Translating Beyond Frontiers

Louis Jolicoeur Université Laval, Quebec, Canada

The periphery Periphery does not mean sub-culture. Rather, it is a position from where one can look at the center, perhaps intervene in it, but always from a distance. A distance that reflects the dynamism of a potential center as well as the possibility of reaching towards other peripheries. A distance that also creates the perspective one needs to think, to view and eventually to reproduce an object. Periphery is thus a geographical concept, but as well a literary one, the act of translating being in fact a process peripheral to that of writing. Since I live on the periphery, it is as someone from the periphery that I would like to say a few words about translation and literature. Is Canada, and Quebec especially, really on the periphery? No doubt it is. Geographically, socially, culturally and even historically, it lies on the periphery of the Western World, in particular of the giant to the South which, while itself made up of many peripheries, possesses nonetheless the mass and the force of what can only be described as a center, if not the center. This being said, one should be happy to be on the heterogeneous periphery, because a better perspective is often achieved from afar and because there, one more easily finds a vital force that is too often absent at the center. And it is this force, this potential for struggle and creation, that makes for interesting parallels between one peripheral place and another, beyond exoticism, apparent differences and voyeurism, even beyond the arrogance that often accompanies such misunderstanding glances at others. The understanding glance, the interesting parallels I have just mentioned, can be achieved by no better means than translation. To translate another, to attempt to bring to light elements from beyond borders that never fail to move us in some way, to seek to know and to make known the shapes from peripheral places that mould our being, all this constitutes a wonderful challenge. And knowing also means getting to know, with all this entails in exploration, discovery, and identification, and with all it brings in the sense of the respect and gratitude we� feel toward another, who holds up a mirror that may dazzle us in its glare, or enable us to see ourselves. Text and context Arms outstretched, eyes that meet, a sudden captivation, the desire to know all the worlds around us : the impulses are there. One way or another, they must take shape in reality. And translation,

2

particularly the translation that goes into anthologies of short stories, is a very good way (certainly not the only way, people meeting people is another) of realizing this goal. In fact, apart from the image they offer to the attentive reader, the stories created by different authors occasionally achieve unexpected stature in such anthologies : a question of chance, in part, but also of ontological convergence, for they turn into parallel worlds winking at one another across the distance even as they weave their own webs, calling at and upon one another, picking up threads another has laid down and exploring regions elsewhere sketched. But any attempt to bridge gaps, or to find where cultures meet or may heed each other's call must be preceded by a look at the context in which they are developing. The moment we do this, we easily see just how and why ties are so naturally created, in spite of geographical differences. The striking fact is that certain social and literary referents are fundamental to literature from all horizons and must be taken into account when compiling and translating an anthology. Each time I have worked on selecting and translating contemporary stories, whether the authors were from Argentina, Mexico, Canada or Ireland, I have noticed that the themes are generally similar. With respect to social context, they include urban life, solitude, derision, violence, the struggle to survive, the crisis in values, the despondency of youth, unemployment, nationalism, identity, liberalism, and the new world order (which, more and more, gives everyone the impression of being on the periphery of some indefinable center). With respect to literary context, they include active art (the reader's involvement in the text and dialogue with the author, akin to the listener's participation in a musical work or the role played by the observer while consenting to be seduced by a work of art), psychoanalysis, deliberate ambiguity, the apparent absence of the author, minimalism (from the microcosm to the universal), and lastly, an element that commands attention, the strong influence of Latin American literature in today's fiction (particularly in the short story). This last element brings me to an important point. It is not easy to conceive of contemporary literature without considering the masters of Latin America and the very specific problems they pose for translators, among others. Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, Juan Carlos Onetti, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa, to name a few, are among these masters, and, while most of them have emerged from the hotbeds of imagery and ideas constituted by Latin America's large urban centers (Mexico, Buenos Aires, and others), they remain fundamentally on the periphery (they are published in Barcelona, look toward Paris or New York, and have been subject to the new world order since long before the expression was coined). Their view from the periphery has led them to create, among other things, a way of relating to reality that we must absolutely seek to understand if we hope to translate their works

3

and bring them into relation with their contemporaries in the rest of the world. I spoke at the outset of a geographical, social, cultural and historical periphery; there is another. It is a periphery of reality, developed to a great extent by Latin American authors — who have brought places the world over under its sway — a special manner of living daily life by transcending things palpable, not for fear of apprehending the world, but in order to act, through poetic means, on things themselves. The fantastic, in this context, is meant not solely to sharpen the imagination,just as the ambiguous serves not merely to confuse. Play is important, of course, but the alteration of reality has another purpose : it offers a new means of integration with reality and, beyond that, a new reality altogether. Here, dreaming serves, not only to dream, but to struggle against chaos ("dreaming is living", according to Onetti); here, there is not absence to keep from seeing, but rather, there are hollows scraped from reality, to face the anguish of emptiness and create a space for dialogue. These traits have all contributed greatly to defining art today — literature included, of course — and to giving ambiguity, in particular, an indispensable role in the play between author and text, and between author and reader-translator. Who to translate If it is important to gain a good sense of the social and literary context nourishing a given literature, it is essential to choose with care the authors represented in an anthology that seeks to highlight the major trends in a given society. In the case of Latin America, for example, the authors I mentioned earlier — most of them, instigators of a radically new literary attitude — are of obvious interest, but almost all of their works have been translated already. And it is particularly interesting, in the context of the approach I have been presenting, to see how the masters have influenced the novices, and especially to see how the latter now speak a similar language at points spread over the globe. In this perspective, I feel that anthologies should bring to light representative writers who are little known outside their own countries. Thus, in the case of Mexico, in preference to Fuentes, Paz, Revueltas or Rulfo, I chose such authors as Guillermo Samperio, Hernán Lara, Jesús Gardea, Silvia Molina and Bernardo Ruiz. In Argentina, there were works, not by Borges, Cortázar, Bioy Casares, and Sábato, but by Kociancich, Piglia, Manauta and Orgambide, and by authors younger still, such as Juan Forn and Rodrigo Fresán, that demanded to be translated and distributed outside the country. By the same token, in Quebec, there are works, not only by Anne Hébert, Yves Thériault, Marie-Claire Blais, Michel Tremblay, Réjean Ducharme and Jacques Ferron, but also by Monique Proulx, Gilles Pellerin, Bertrand Bergeron, Marie José Thériault, Diane-Monique Daviau and André Major that must be offered to the rest of the world. And, in the case of Ireland, while works by Joyce, Beckett,

4

Wilde, Shaw, Yeats and so many others remain essential reading, it is now such authors as John Banville, Clare Boylan, Evelyn Conlon, Desmond Hogan, Aidan Mathews, John McKenna, Harriet O'Carroll, Niall Quinn and Frank Ronan who are deserving of attention (these, at least, are the authors we have chosen for an anthology published a few years ago by the Éditions de I'Instant même in Quebec, entitled Nouvelles d'Irlande). Effect and ambiguity Translation, when seen as the final act in the play with mirrors that is the essence of literature, is much more than a tool for discovering others. In its own way, it constitutes a periphery, for it must draw near, not collide; explore, not lay bare; touch, not alter. It is born of an attraction that, unceasing, sustains its course; it seeks the effect beyond the meaning; it listens to someone, more than to words. And translation is playful — more faithful to movement, hiatus and tension, than to appearances — and it is seduced, almost in secret, by the fragile presence, unpredictable and ethereal, of ambiguity. It lives happily in this presence, which it feeds while being fed from it, whose company it prefers to seek rather than flee. And this company is its destiny, for not only is ambiguity at the heart of the trembling passage from one language to another, but it is in reproducing ambiguity that the translator truly draws near to the author. And this leaves unsaid that to translate ambiguity, to dwell in the contours of the text, to consider what lies beyond the immediate (even when translating a text of one's own — the ultimate challenge), is to skirt around its essence, true enough, but all the better to capture and express it. It is thus by defying words (but remembering their poetic force), by seeking to reproduce the movement of things as much as the things themselves, the view of reality as much as the reality itself, the tone, the music, the silences, in a word, the effect more than the sentences, and by reading the text at each of its levels (connotation, dialogue, different spheres of space and time, different perspectives within the same sphere, etc.), and by remembering the author in the text — it is thus, I feel, that we must seek to translate. Above all, I might add, we must avoid the sterile opposition that, so often, foils translation studies, the polarized view that sees literariness on the one hand (translating adaptations, such as Baudelaire's Poe and Yourcenar's Woolf, in spite of their obvious literary qualities) and literalness on the other (Meschonnic's "respect de la lettre", Berman's "reproduction de l'étrangeté", and Mounin's "dépaysement du lecteur"). Rather than the adaptation that distorts the work, or the false faithfulness that betrays the target language, and thereby the author himself, we could thus propose a process of translation that considers the author as much as the text, and an approach whereby the translator seeks to keep

5

firmly in his grasp a thread that runs from the writing of the source text to the publication of the target text : the effect of the text, in its most all-embracing sense. The art of literary translation, in this context, is clearly not only a question of writing. It involves social and anthropological issues, as well as philosophical aspects linked to the fields of aesthetics and ethics. The objective of the literary translator is thus not only to respect a work of art (with its beauty, its ambiguity, its effect), and through it an author (with a culture, a history, an intention), but also to create links between cultures. In fact, when dealing with cultural differences, the literary translator should try to see, beyond the exotic appeal, the potential for a rapprochement between peripheries, be they geographical, social, literary or, could we say, imaginary, that is, the periphery of reality, most important, there again, in the Latin American context in particular. In this context, it is easy to see, along the lines of what Lawrence Venuti and others (in particular, more recently, Michael Cronin) have sketched, the difficulty for smaller cultures, in particular in the context of the Americas — this is true for Quebec of course, but also for many other cultures of the Americas —, to be diffused to a broader public. The Canadian Literary Translation Center This is in great part why we are currently setting up at Université Laval (Québec City, Canada) a research group called l’Observatoire canadien de la traduction littéraire (the Canadian Literary Translation Center), where we wish to explore, in a context where globalization of markets and cultures makes translation more important than ever, the modes of diffusion of Canadian literary culture through translation. Considering that circulation of culture is never innocent, that it is by no means independent from political and economic struggles, and that choices made correspond to a certain ethics, based on specific objectives, the Center aims to study the role of literary translators in the diffusion of Canadian literary culture worldwide. In order to do so, we wish, in the Canadian context, to provide answers to the following questions : Who do we translate, who translates, for whom, where, how and why? The Observatoire is thus fully representative of new trends in the fields of translation studies and cultural diversity. Integrating practice and theory, it wishes to reflect on links between center and periphery, on cultural contacts in a globalized context, on economic aspects of cultural industries, on bilinguism, national cultures diffusion policies and other related issues. To illustrate the context in which we wish to operate, let us recall a few figures. Translations in the world are made from English (40%), French, German and Russian (10%), Italian, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Czech (3%), Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese (1%). Other languages

6

being negligible. The literary production of most European countries is made up every year of 20 to 40% translations, while only 3% of books published in 2005 in the US were translations. To be more precise, let us see the example of Germany, country that bought in 2005 the rights of more than 4000 US books, while the US bought the rights of no more than 150 German books, most of which were schoolbooks. In Canada, the Canada Council and other government bodies do promote the translation of Canadian books within Canada between the two official languages of the country : English and French. But little else. No wonder in such a context that other than a few stars such as Umberto Eco, Milan Kundera, José Saramago, to name a few, or some of the great Latin American authors mentioned above, or with respect to English Canada, names such as Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, Carol Shields, Lucy Maud Montgomery, with perhaps in Quebec Michel Tremblay and very few others, writers of the world remain unknown in most countries. Which is why we believe that the role of the translator nowadays goes far beyond the mere translation of a text for a new readership : it is a role of exploration and intervention. Michael Cronin (2003) interestingly introduces the concept of neo-babelianism, and notes how the world has created the fantasy of instantaneous and universal communication, fantasy supported as much by technology than by the strenght of the English language. Very much in the same direction, we believe that translation, and the study of the diffusion of a national culture worldwide through translation, is a way to promote cultural diversity. Cronin notes that translation exposes disparities within a globalized world, and makes visible the asymmetry of the linguistic traffic in the context of neo-babelianism. Cronin argues that translation could and should be seen as a means to fight against the dictatorship of immediacy, to promote slowness, and to link languages to their past, so as to avoid what he calls clonialism, i.e. the production and circulation of the same. It is in this context that our Observatoire canadien de la traduction littéraire wishes to operate. With a view to better understand who amongst Canadian authors are translated, who translate them, for whom, where, how and why. It is only thus, we believe, that we may be able to intervene with some degree of efficiency in the cultural diversity we all yearn for.

7

Bibliography BERMAN, Antoine.1984. L'épreuve de l'étranger — culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique. Paris, Gallimard (Coll. «Les Essais»). CRONIN, Michael. 2003. Translation and Globalization. London, Routledge. FOLKART, Barbara. 1990. La fonction heuristique de la traduction. Meta, 35, 1, pp 37-44. — .1991. Le conflit des énonciations — traduction et discours rapporté. Candiac, Balzac. — .1982. Translation as Literary Criticism. Meta, 27, 3, pp. 242-256. — .1986. Traduction et remotivation onomastique. Meta, 31, 3, pp 233-252. JOLICŒUR, Louis .1995. La sirène et le pendule — attirance et esthétique en traduction littéraire. Québec, L'instant même. LEFEVERE, André .1992. Translation, Rewriting & the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London, Routledge (Coll. «Translation Studies»). PAZ, Octavio .1984. La fleur saxifrage — langue et littérature. Paris, Gallimard. — (1956). El arco y la lira. Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica. SIMON, Sherry .1994. Le trafic des langues — traduction et culture dans la littérature québécoise. Montréal, Boréal. TOURY, Gideon .1980. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. TRIVEDI, Harish .1997. India, England, France : A (Post-)Colonial Translational Triangle. Meta, 42, 2, pp. 407-415. VENUTI, Lawrence .1995. The Translator's Invisibility — A History of translation. London, Routledge. WUILMART, Françoise .1990. Le traducteur littéraire : un marieur empathique de cultures. Meta, 35, 1, pp. 236 à 242.

8