Literary translation in Canada : a survey

incl. ref.

Numéro spécial: "Histoire de la traduction au Canada"

It must seem strange that a country like ours which has accepted the ideaof fostering two languages and two cultures for over 200 years should have made such a small contribution in the way of translations, but the fact is that we lag behind most Western nations in this field. UNESCO statistics show Canada ranking somewhere between Iceland and Albania in annual production. Historically, next to no literary translation was published in Canada before 1920 (10 titles in English, 2 in French), and little enough during the next forty years (39 titles in English, 9 in French). There never has been any systematic attempt to translate major works of the other culture. Too often Canadians have not only been guilty of ignoring each other; they have struck the colonial posture and have left the iniciative of translating Canadian books to foreign translators publishing in London, paris or New York. In short, there is no tradition of literary translation in Canada.