post-colonial_translation

Border writing in Quebec 61
‘my so bad english’. Working within different aesthetic projects, all three
use interlinguistic exchange as theme or method and place translation
at the heart of their creative work. Their work is self-consciously
provocative, jarring traditional alignments, blurring boundaries of
cultural identity, and writing against a cultural tradition which has been
deeply suspicious of the work of translation. 4
JACQUES BRAULT: THE TRANSLATOR’S
SIGNATURE
Jacques Brault’s Poèmes des quatre côtés, or ‘Poems of/from the four
sides’, is a slim volume, entirely in French, composed of four sets of
poems, interspersed with sections of prose and engravings. Each section
carries the designation of one of the four points of the compass. In the
prose texts, Brault proposes his thoughts on the process of ‘nontranslation’;
in the poems he illustrates the process.
Brault’s reflections on translation have several sources of inspiration.
A reader of Maurice Blanchot, Henri Meschonnic and Jacques
Roubaud, Brault is suspicious of the absolute separation between
‘original’ and ‘derivative’ poetic activity. He is attentive to the dynamics
of loss involved in all writing. His first comments in Poèmes des quatre
côtés evoke the physical situation of the poet-translator, uncertain of
his desire, then swept up by the appeal of strange words and voices.
Throughout the volume he emphasizes the creative aspects which are
common to both writing and translation, making all imaginative work
part of a dynamic relationship with otherness. But Brault insists as well
on the cultural weight of translation. As a member of a French-speaking
community in North America, he is intensely aware of the traditional
mistrust of translation which prevails in Quebec – translation most
often involving the massive importation of American cultural materials
onto the Quebec market. He wishes to propose a different use of
translation – one which will contribute to the cultural interests of
Quebec.
When Poèmes des quatre côtés first appeared some critics assumed
that the poems were ‘imaginative recreations’, others that they were
indeed translations. But none could be sure. Why Because Brault gives
no explicit indication of the original sources of the poems. He simply
explains, in one of the prose pieces, that he has been inspired by the
works of four English-language poets, Gwendolyn McEwen, Margaret
Atwood, John Haines and e.e. cummings, and that he has used their
poems to create new ones. He indicates the names of the volumes from