Sherry Simon

With Gender in Translation, Sherry Simon presents a study of the feminist issues surrounding translation studies. She argues that translation of feminist texts is a cultural intervention, seeking to create new cultural meanings and bring social change.

Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission

Gender in Translation

All cities are multilingual, but there are some where language relations have a special importance. These are cities where more than one historically rooted language community lays claim to the territory of the city. This book focuses on four such linguistically divided cities: Calcutta, Trieste, Barcelona, and Montreal. Though living with the ever-present threat of conflict, these cities offer the possibility of creative interaction across competing languages and this book examines the dynamics of translation in its many forms. By focusing on a category of cities which has received little attention, this study contributes to our understanding of the kinds of language relations that sustain the diversity of urban life. Illustrated with photos and maps, Cities in Translation is both an engaging read for a wide-ranging audience and an important text in advancing theory and methodology in translation studies.

Intersections of Language and Memory

Cities in Translation

Journeys through Montreal's literary landscape illuminate the changing cultural fabric of a city.

Episodes in the Life of a Divided City

Translating Montreal

Translating Montreal follows the trajectories of adventurous cultural translators such as Malcolm Reid, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein - pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s - Pierre Anctil, whose translations from Yiddish to French are emblematic of the dramatic reroutings now occurring across the Montreal landscape, and contemporary writer-translators such as Gail Scott, Erin Mouré, Jacques Brault, Michel Garneau, Nicole Brossard, and Emile Ollivier. Simon argues that translation is a dynamic and subtle tool for analysing cultural contact. An original take on cultural relations in the city, Translating Montreal explores the emergence of the "new" Montrealer. No longer "Franco-Québécois," "Anglo-Québécois," "immigrant," or "ethnic," the new Montrealer is a citizen of a mixed and cosmopolitan city.

Paul St-Pierre

This volume explores the theoretical foundations of postcolonial translation in settings as diverse as Malaysia, Ireland, India and South America. "Changing the Terms" examines stimulating links that are currently being forged between linguistics, literature and cultural theory. In doing so, the authors probe complex sequences of intercultural contact, fusion and breach. The impact that history and politics have had on the role of translation in the evolution of literary and cultural relations is investigated in fascinating detail.

Translating in the Postcolonial Era

Changing the Terms

David Homel

This book features essays and discussions from writers, translators, and individuals who play both roles at once, from around the world. It evolved from an international conference sponsored by Canada's Literary Translators' Association which took place in Montreal in 1986.

The Art and Politics of Translation

Mapping Literature

Speaking Memory evokes the complex "language-scapes" that form at the crossroads of culture and history in cities. While engaging with current debates on the nature and role of translation in globalized urban landscapes, the contributors offer a series of detailed and nuanced readings of “translational” cities – their histories, their construction and transformation in memory, and the artistic projects that tell their stories. The three sections of the book highlight historical case studies, conceptual issues, and text-based analyses of city scripts, in particular as they relate to creative literary practices and language interventions on the surface of the city itself. In this volume, translation points to the dissonance of city life, but also to the possibility of a generalized, public discourse – a space vital to urban citizenship, where the convergence of languages can be the source of new conversations. Essays cover a variety of topics and approaches, bringing new voices and insights to discussions on multilingualism and translation in the urban contexts of cities including Dublin, Montevideo, Montreal, Prague, and Vilnius. Defining cities as fields of translational forces where languages are both in conversation and in tension, translation in Speaking Memory is stretched beyond its usual confines, encompassing literary, artistic, and cultural practices that permeate everyday contemporary life. Contributors include Liamis Briedis (Vilnius University), Matteo Colombi (University of Leipzig), Michael Cronin (Dublin City University), Michael Darroch (Windsor University), Roch Duval (Université de Montréal), Andre Furlani (Concordia University), Simon Harel (Université de Montréal), William Marshall (Stirling University), Sarah Mekdjian (Université Paris III), Alexis Nouss (Université d’Aix en Provence), Katia Pizzi (University of London), Sherry Simon (Concordia University), Will Straw (McGill University), and Miriam Suchet (Université Paris III).

How Translation Shapes City Life

Speaking Memory

The divided Montreal of the 1960s is very different from today's cosmopolitan, hybrid city. Taking the perspective of a walker moving through a fluid landscape of neighbourhoods and eras, Sherry Simon experiences Montreal as a voyage across languages. Sketching out literary passages from the then of the colonial city to the now of the cosmopolitan Montreal, she traces a history of crossings and intersections around the familiar sites and symbols of the city - the mythical boulevard Saint-Laurent, Mile End, the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Mont-Royal.

Since the late 1960s Sheila Fischman has worked tirelessly at making the best works of Québécois literature available to English-language readers. Anglophones who have read works by Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Yves Beauchemin, François Gravel, Anne Hébert, Roch Carrier, and Marie-Claire Blais most likely know these works only through Fischman's subtly and faithfully crafted translations. In Translation celebrates Fischman's more than 150 book-length translations from French to English. It combines essays on the friendships created through translation with essays on the art of translation and on the changing context of literary translation in Canada. Distinguished contributors include Alberto Manguel, Commissioner of Official Languages Graham Fraser, authors Gaétan Soucy, Lise Bissonnette, and Louise Desjardins, and fellow-translators Lori Saint Martin, Michael Henry Heim, Luise von Flotow, and Kathy Mezei. The volume also includes interviews with Fischman and a selection of her prose. A fitting tribute to an outstanding career, In Translation illuminates the artistry behind a difficult craft by considering the work of one of its finest practitioners.

Honouring Sheila Fischman

In Translation

Paul St. Pierre

Paul Saint-Pierre

University of Ottawa Press

This volume explores the theoretical foundation and undercurrents of translation in diverse postcolonial contexts. In doing so the authors examine complex sequences of intercultural contact and encroachment, fusion, and breach. The impact that history and political relations have had on the role of translation in the evolution of literary and cultural relations is demonstrated and examined in detail. A strength of this collection of essays lies in the various postcolonial contexts it deals with the challenges posed to the commonly held views on postcolonial theory.

Luise von Flotow

Kathy Mezei

Much of Canadian cultural life is sustained and enriched by translation. Translation Effects moves beyond restrictive notions of official translation in Canada, analyzing its activities and effects on the streets, in movie theatres, on stages, in hospitals, in courtrooms, in literature, in politics, and across café tables. The first comprehensive study of the intersection of translation and culture, Translation Effects offers an original picture of translation practices across many languages and through several decades of Canadian life. The book presents detailed case studies of specific events and examines the reverberation and spread of their effects. Through these imaginative, at times unusual, investigations, the contributors unveil the simultaneous invisibility and omnipresence of translation and present a cross-cut of Canadian translation moments. Addressing the period from the 1950s to the present and including a wide scope of examples from medical interpreting to film dubbing, the essays in this book create a panoramic view of the creation of modern culture in Canada. Contributors include Piere Anctil (University of Ottawa), Hélène Buzelin (Université de Montréal), Alessandra Capperdoni (Simon Fraser University), Philippe Cardinal, Andrew Clifford (York University), Beverley Curran, Renée Desjardins (University of Ottawa), Ray Ellenwood, David Gaertner, Chantal Gagnon (Université de Montréal), Patricia Godbout, Hugh Hazelton, Jane Koustas (Brock University), Louise Ladouceur (Université de l'Albera, Gillian Lane-Mercier (McGill University), George Lang, Rebecca Margolis, Sophie McCall (Simon Fraser University), Julie Dolmaya McDonough, Denise Merkle (Université de Moncton), Kathy Mezei, Sorouja Moll, Brian Mossop, Daisy Neijmann, Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Joseph Pivato, Gregory Reid, Robert Schwartzwald, Sherry Simon, Luise von Flotow (University of Ottawa), and Christine York.

The Shaping of Modern Canadian Culture

Translation Effects

Norman Ravvin

Failure's Opposite presents a fresh perspective on Klein's reception and legacy, exploring why he has remained a compelling figure for critics and readers. His experimentalism drew upon strong traditions and fluency in several languages - English, French, Yiddish, and Hebrew - allowing him to develop a multilingual, modernist Jewish voice that is a touchstone for understanding Canada's multicultural identity. His struggle with the emotional and historical dimensions of diaspora is of considerable importance throughout his work and is investigated through the lenses of translation, voice, and his relationship to other Jewish writers. Contributors also re-evaluate Klein's connection to Montreal and the original ways in which he captured the atmosphere of his "jargoning city." Failure's Opposite reflects the many ways A.M. Klein is being remade in the twenty-first century, both as a bridge to the past and a model for contemporary critical and creative work in Canadian literature.

Listening to A.M. Klein

Failure's Opposite

Pierre Anctil

The texts collected in this volume unveil the practice and the methods of the translators and scholars who contributed to the reemergence of Yiddish in contemporary Canada. Each of the personalities discussed enlarged the historical position and interpreted various aspects of the Yiddish language in Montreal that until recently remained obscure or inaccessible. -- Les textes rassemblés dans ce volume tentent de lever le voile sur la démarche et les méthodes des traducteurs et chercheurs qui ont contribué à la réémergence du yiddish dans le Canada contemporain. Ces traducteurs et chercheurs ont élargi l’assise historique et interprété de nombreux aspects de la langue yiddish à Montréal, aspects qui jusque-là demeuraient obscurs et inaccessibles.

New Readings of Yiddish Montreal - Traduire le Montréal yiddish

Gender in Translation is a broad-ranging, imaginative and lively look at feminist issues surrounding translation studies. Students and teachers of translation studies, linguistics, gender studies and women's studies will find this unprecedented work invaluable and thought-provoking reading. Sherry Simon argues that translation of feminist texts - with a view to promoting feminist perspectives - is a cultural intervention, seeking to create new cultural meanings and bring about social change. She takes a close look at specific issues which include: the history of feminist theories of language and translation studies; linguistic issues, including a critical examination of the work of Luce Irigaray; a look at women translators through history, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century; feminist translations of the Bible; an analysis of the ways in which French feminist texts such as De Beauvoir's The Second Sex have been translated into English.

Sherry Simon

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