Gillian Lane-Mercier

Official fictions of translation: The Canada Council’s discourse on translation and the translator (1972-2014)

This paper will examine the evolution of the Canada Council for the Arts’ discourse on literary translation and the translator from the creation of the Translation Grants Program (1972) to the present. Drawing on published and unpublished archival material, it traces shifting attitudes to the status of translation and the role of the translator, and highlights the various means used to foster, through translation, a mutual understanding between Canada’s two “founding” communities. The Canada Council has upheld the principles underlying the Official Languages Act (1969) while also revealing the cultural, political, and ideological constructions – or fictions – in which these same principles are grounded.  Among the official fictions of translation the Council continues to uphold, despite evidence to the contrary, are the well-worn federalist ideals of cultural parity, the equal status of Canada’s official languages, fluid intercultural exchange, a shared social contract, national unity, and translation conceived as bridge-building and dialogue. 

Keywords : Canada Council for the Arts, institutional translation, history of funded literary translation in Canada

Biography

Gillian Lane-Mercier is an Associate Professor in the Department of French Language and Literature at McGill University. She has a PhD in Literary Theory and an MA in French Literature. She co-founded and co-directs the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur l’étude de Montréal. Her research interests include 20th century avant-garde French Literature, reception theory, Translation Studies, and literary translation in Canada. Author of La parole romanesque and co-author of Faulkner. Une expérience de retraduction, she has published extensively on the theory of the novel, Translation Studies, anglo-Canadian writer-translators, and anglo-Québécois literature. Her current research focuses on the representations and practices that define our contemporary intercultural space.