenwood, Ray. 1983. “Some actualities of literary translation”. Camille R. La Bossiere, ed. Translation in Canadian literature. Ottawa, Ontario: University of Ottawa Press, 1983. 61–71.Google Scholar
. 1984. “Some notes on the politics of translation”. Atkinson review of Canadian studies 2:1. 25–28.Google Scholar
. 1995. “Translating Québécisme in Jacques Ferron’s Le ciel du Québec ”. Simon 1995 : 101–109.Google Scholar
Étiemble, René. 1964. Parlez-vous franglais? Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1978. Papers in historical poetics. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics.Google Scholar
. 1990a. “The position of translated literature within the literary polysystem”. Poetics today 11:1. 45–51.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990b. “Laws of literary interference”. Poetics today 11:1. 53–72.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischman, Sheila. 1975. “Joual book fails to translate well into English”. Montreal gazette 18 January. 51.Google Scholar
Frank, Armin Paul and Birgit Bödeker. 1991. “Trans-culturality and inter-culturality in French and German translations of T.S. Eliot’s The waste land ”. Harald Kittel and Armin Paul Frank, eds. Interculturality and the historical study of literary translations. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1991. 41–63.Google Scholar
Godard, Barbara. 1999. “Une littérature en devenir: la réécriture textuelle et le dynamisme du champ littéraire. Les écrivaines québécoises au Canada anglais”. Voix et images 24:3. 495–527.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Godbout, Jacques. 1988. “Politics, the Quebec novel, and translation”. David Homel and Sherry Simon, eds. Mapping literature: The art and politics of translation. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1988. 84–86.Google Scholar
. 1994. Le Réformiste: Textes tranquilles. Montréal: Boréal (1st ed. Montréal: Stanké, 1975).Google Scholar
Grutman, Rainier. 1993. “Mono vs stereo: Bilingualism’s double face”. Visible language 27:1–2. 206–227.Google Scholar
. 1996. “Langues étrangères et savoir romantique: considérations préliminaires”. TTR: Traduction-Terminologie-Rédaction 9:1. 71–90.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1997. Des langues qui résonnent: L’hétérolinguisme au XIXe siècle québécois. Montréal: Fides.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Multilingualism and translation”. Baker 1998 : 157–160.Google Scholar
. 2002. “Les motivations de l’hétérolinguisme: réalisme, composition, esthétique”. Furio Brugnolo and Vincenzo Orioles, eds. Eteroglossia e plurilinguismo letterario, vol. 2: Plurilinguismo e letteratura. Rome: Il Calamo, 2002. 291–312.Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1950. “The analysis of linguistic borrowing”. Language 261. 210–231.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hébert, Pierre. 1989. “Roch Carrier au Canada anglais”. Œuvres et critiques 14:1. 101–113.Google Scholar
Koster, Cees. 1997. “Treinen spotten. ‘Kut. Fuck. Klote. Shit’: het Engels in het Nederlands”. Filter 4:1. 40–46 (on-line at: [URL]).
Kundera, Milan. 1993. Les testaments trahis. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Kunz, Marco. 1993. “El final bilingüe de Juan sin Tierra de Juan Goytisolo”. Elvezio Canonica and Ernst Rudin, eds. Literatura y bilingüismo. Homenaje a Pere Ramírez. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1993. 241–252.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural citizenship. A liberal theory of minority rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lefevere, André. 1992. Translating literature: Practice and theory in a comparative literature framework. New York: MLA.Google Scholar
. 2004. “Mother Courage’s cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature”. Venuti 2004 : 239–255.Google Scholar
MacNeil, Tanya. 2003. “Hétérolinguisme/Heterolingualism”. Jean-Marie Grassin, ed. Dictionnaire international des termes littéraires/International dictionary of literary terms (on-line at [URL]).
Marshall, Joyce. 1991. “Found in translation”. Books in Canada 20:2. 30–32.Google Scholar
Meschonnic, Henri. 1999. Poétique du traduire. Lagrasse: Verdier.Google Scholar
Meylaerts, Reine. 2004. L’aventure flamande de la Revue belge: Langues, littératures et cultures dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Brussels-Frankfurt: Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes. Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Mezei, Kathy. 1994. “Translation as metonymy: Bridges and bilingualism”. Ellipse 511. 85–102.Google Scholar
. 1995. “Speaking white: Literary translation as a vehicle of assimilation in Quebec”. Simon 1995 : 133–148.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Dialogue and contemporary literary translation?” Denis Saint-Jacques, ed. Tendances actuelles en histoire littéraire canadienne. Québec: Nota bene, 2003. 107–129.Google Scholar
Moura, Jean-Marc. 1999. Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Oore, Irène and Oriel C.L. MacLennan. 1998. Marie-Claire Blais, an annotated bibliography. Toronto: ECW Press.Google Scholar
Rabassa, Gregory. 2005. If this be treason: Translation and its dyscontents. A memoir. New York: New Directions.Google Scholar
Rivard, Adjutor. 1914. “Les formes dialectales dans la littérature canadienne”. Premier Congrès de la langue française au Canada. Mémoires. Québec: Imprimerie de l’Action Sociale. 420–425.Google Scholar
Savard, Félix-Antoine. 1953. “L’écrivain canadien-français et la langue française”. Troisième Congrès de la langue française au Canada. Mémoires. Québec: Ferland, 1953. 268–276.Google Scholar
Schogt, Henry G.. 1986. “Pas lonely pantoute?”. Cécile Cloutier-Wojciechowska and Réjean Robidoux, eds. Solitude rompue. Hommage à David M. Hayne. Ottawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1986. 340–350.Google Scholar
. 1988. Linguistics, literary analysis, and literary translation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Simon, Sherry. 1992. “The Language of cultural difference: Figures of alterity in Canadian Translation”. Venuti 1992 : 159–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ed. 1995. Culture in transit: Translating the literature of Quebec. Montreal: Véhicule Press.Google Scholar
Stackelberg, Jürgen von. 1984. Übersetzungen aus zweiter Hand. Rezeptionsvorgänge in der europäischen Literatur vom 141. bis zum 181. Jh. Berlin: De Gruyter.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stratford, Philip. 1991. “Translation”. W.H. New, ed. Literary history of Canada. Canadian literature in English. 2nd ed. Vol. IV1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 97–107.Google Scholar
Sugars, Cynthia. 1996. “Prochain Épisode; or, charting canonical time”. Canadian review of comparative literature/Revue canadienne de littérature comparée 23:4. 1125–1143.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ullmann, Stephen. 1964. Style in the French novel. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence, ed. 1992. Rethinking translation: Discourse, subjectivity, ideology. New York-London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1995. The translator’s invisibility. A history of translation. New York-London: Routledge.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998a. “Strategies of translation”. Baker 1998 : 240–244.Google Scholar
. 1998b. “American tradition”. Baker 1998 : 305–316.Google Scholar
, ed. 2004. The Translation Studies reader. Second Edition. New York-London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Waddington, Miriam. 1974. “Chacun sa Blais”. Books in Canada 3:7. 3–5.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edmund. 1965. O Canada: An American’s notes on Canadian culture. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
. 1993. “Canada”. The sixties. The last journal, 1960–1972. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. 120–157.Google Scholar
Cited by (40)

Cited by 40 other publications

Lindqvist, Yvonne
2024. Tre nyanser av adekvans. Om grader av källbundenhet i spänningsfältet mellan det vernakulära och det kosmopolitiska i tre svenska översättningar. Språk och stil 33 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo
Bennett, Karen
2023. Translating knowledge in the multilingual paradigm: Beyond epistemicide. Social Science Information 62:4 ► pp. 514 ff. DOI logo
Deganutti, Marianna
2023. Selektivni code switching v Grmadi v pristanu Borisa Pahorja. Jezik in slovstvo 68:3 ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo
Bertacco, Simona
2022. Postcolonial Literatures and Translational Readings. Parallax 28:1 ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
Khoshsaligheh, Masood, Azadeh Eriss, Milad Mehdizadkhani & Elnaz Pakar
2022. Translation of multilingual films in Iran in Persian dubbing. International Journal of Multilingualism ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Domokos, Johanna & Marianna Deganutti
2021. Four major literary code-switching strategies in Hungarian literature. Decoding monolingualism. Hungarian Studies Yearbook 3:1 ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Grutman, Rainier
2021. Translation that dare not speak its name: Amara Lakhous as an ambivalent self-translator. The Translator 27:3 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Minutella, Vincenza
2021. Introduction. In (Re)Creating Language Identities in Animated Films, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Segnini, Elisa
2021. Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano and Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale: the afterlife of two ‘glocal’ series. The Translator 27:3 ► pp. 254 ff. DOI logo
Segnini, Elisa
2021. From Scampia to Rione Luzzatti: Marginality and its Language in the Age of Convergence. Comparative Critical Studies 18:1 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
Segnini, Elisa & Gigliola Sulis
2021. Local, Regional, and Transnational Identities in Translation: the Italian Case. The Translator 27:3 ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo
Attig, Remy
2020. Transnational Translation: Reflections on Translating from Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish. TTR 32:2 ► pp. 61 ff. DOI logo
Attig, Remy
2023. La traducción de lo queer del espanglish en contextos audivisuales. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 16:1 ► pp. 36 ff. DOI logo
Ceuppens, Jan
2020. Rückübersetzung: The Fates of Nico Rost’s Diary Goethe in Dachau. Dutch Crossing 44:2 ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
KLAUDY, KINGA & PÁL HELTAI
2020. RE-DOMESTICATION, REPATRIATION , AND ADDITIONAL DOMESTICATION, IN CULTURAL BACK-TRANSLATION. Across Languages and Cultures 21:1 ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Baldo, Michela
2019. Italian-Canadian Writing and Narratives of Translation as Return: The Italian Translations of Ricci’s Trilogy, Melfi’s Italy Revisited and Paci’s Italian Shoes. In Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return, ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
Baldo, Michela
2019. Introduction: Translation, Narratives and Returns. In Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Baldo, Michela
2019. Towards a Narrative Model of Code-Switching in Diasporic Writing. In Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return, ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Kershaw, Angela
2019. Layers of Translation: Multilingualism in War and Holocaust Fiction. In Translating War, ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Lorraine Cresci, Karen
2019. On Loss and Gain: The Translation of Linguistic Simultaneity in This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Díaz. TTR 31:2 ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Hansen, Julie
2018. Introduction: Translingualism and transculturality in Russian contexts of translation. Translation Studies 11:2 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Hansen, Julie
2022. Translating the translingual text. Translation and Interpreting Studies ► pp. 100 ff. DOI logo
Johnson, Penelope
2018. Border Writing in Translation: The Spanish Translations of Woman Hollering Creek by the Chicana Writer Sandra Cisneros. In The Palgrave Handbook of Literary Translation, ► pp. 427 ff. DOI logo
Munyard, Stephanie Faye
2018. Heterolingualism and the Holocaust: Translating the Ineffable in Hélène Berr’s Journal. Humanities 7:3 ► pp. 74 ff. DOI logo
Summers, Caroline
2017. Understanding Translated Authorship. In Examining Text and Authorship in Translation, ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Karas, Hilla
2016. Intralingual intertemporal translation as a relevant category in translation studies. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 28:3 ► pp. 445 ff. DOI logo
Karas, Hilla
2019. False equality in election advertisements. Journal of Language and Politics 18:1 ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Zabalbeascoa, Patrick & Montse Corrius
2014. How Spanish in an American film is rendered in translation: dubbingButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidin Spain. Perspectives 22:2 ► pp. 255 ff. DOI logo
Pas, Justine M.
2013. Language and belonging in the Polish translation of Eva Hoffman'sLost in Translation. Translation Studies 6:1 ► pp. 64 ff. DOI logo
Polezzi, Loredana
2012. Translation and migration. Translation Studies 5:3 ► pp. 345 ff. DOI logo
Polezzi, Loredana
2012. Migration and translation. In Handbook of Translation Studies [Handbook of Translation Studies, 3], ► pp. 102 ff. DOI logo
Boyden, Michael & Patrick Goethals
2011. Translating the Watcher’s Voice: Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao into Spanish. Meta 56:1 ► pp. 20 ff. DOI logo
Corrius, Montse & Patrick Zabalbeascoa
2011. Language variation in source texts and their translations. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 23:1 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Keuris, Marisa
2011. Fugard and the Recent Afrikaans Translations of His Plays: A Subversive Exercise?. Journal of Literary Studies 27:4 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Tong King
2009. Asymmetry in translating heterolingualism: a Singapore case study. Perspectives 17:1 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Tong King
2012. The Epistemological Dilemma of Translating Otherness. Meta 56:4 ► pp. 878 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Tong King
2013. Translating anglophobia. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 25:2 ► pp. 228 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Tong King
2022. Translation and Translanguaging in (Post)multilingual Societies. In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Tong-King
2011. The crisis of representation in translating bilingual texts: a social semiotic perspective. Perspectives 19:2 ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Boyden, Michael
2008. Is Translation Studies too much about translation?. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 20:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.