On the necessity to celebrate Indigenous translation as performance

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Radio-Canada is a Canadian public broadcaster also known as Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in English. “ICI Grand Nord” is the Northern Canada’s branch in the francophone sphere.

2 Reading the provocation piece, we are presented with another version. It now appears that Henitiuk and Mahieu changed their minds: “What the detailed discussion in our book demonstrates is that the published English rendition is a reworked text, by hands other than Markoosie’s, thus underscoring the intrinsic value of going back to the original” (our emphasis).

3 Using the word bastard, we are invoking Plato’s argumentation in Phaedrus about the author metaphorically viewed as a father of discourse (see Derrida 1981 for a discussion).

4 We are using here the metaphor proposed by Martin (2012, 7) inspired by Inuit stories in which animals wear their own skin.

5 Let us remind ourselves that it can be legitimate for an Indigenous author to seek for their work to be “arranged”, as Markoosie could have put it, for non-Indigenous people, see e.g. the discussion between the Sto:Loh writer Lee Maracle and her Settler publisher, Marc Côté (in Younging 2018, 22–23).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Faculty of Arts and Science, Concordia University.

Notes on contributors

René Lemieux

René Lemieux is an Assistant Professor in translation studies at Concordia University. His research focuses on the role of translation in Indigenous languages revitalization. He contributes to the Awikhiganisaskak Project, a group of scholars working in collaboration with Indigenous communities in the province of Québec for the preservation of their languages. He is also the lead researcher of the Observatoire de la traduction autochtone (Concordia University).

William Roy

William Roy is an MA student in translation studies at Concordia University. He is currently writing his master’s thesis on the translation of Indigenous languages in missionary writings in New France. His research contributes to the Awikhiganisaskak Project. He is the coordinator of the Observatoire de la traduction autochtone (Concordia University).