Between Translation and Traduction

Several translation paradoxes underlie the writing and translation of the classic Canadian novel, Two Solitudes, whose very title has come to symbolize the irreconcilable gap between Anglophones and Francophones in Canada. These paradoxes reflect the intercultural nature of the book’s themes, the contrary crossreadings of both the original and its translation (the book was well received by both groups for opposite reasons), the colonial position of both nascent English and Québécois literary institutions, and the absence, in both cultures, of any clearly defined horizon of expectations for literary translation. Using Antoine Berman’s distinction between the actual translation (or traduction) of a text and the reception process (or translation) in the receiving culture, one appreciates the need for a more extensive analysis of the reception (translation) process, an analysis that looks both backwards in time to identify the hidden translation intertexts within the original text (Two Solitudes is in fact a translation of a Québec novel, Trente Arpents), and forward in time to clarify how a translated text can inform the more general intercultural process of translation between two languages.