The delicate translation of problematic words

Increasingly, we see texts from the past, forgotten or neglected, given new life through reprints or translations. This raises a tricky question: how to reproduce terms used then, but which are now obsolete or downright pejorative?

Mary Tison
The Press

The problem arose in particular with A land of mourning, translation of a story published in 1908, by Marchand de Feuilles last winter. In this book, Mina Benson Hubbard recounts the extraordinary expedition she made in 1905 to map northeastern Labrador with a team of Natives and Métis.

M^me Hubbard wanted to complete an expedition in which her husband had perished two years earlier. In the end, she was the one who took all the honors with a well-planned and well-executed expedition.

From the first page of her story, Mina Hubbard tells how her husband, then a child, liked to read an old geography textbook which included photos of First Nations people. In the original English text, Mina Hubbard used the word Indians. The term First Nations began to be used in the early 1980s to replace the word Indians.

“From the start, this word was a historical error,” recalls Charles Bender, animator, actor and translator of Huron-Wendat origin.

Eskimo is also a word to avoid: there are several theories as to its meaning (it could be “eater of raw flesh”, “person who laces his snowshoes” or even “person who speaks another language”), but one thing is certain, he comes from a language other than Inuktitut and he was certainly not chosen by the peoples of the North. They prefer the word Inuit, meaning “human being”, in Inuktitut.

“Eskimo is a very pejorative term,” stresses Charles Bender.

In A land of mourning, the Marchand de Feuilles publishing house and its translator, Bertrand Busson, have decided to replace these words with the modern equivalent. “For us, it was really obvious, testifies Mélanie Vincelette, editor of Marchand de Feuilles. I would have been unable to use the outdated terms, even if we are talking about a historical document here. »

Bertrand Busson believes that the use of these pejorative terms would have had a considerable impact on reading. “Using words that have such a baggage of violence, it means that we no longer see beyond, that we hang on to it, he says. It shocks. Which does not at all correspond to the pen of Mina Hubbard, in the end. »

Indeed, throughout the story, M.^me Hubbard has great admiration for his Native and Métis guides. “I sincerely believe that if Mina had participated in the translation of her book, she would have liked to revisit these outdated terms, and show all the respect she had for these people”, continues Mr. Busson.

A warning

Louis Hamelin, columnist, novelist and director of the American Eye collection at Éditions du Boréal, chose a slightly different path when translating dipper summersby Muriel Wylie Blanchet, released in 2020. In this autobiographical novel, M^me Blanchet recounts the 15 summers she spent sailing along the British Columbia coast in the 1930s with five young children.

For the translator, the difficulty lay not only in the terms used, but also, and above all, in the author’s attitude to the Aboriginal reality. “With her children, she explores villages that she considers abandoned, but in fact, they are simply left for the summer,” says Mr. Hamelin. They will appropriate objects. Today, that would almost be called grave robbing. »

He explains that at the time, Aboriginal cultures were considered to be on the verge of extinction.

Mr. Hamelin was, however, very aware of “the possibility of a reception problem”. He chose to keep the problematic terms and passages, but put a disclaimer at the beginning of the book to put them in context.

“Today’s reader should remember that at the time these lines were written [les années 1950], the concepts of cultural appropriation and postcolonial structures were still unknown,” he writes in this “Translator’s Note.” Louis Hamelin believes that a text should be kept as close as possible to its original state in order to understand the era in which it belongs.

Charles Bender, who translated the important Métis text Halfbreed with theater man Jean Marc Dalpé, advocates a case-by-case approach. “As a translator, I will look at the intention of the author,” he says

In some cases, it is a question of making the reader react, of drawing attention to the attitude of a character or even of emphasizing the gap between a bygone era and the contemporary era. In other cases, the problematic words bring nothing, quite the contrary.

“There is a certain degree of subjectivity. As a translator, you will test, you will make several versions. You may realize that the words Indian or Savage distract us from the importance of what is on offer, they get in the way. Or you can realize they’re supporting what we’re trying to convey. »

A land of mourning

Mina Benson Hubbard

leaf merchant

376 pages

Bear Summers

Muriel Wylie Blanchet

Editions du Boreal

264 pages