Target. International Journal of Translation Studies - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2006

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.

Les deux langues officielles du Canada sont prises dans un rapport de force marqué par l’inégalité. Travaillés par cette inégalité, les textes de théâtre ont recours à des procédés verbaux dont les fonctions varient selon la langue dans laquelle ils sont écrits et la communauté à laquelle ils s’adressent. Ainsi, la dramaturgie franco-canadienne fait appel à une alternance de codes qui reflète la réalité minoritaire du français nord-américain exposé à l’influence dominante de l’anglais et est, par conséquent, difficilement traduisible en anglais. L’accent affiché sur scène par les personnages est aussi une manifestation d’hétérolinguisme qui s’inscrit dans une dynamique identitaire fort complexe propre au texte oral. Cette étude porte sur les accents et les alternances de codes dans des œuvres dramatiques de Michel Tremblay, Jean Marc Dalpé et Robert Lepage pour en dégager les fonctions et observer les représentations auxquelles elles donnent lieu en traduction anglaise.

For this paper, heterolingualism or language plurality will be considered as the presence in a single text or in a social environment of both French and English, Canada’s official languages. Language plurality will here be studied from an institutional viewpoint: the influence of the Canadian government on the translation of political speeches. The first part of this article will establish that political speeches are written in a bilingual environment where the two official languages are often in contact. This bilingualism, however, is often homogenised when it comes to speech delivery and publication. Therefore, the second part focuses on the speeches’ paratextual features and the third looks at the speeches’ textual features.

Si l’hétérolinguisme littéraire est aujourd’hui une chose reconnue et un phénomène amplement étudié par les critiques, les défis qu’implique la traduction, au sens le plus concret, de cette esthétique ont été encore peu abordés. Cet article tente d’apporter une contribution dans ce sens. Fondé sur un cas particulier, ma tentative de traduire en français The lonely Londoners, roman de l’écrivain indo-trinidadien Samuel Selvon, il interroge les enjeux esthétiques et éthiques de la pratique de la traduction littéraire dans un contexte minoritaire et un paradigme interprétatif fondé sur la valorisation de l’hybridité linguistique et culturelle des œuvres. Cette étude débouche sur une critique des positions défendues par Antoine Berman et Lawrence Venuti. Elle vise plus particulièrement à souligner que la traduction de l’hybridité linguistique dans le littéraire soulève des questions et exige des prises de position allant bien au-delà du choix entre le travail sur la lettre/foreignizing ou la traduction ethnocentrique/domesticating. Pour les traductologues, l’étude de ces phénomènes littéraires invite à concevoir le processus de traduction selon une perspective moins binaire et à repluser de la notion même de sujet traduisant.

The article deals with the problem of linguistic alterity in American literary histories. The debate over the ‘foreignness’ or the ‘domesticity’ of a text or translation is usually conducted in a rather polarizing fashion, as in the case of Venuti (1995). Venuti’s conceptual framework fails to provide adequate criteria for differentiating domesticating and foreignizing translation strategies, which easily results in inflated claims about the linguistic hegemony of the Anglo-American world. In reaction to this, the article reconceptualizes the two translation strategies as part of the paradoxical internal logic of culture in order to highlight how every culture is continually in the process of (re-)translating itself. Therefore, the analysis is broadened to include the domesticating aspects of the foreignizing strategy, and vice versa, the foreignizing potential of domesticating translations. The domestication of the foreign is evident in the ambiguous inclusion of non-English or bilingual texts in American literary histories. The foreignization of the domestic, by contrast, appears from a persistent tendency on the part of literary historians to describe their forerunners or competitors as excessively Anglo- or Eurocentric. Through this reflexive application of Venuti’s strategies, the article draws attention to the paradoxical togetherness of the foreign and the domestic inside American literary culture.

Despite official disapproval, playwrights and their translators in Singapore use heterolingualism to establish a Singaporean identity. Kuo Pao Kun’s work shows us the “little man” and demonstrates that English is the language of power. Quah Sy Ren’s work explores the plight of the local Chinese-speaker, suggesting that Chinese-Singaporeans are more firmly anchored in their cultural identity. In Alfian Sa’at’s work the single heterolingual speaker is splintered into a variety of roles shaped by age, ethnicity, and gender, with heterolingualism being a mark of intergenerational and interracial tension. These three plays offer three solutions to the problem of forging a Singaporean identity: one based on Singlish, one based on Chinese, and one based on multilingualism and translation. They destabilize the notion of independent and self-sufficient languages, thereby challenging the notion of equivalence in translation.