NOTE: The translation studies entries are part of the main bibliographic database. To access them, go to "Search Our Database."

The Translation Studies section of the Bibliography project provides bibliographic information on publications in the field of Canadian literary translation studies. With literary translation studies assuming an increasingly central role in the academic and literary landscape in Canada and internationally, this part of the online bibliographic database is intended as an important and valuable research tool.

This section of the bibliography was first developed by Pamela Grant and Kathy Mezei, who joined the project team in 1998 and 2001 respectively, as well as by several graduate student research assistants: Natasha Dagenais, Stefania Forlini, Alessandra Capperdoni, Pierrette Richard, Simon Gilbert and Eva Milanovic. Kathy Mezei had previously published an annotated bibliography, the Bibliography of Criticism of English and French Literary Translations in Canada: 1950-1986 / Bibliographie de la critique des traductions littéraires anglaises et françaises au Canada : de 1950 à 1986 (Cahiers de traductologie #7, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988), and permission was obtained from the publisher for the entries from the Mezei bibliography to be included in the project's online database. Team members have also been working on updating Canadian literary translation studies entries from 1988 forward.

Two other translation scholars joined the Bibliography's Translations Studies team in 2005, bringing fresh expertise: Patricia Godbout, a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, specializes in twentieth-century literary translation in Quebec; and Hugh Hazelton, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, specializes in Latin American literature as well as translation into and from Spanish and Portuguese.

Whereas the entries in Professor Mezei's published bibliography focus on criticism of Canadian literary works translated from English to French and French to English to 1986, we have expanded our parameters for this online database to include writings up to the present on the translation of Canadian literature into French, English, and other languages, on literary translation from or into Canadian native languages, and on literary translation by Canadian translators wherein Canadian context or culture plays a significant role (for example, Michel Garneau's translation of Macbeth into joual). The database will also present studies of translations from those minority literatures and languages in Canada that have a significant translation corpus. Also included are theoretical works that discuss literary translation and works by major Canadian literary translation theorists which mention or are pertinent to Canadian literary translation. Translations themselves are not listed, but significant forewords, introductions and prefaces to translations are included.

The recorded history of translation and interpretation in Canada began with a violent and coercive act: in 1534 Jacques Cartier captured two Iroquois, carried them off to France, and then used them as interpreters on his next voyage to New France (Jean Delisle, La Traduction au Canada / Translation in Canada 1534 - 1984). Thus, from early on, translation has borne the stigma of cultural appropriation and colonial exploitation. With both French and English being given official status by the language provisions of the BNA Act of 1867 and by the federal Official Languages Act of 1969, translation has been rooted in political contingency.

The growth of literary translation in Canada has been more recent. In the second part of the twentieth century, as English-Canadian and Quebec literary production increased and diversified, there was a marked growth of interest in their translation. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of Quebec's deep discontent and fears about its cultural and linguistic survival, literary translation, especially from French to English, began to flourish. It has since grown to play a consistent if subdued role in Canadian cultural life. In recent years, translations from English to French have begun to outnumber those from French to English.

The Canada Council Translation Grant program was created in 1971, and in 1975, the Literary Translators' Association was founded to promote literary translation and to support literary translators. Literary translation was included in the Governor General's literary awards in 1987. Other landmarks in the legitimization of literary translation in Canada include the founding of journals such as Ellipse (1969), Meta (1966), and TTR (1987); the publication of Philip Stratford's 1977 Bibliography of Canadian Books in Translation: French to English and English to French; the inclusion of the "Translation" section in University of Toronto Quarterly's annual Letters in Canada, beginning in 1977; the publication of literary translations by various small publishing houses (such as Exile, Harvest House, Pierre Tisseyre's "Collection des deux solitudes," Oberon, Anansi, Véhicule, Guernica, Coach House Press, Talonbooks, XYZ, Boréal, Leméac, Cormorant), and the introduction of translation programs at various universities (such as the University of Ottawa, Concordia, Glendon College, Laval, the Université de Montréal, and the Université de Sherbrooke).

The political reality of biculturalism and bilingualism has been variously configured by writers, translators, and critics. First, it has been represented as an oppositional binary-- the "bind of binarism" (E.D. Blodgett, Configurations, p.25) -- through metaphors such as two solitudes, the double helix, the double staircase at the Château de Chambord, and the ellipse [1], and through concepts of alterity and diglossia; then by images of mixity such as métissage, hybridity, fusion; and finally by a more fluid, less oppositional binary expressed through conversation, dialogue, and collaboration. The spectre of the globalization of English not surprisingly inflects contemporary conversations about translation and the status of Quebec literature and language.

Moreover, the interest in and practice of Canadian literary translation has been broadening. Whereas translation in Canada has traditionally been binary and internal - focusing on writings in English and French by Canadian and Quebec authors - recent years have seen the expansion of Canadian translation practice and studies to encompass other languages and cultures.

International translators and scholars have pointed out the importance of a Canadian school of translation shaped by its specific political and cultural context, and have remarked on the vital role played by Canadian feminist writers and translators in modelling a theory of gender and translation. For example, in his 1993 Contemporary Translation Theories, Edwin Gentzler acknowledges the importance of feminist translators: "the complicated question of Canadian identity - problems of colonialism, bi-lingualism, nationalism, cultural heritage, weak literary system, and gender issues are involved - seems to provide a useful platform from which to begin raising questions about current translation theory" (184). Susan Bassnett also refers to a Canadian school that conceptualizes translation as political activity. Comparing Brazilian and Canadian translation theorists, Bassnett observes that both groups are "concerned to find a translation practice and terminology that will convey the rupture with the dominance of the European heritage even as it is transmitted" (Comparative Literature, 157). In his recently published Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, Jeremy Munday's section on "Translation and Gender" focuses on the work of Sherry Simon, Barbara Godard, and Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood. The influence and importation of international translation theories and experiences are reflected in E. D. Blodgett's model for a Canadian literary translation based upon polysystem theory (1991), and in Sherry Simon and Paul St. Pierre's extension of [Canadian] translation terminology and exploration of the translation status of minority literatures based upon their encounter with multilingualism in India (2000).

[1]: Two solitudes is of course drawn from Hugh MacLennan's 1945 novel Two Solitudes, and has evolved into a commonplace, overworked metaphor for our bicultural, bilingual state, taking on an ironically different meaning from Rainer Marie Rilke's hopeful image in the lines that serve as the novel's epigraph: "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch, and greet each other." In All the Polarities Philip Stratford adopted the double helix, a parallel spiral formation, to describe the two literatures. The double spiral staircase at the Château de Chambord, which two people can climb without meeting each other, was the image Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, Quebec's first premier, drew of the two cultures (Stratford 1986, 3). Ellipse refers to a geometrical sphere with two centres and provides the logo of the translation journal, Ellipse.