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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Marc Charron In collaboration with my colleague Christiane
Melançon and Prof. Seymour Mayne of the University of Ottawa, I am currently
preparing an anthology of contemporary French (mostly Québécois) and English
Canadian poetry on the topic of “otherness” provisionally entitled The Other
Poetry/L’Autre poésie, to be published in mid-2004 by both Borealis Press
and Les Éditions David. From a translational perspective, the project is an
ambitious one if only because its very raison d’être is to present each and
every poem (a hundred or so altogether) in the other official language in
renditions by various translators including national award-winning poets and
translators Pierre Desruisseaux and Donald Winkler, and also by the three
editors of the volume.
Panel 5: Translation and the (De-)construction of National/Cultural Identities
The Other Poetry: Aspects of Otherness in Contemporary Canadian Poetry
Université du Québec en Outaouais, Canada
Not surprisingly, studies of French (Québécois) and English Canadian poetry
of the last half century have shown time and again that identity, but even
more so otherness, have become key elements of the Canadian poetical
imagination and sensibility. In turn, these give way to multiple poetical
spaces and crossroads where voices and points of view, among other things,
border one another, challenge each other and even overlap, thus giving us
the possibility of studying this ongoing dialogue between identity and
otherness
In this presentation, I will mainly focus on the following aspects: as a
privileged manifestation of the discourse on the Other, is poetic
translation, by definition, a (poetical) form of otherness? As to the notion
of otherness, should it be admitted straight off (as is often the case in
critical discourse) as an obvious challenge to the act of translation
itself? Moreover, what happens to poetical activity, more specifically to
the expression of otherness, when the latter goes through the process of
being translated and passes through the prism of translation? From examples
taken from the anthology, I will explore some of the conflicts and/or
complementary relations between poetic translation and otherness as key
elements of contemporary poetry writing in Canada in both French and
English, not only in texts from poets naturally associated with one of the
two main linguistic communities, but also in the writing of (im)migrant or
Native poets whose mother tongue is neither one nor the other of Canada’s
official languages.
© IATIS 2003