The Case For Local Specificities: Francophone And Anglophone Literary Translators In Canada

The focus of this article is the changing role of Anglophone and Francophone literary translators as cultural mediators in Canada since the 1960s. Using a comparative model sensitive to both differences and similarities, I will offer an overview of literary translation in Canada during this period. Drawing from my introductions to two recent edited volumes of portraits of individual Canadian translators,1 I will examine how translators from both cultures became the purveyors and advocates of their cultural “other”, and within what intercultural traditions they inscribe their own practice. Special attention will be paid to the role these translators have assumed as cultural and literary agents within each literary institution. In more general terms, this analysis from the perspective of translators as cultural agents will provide insights into how English and French-language literary translation in Canada has worked towards building local specificities during a period of global cultural change. Creating a Tradition of Literary Translation The decades from the 1960s to the present constitute the founding period of literary translation into both French and English in Canada, for reasons directly related to local imperatives. For both linguistic groups, the 1960s and 1970s were marked by a new determination to fre