Translate ... or transcreate?
The Philistine translator Sophie Voillot had a daring idea about how the novel needed to be translated. She and author Leila Marshy sat down to discuss their approach.
The Philistine translator Sophie Voillot had a daring idea about how the novel needed to be translated. She and author Leila Marshy sat down to discuss their approach.
It’s lunchtime, and the Café du clocher (88 av. Morel, Kamouraska), has a dozen or more tables in pretty tablecloths set out on the grass overlooking the St. Lawrence (there are tables indoors, as well). A gentleman has a basket of chanterelles he picked that morning in the woods nearby, and he’s selling them for $12 a pound. He has a guitar with him, and he sits down to play and sing as you sit down to an al fresco lunch of salad, smoked Kamouraska lamb and some of the local smoked fish.
Photo: Linda Leith
Eva Gonzalès, by Édouard Manet
In The Painter’s Lover, recently translated into French by Ellen Sowchek and Annie Heminway, Eduardo Manet tells the fabulous story of his grandmother Eva Gonzalès, a brilliant painter who was also Édouard Manet’s pupil, lover, and muse. Art lovers, take note!
Because one of the things that happens – and I cannot believe we do this as a society – is that there’s a decision: Is this a penis or a clitoris? If it’s decided it shouldn’t be a penis, then it’s removed. So, whatever it was, it could feel stuff, right? Whatever it was, it was the source of sexual ecstasy for that child’s future. And as part of our comfort level with being a society that wants to have no ambiguity, we don’t even think about that.
