Luise Von Flotow - Feminism In Translation The Canadian Factor (Str. 41-).pdf - Gender in Translation - cli

Quaderns. Revista de traducció 13, 2006 11-20

Feminism in Translation: the Canadian Factor

Luise von Flotow

University of Ottawa

School of Translation and Interpretation

Abstract

This article starts from a strangely bilingual Canadian sound poem, «Simultaneous Translation»

by Penn Kemp (1984) and traces the specifically Canadian aspects of the work done in the area

of «translation and gender» from the 1980s to 2000. The social and political circumstances

supporting the intense focus both on gender and on translation in Canada in those decades are

explored here, and are seen as the key to understanding why primarily Canadian writers and

academics developed the field.

Key words: Canadian feminisms and translation, history of gender issues in translation.

Resum

Aquest article parteix d’un poema canadenc estranyament bilingüe «Traducció Simultània», escrit

per Penn Kemp (1984) i traça els aspectes canadencs específics de la recerca feta en el camp de

la «traducció i el gènere» des del 1980 fins al 2000. Les circumstàncies socials i polítiques que

recolzen un enfocament intens vers el gènere i la traducció al Canadà en aquelles dècades s’exa-

minen en aquest article, i es conceben com la clau per entendre per què foren primordialment

els/les escriptor/es i acadèmic/ques canadencs els que varen desenvolupar aquest camp.

Paraules Clau: feminismes canadencs i traducció, història de temes de gènere en la traducció.

Summary

Canadian Beginnings

Those involved

And now fot the limitations

Bibliography

Canadian Beginnings

Let’s begin with a poem, an odd, bilingual sound poem by a Canadian poet, Penn

Kemp, a writer who has participated in the many Canadian manifestations of

women’s creativity over the past 30 years. Entitled «Simultaneous Translation»,

it was first published in 1984, on the inside cover of the conference proceedings

12 Quaderns. Revista de traducció 13, 2006

Luise von Flotow

Women and Words, thus giving a specific direction to the anthology. The book is a

compilation of texts from the first ever joint literary conference of English and

French speaking Canadian women —held in Vancouver in 1983—, a conference that

was instrumental in connecting these two very different sectors of Canadian soci-

ety and culture, and launching numerous joint projects, many of which led to trans-

lations and bilingual publications.

The poem reflects and activates, mirrors and encourages a bilingual, translin-

gual component in women’s writing in Canada, a component that, in 1983, explic-

itly evokes the need to cooperate and communicate on a level that will transcend

cultural differences and ancient animosities, and that later, over the course of the late

1980s and 1990s, will add a creatively hybrid tinge to the work of a number of

women writers, both in French and in English. As a sound poem, read aloud on

CD by its English-language author (2001), this particular piece comes across as

even more hybrid: we hear French pronounced with an unabashed English accent,

a strange, halting, ludic, sometimes also incomprehensible accent. One could argue

that the poem enacts nothing more than what Roman Jakobson calls the «phatic

function of language», opening the channels of communication between two of

the major cultural groupings in Canada. The fact that it does so via translation, and

in the name of translation, is useful for my project — which is, first , to discuss the

origins of the work on gender and translation in Canada, which became the basis

for much subsequent work elsewhere (Flotow 2005), 1 and, second , examine some

of the limitations of this early material.

Here is the poem:

Simultaneous Translation (by Penn Kemp)

J’ai essayé et

J S A A A

J S A A

je ne suis pas capable / j’ai pensé tous les fois

je ne suis pas capable / j’ai pensé toutes les folles

jeune suivra capable jay pensé toutes les folles

gêne suivra cap pablum jay pensé toutes les folles

gêne sweep pa cap pablum jay pensy toutes les folles

june sweep pa cap pablum jay pensy toot les folles

june sweep pa cap pablum jay pensy toot lay falls

tant m’échappe mais j’embarque

taunt m’échappe mais j’embarque

taunt may chap may j’am barque

taunt may chap may jam bark

1. This forthcoming text is a compilation and analysis of the many different applications of ideas on

gender and translation, published in the wake of early Canadian initiatives.

Feminism in Translation: the Canadian Factor

Quaderns. Revista de traducció 13, 2006 13

car nous sommes toutes traductrices

car new sommes toutes traductrices

car new some toutes traductrices

car new some toot traductrices

car new sum too trad duke trees

car new sum too trad ostrich

dans un silence qui ne sait pas s’exprimer au langage masculin

dance un silence qui ne sait pas s’exprimer au langage masculin

dance on silence qui ne sait pas s’exprimer au langage masculin

dans on sill once qui ne sait pas s’exprimer au langage masculin

dance on sill once key ne sait pas s’exprimer au langage masculin

dance on sill once keen say pas s’exprimer en langage mask you lent

dance on sill once keen say pa s’exprimer au langage mask you lent

dance on sill once keen say pa sez primer au langage mask you lent

dance on sill once keen say pa sez primer oh langage mask you lent

dance on sill once keen say pa sez primer oh long age ask you lent

dance on sill once keen say pa sez preen eh oh long age mask you lent

essay on

essayons

The poem astounds and perplexes first of all by its juxtaposition and exploita-

tion of both French and English — starting from relatively «straight» French and

using fragmented English in ludic counterpoint. In a country of at least two major

cultures, that had until the 1960s and later been marked by «two solitudes» 2 (the

French vs the English), the bilingualism of the piece is first and foremost an appeal

to Canadian women to communicate. But it also presents some of the major topoi

of a certain type of feminist writing in Canada at the time, and displays some of

its formal qualities as well.

At the level of topoi , it opens with the expression of women’s (inculcated)

sense that they lack ability, «j’ai essayé, je ne suis pas capable, tant m’échappe»

(I have tried, I am not able, so much escapes me); it associates madness with female-

ness «je ne suis pas capable, j’ai pensé toutes les folles» (I am not able, I have

thought all the mad women). At the same time, the first person voice reacts against

this lack of ability, «tant m’échappe mais je m’embarque» (so much escapes me

but I head out anyway), and names the problem «dans un silence qui ne sait pas

s’exprimer au langage masculine» (in a silence that cannot express itself in masculine

language], having come to the realization that this language is so foreign for women,

that to use it means «nous sommes toutes traductrices» (we are all translators —

feminine plural). And now that these issues are on the table: the poet ends with an

exhortation «essay on», «essayons» (let us continue our efforts, let us try). To sum-

marize, and doubtless simplify terribly, women’s silence, their (perceived) lack of

2. Reference to Hugh MacLennan’s novel Two Solitudes that addresses the gap between English and

French culture and life in Canada.

14 Quaderns. Revista de traducció 13, 2006

Luise von Flotow

ability, and their own sense of this are the result of the imposed use of a language

that works against them, a masculine language that transcends the different individual

languages, imposing silence upon women, and forcing them to translate in order

to express themselves.

Formally, the poem plays with and bilingually deconstructs and reconstructs

language, demonstrating first of all that it is possible to do so, also an important

topos of this period, and that in so doing «jeune (je ne) suivra pas» (I will not fol-

low). Demonstrating further that language is a curiously coincidental assortment

of sound and sound progressions that move between languages as much as within

a language, especially in a situation of bilingualism, and biculturalism, it implies

that its formalization through conventions and traditions, into written form is a

further aspect of «le langage masculin» — orality being another important feminist

topos . How else can we understand the line «dance on sill once keen say pa

s’exprimer au langage mask you lent» — except perhaps to pull out items such as

«dance on sill» (an expression of crazily being on the edge?), the reference to «pa»

(father?), or «langage mask you lent» to associate «language» with «mask», i.e.

the cover-up behind which «pa» operates? This is all conjecture, of course, but

knowing something about the Canadian scene of that time, it is probably not all

wrong.

What is useful for my purpose — to identify some of the social and literary

bases for ideas on gender and translation in Canada —, is Kemp’s use of both

French and English, the métissage of the two languages in her text, and the order

in which she deploys them: French first, an indication of the strong influence of

French writing at the time, and English second, playing the ludic, deconstructive

game, perhaps taking some of the edge off the feminist agenda. The hybrid nature

of the text, its focus on translation, and on avant-gardist, oral, sound-play are all

elements that are significant elements in French Canadian women’s writing at the

time. But Kemp is one of the first English-Canadian poets/writers to work with

the deconstruction of syntax and sense and sound that had started in the mid-1970s

in Quebec, where the influence of post-structuralism, deconstruction, and French

influences on feminisms had been felt much earlier than in the rest of North America.

This particular set of circumstances of feminist activism and deconstructive

ludic writing and performance, enacted here by Penn Kemp, connected three impor-

tant elements: bilingualism, translation, and women’s agency as an integral part

of Canadian feminisms of the 1980s, a situation that was nurtured and developed

by a small interconnected web of women whose work provides a good example

of what Bourdieu would call a «groupe scientifique» that suddenly takes a not dis-

interested «interest» in a new idea. He writes:

Nous avons intérêt aux problèmes qui nous paraissent intéressants. Cela veut dire

qu’à un certain moment un certain groupe scientifique, sans que personne ne le

décide, constitue un problème comme intéressant: il y a un colloque, on fonde des

revues, on écrit des articles, des livres, des compte-rendus. C’est dire que «ça paie»

d’écrire sur ce thème, ça apporte des profits, moins sous forme de droits d’auteur […]

que sous forme de prestige, de gratifications symboliques, etc. (1980, 79).

Feminism in Translation: the Canadian Factor

Quaderns. Revista de traducció 13, 2006 15

We are interested in problems that appear interesting. At a certain moment a cer-

tain group of scholars will define a problem as interesting, without anyone in parti-

cular making that decision; they hold a conference, found journals, write articles,

books, reviews. In other words, «it pays» to write on that topic, it brings in rewards,

not necessarily royalties, but prestige, symbolic gratification… (my translation).

I don’t think that this description of how academic and/or literary fields devel-

op is particularly surprising or controversial anymore, though Bourdieu’s analy-

ses of such «strategies of distinction» (Fowler, 1997, 94) have been viewed as

cynical, sarcastic, anti-intellectual, attacks that Bourdieu brushes off as deriving

from the fact that his analyses «livre[ent] au premier venu les secrets réservés aux

initiés» (1980, 67) (his analyses give away the secrets that were reserved for spe-

cial initiates [my translation]).

In Canada of the 1980s, and in the sector of women’s writing/feminist writing,

this construction of «field» is clearly visible. Besides various public events such

as the «Women and Words» conference, special women’s publishing houses devel-

oped (The Women’s Press in Toronto, Editions de la pleine lune, and Editions

remue-ménage in Montréal are examples), magazines such as La vie en rose , and

journals such as Room of One’s Own quickly appeared. Women’s writing and pub-

lishing was in full swing. And so were the academic commentaries: within four

years, three anthologies of critical texts appeared, one entitled Féminité, Subversion,

Écriture (1983), another A Mazing Space (1986), another Gynocritics/La

Gynocritique (1987), all of which gave almost equal if not more space to articles

about Quebec women’s writing as they did to English-Canadian work, and were

edited by people intimately connected with the earlier Women and Words anthology,

people who also authored articles in the anthologies and/or wrote the bilingual

forewords, did the editing and the translation.

At the same time as anthologies of creative and critical work were appearing,

academic journals focused on women’s writing were being established; of special

interest is the journal Tessera , founded by four academics/writers, most of whom

also participated in the anthologies. It focuses specifically on women and language,

on translation and bilingualism in Canadian women’s writing, on the politics of

reading and writing. Finally, there was also translation: done by many of this same

group, largely of selected avant-gardist writing from Quebec, translations that

almost always included considerable translators’ introductions, commentaries, or

even short articles on the translations. 3 A Bourdieusian «field» had indeed been

created, and was expanding.

Throughout, the personal connections between the group of English-French

women writing and translating each other in Canada, the web of contacts and the

knots of power, which Bourdieu sees as the sources of social capital were expand-

ing, and with it the cultural and symbolic capital that comes with recognition for

the authors, and publication for the academics /intellectuals. The fact that people

3. I discussed these particular Canadian tendencies in «Feminist Translation: Contexts, Practices,

Theories», TTR, 1991.

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