Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City

By Sherry Simon

Book Overview

The divided Montreal of the 1960s is very different from today's cosmopolitan, hybrid city. Taking the perspective of a walker moving through a fluid landscape of neighbourhoods and eras, Sherry Simon experiences Montreal as a voyage across languages. Sketching out literary passages from the then of the colonial city to the now of the cosmopolitan Montreal, she traces a history of crossings and intersections around the familiar sites and symbols of the city - the mythical boulevard Saint-Laurent, Mile End, the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Mont-Royal.

Translating Montreal follows the trajectories of adventurous cultural translators such as Malcolm Reid, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein - pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s - Pierre Anctil, whose translations from Yiddish to French are emblematic of the dramatic reroutings now occurring across the Montreal landscape, and contemporary writer-translators such as Gail Scott, Erin Mour , Jacques Brault, Michel Garneau, Nicole Brossard, and Emile Ollivier. Simon argues that translation is a dynamic and subtle tool for analysing cultural contact. An original take on cultural relations in the city, Translating Montreal explores the emergence of the "new" Montrealer. No longer "Franco-Qu b cois," "Anglo-Qu b cois," "immigrant," or "ethnic," the new Montrealer is a citizen of a mixed and cosmopolitan city.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773531084
• ISBN13: 9780773531086
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.5"