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Article published In:
Heterolingualism in/and Translation
Edited by Reine Meylaerts
[Target 18:1] 2006
► pp. 17–47

Refraction and recognition

Literary multilingualism in translation

| University of Ottawa

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.

Keywords: multilingualism and literature, translation, minorities in literature, French-Canadian Literature (1900–1999), Marie-Claire Blais, Ralph Manheim, Ray Ellenwood, Antoine Berman, Pierre Bourdieu, Pascale Casanova
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.What happens to multilingualism in translation?
    • 1.1Heterolingualism unbound
    • 1.2Textual matters: Erasing (exotic) differences
    • 1.3Contextual matters: Asymmetrical transfers, unequal exchanges
  • 2.Marie-Claire Blais in English
    • 2.1Literary translation, a Canadian institution
    • 2.2The debate over joual
    • 2.3Manheim’s domesticating translation
    • 2.4Ellenwood’s foreignizing translation
  • 3.Concluding remarks: Refraction or recognition?
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 December 2006
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18.1.03gru
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