The search for a native language: translation and cultural identity

Abstract

In this chapter from her 1990 study, A Sociocritique of Translation , Annie Brisset studies recent Québécois drama translations that were designed to form a cultural identity in the service of a nationalist agenda. She relies on Henri Gobard’s concept of linguistic functions to describe the ideological force of Québécois French as a translating language. In the politicized post-1968 era, nationalist writers fashioned Québécois French into a native or mother tongue, a language of community. Between 1968 and 1988 Québécois translators turned this vernacular into the foundation of a national literature by using it to render canonical world dramatists, notably Shakespeare, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Brecht. In these translations, Québécois French acquired cultural authority and challenged its subordination to North American English and Parisian Typesetter : please add the following date at base of the first page of this chapter :1990/translated 1996French.

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