A story thrice-told
Current Killam prize-holder Sherry Simon has built her career tracing the paths that Montreal’s linguistic communities have carved through the city.
It’s only fitting that Concordia’s five-year partnership with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), bringing together Francophone and Anglophone institutions, begin with Simon’s reflections on “The stream of languages and cultures” as she discusses the role of translation in multilingual cities.
With several publications on the meaning of the act of translation to her name, the Royal Society member was recognized on Oct. 7 with the Prix André-Laurendeau by the Association francophone pour le savoir where she was awarded.
“It all starts with Montreal,” says Simon, of Concordia’s Département d’études françaises, recalling the deep linguistic divisions in the city she grew up in. “It was more important to learn Latin than to learn French,” she adds of her high school days, “if you did learn French, it was Parisian French. You learned the grammar, like Latin.”
The alien language was reflected in the city itself, with linguistically divided neighbourhoods. Simon would take the bus east and study the familiar yet foreign world across the other side of the Main as if she were a tourist, “it was attractive and frightening.”
Simon was deeply marked by her observations of a city both interdependent and oblivious to the parallel, but different, worlds within it. She was aware of her own position as a “member of the oppressing minority.”
Her current research has led her to identify writers and translators in particular places — and moments within cities — with similar multilingual identities to uncover the roles language and translation play in building cultures. “I’m looking at the individuals as actors and participants in the life of the city.”
Her reflection has brought her to colonial Calcutta (now Kolkata) and to Trieste, where Italian and German vied for space under the Habsburg Empire. “Every time you have two or more languages, you have a hierarchy and relations of power.”
Thinking through and across linguistic cultures in different times and places has brought her back (or tied her more tightly) to Montreal. Her talk at the BAnQ on Oct. 27 will look at three, simultaneous modernist movements in the ’40s.
The English community was influenced by the writing of Mavis Gallant, Irving Layton, A.M. Klein and P.K. Page, all of whom were active in Montreal at that time. Meanwhile, across town, the Refus Global manifesto was published in 1948.
The Yiddish community was experiencing its own modernist stirrings through writers like Chava Rosenfarb and J.J. Segal. “It was all totally separate,” marvels Simon of the simultaneous and discrete developments. “I’d like to plot it all on a map.” Simon will speak at the BAnQ (475 De Maisonneuve Blvd. E.) on Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Listen to Simon read of her memories of cross-Montreal travel from her book Translating
Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City:
Related Link:
- Concordian receives Prix André-Laurendeau