Category Archives: Translations

Frames

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Frame One Salman Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 writes about a book of images by John Bishton and John Reardon called Home Front. He makes this point: But the significance of such a photographic essay as Home … Continue reading →

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Pending and Pensive

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Daphne Marlatt sharing a keynote with Nicole Brossard at a gathering in honour of translator and theorist Barbara Godard reminds us of the palpable work that play with language involves. ah, words wording the worder. so that her edges disappear … Continue reading →

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English Words on Stein in Japanese

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Kyong-Mi Park has translated Gertrude Stein into Japanese. In an essay “My Asian Bones Are Ringing” she muses on how the acquisition of any language is an encounter through the bones of the ears with the other. She reminds us, … Continue reading →

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Bearing With Loss

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Francois Lachance

There is an entry for Gilgamesh in The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage edited by Claude J. Summers. It is an inclusion that comes back to me when I read the version by Herbert Mason which opens It is an … Continue reading →

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Felicitous

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Francois Lachance

When I was teaching French I used to gather bilingual copy in an attempt to inculcate in students an appreciation for the well-turned phrase. A wrapper of Christie Premium Plus Biscuits/Crackers supplied me with this lovely pairing which comes across … Continue reading →

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Dice Incisions

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Francois Lachance

From a note dated 30/07/97 […] highly intriguing formulation: the production of randomness in a literary (machine) text is a safeguard against entropy. In one sense this is a homeopathic theory of semiotics. A certain degree of nonsense is incorporated … Continue reading →

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Handkerchiefs Waving

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Francois Lachance

“Brise Marine” in Stéphane Mallarmé: Selected Poetry and Prose is beautifully translated by Peter and Mary Ann Caws. Croit encore à l’adieu suprême des mouchoirs! is rendered most delicately as Has faith still in great fluttering farewells! So very felicitous. … Continue reading →

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Howard translating Deleuze describing

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Richard Howard translator of Proust & Signs by Gilles Deleuze renders a description of a party attended by characters who have aged. It is exquisite. Mme de Guermantes’s salon with the aging of its guests, makes us see the distortion … Continue reading →

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Translation and of Modals

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Take four modal categories Alethic (possible, impossible, necessary) Deontic (permitted, prohibited, obligatory) Axiological (good, bad, indifferent) Epistemic (known, unknown, believed) And think about their intersection through the lens of ekphrasis and the consideration of visual-verbal translations. I would like to … Continue reading →

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Re-entranced

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Francois Lachance

As an afterwards to Alice A. Parker’s remarks on translation to the effect that “Translation, like writing, opens up a quantum field of inquiry […]” I place this passage from Li Tongxuan Entry into the Realm of Reality as translated … Continue reading →

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