Marie Leconte

Localizing Hage: A lasting change in Quebec’s literary translation practice?

Quebec’s complicated political and linguistic history has long dictated the kind of relationship its literary establishment has entertained with Quebec English-language fiction and its translation into French. Historically, it has ignored and excluded it, relegating it to the domain of CanLit and sending it off to France to get translated. But could this relationship be changing? Quebec’s English-language literature has been garnering explicit attention from academia as well as the Québécois literary establishment for at least a decade now and is increasingly being translated into French in Quebec. In this presentation, I will elaborate specifically on the case of Rawi Hage’s novel Cockroach, its translation into French, and the translation’s journey into France’s publishing world.

Keywords: literary translation, localization, Quebec

Biography

Marie Leconte is a PhD candidate in English Studies at the Université de Montréal. She holds an MA in Translation Studies, a Graduate Diploma in Translation, and a BA in Linguistics from Concordia University. Her FRQSC-funded research focuses on literary translation between contiguous literary cultures, specifically those of Montreal. She is currently investigating works of English-language literature from Quebec, their translation into French and the cross-cultural implications of both types of work. Her other research interests include cultural translation, sociolinguistics and minority literatures.