Category Archives: Translations

Entranced

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Alice A. Parker in the entry on Nicole Brossard in The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader’s Companion to the Writers and their Works from Antiquity to the Present edited by Claude J. Summers writes Translation, like writing, opens … Continue reading →

Posted in Reading, Translations | Leave a comment

Wrapper

Posted on February 20, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Drinking coffee, I found an interesting rendering for the cuff that supports the cup and protects the hand from the heat. In English it is called an “insulating sleeve”. In the French one reads about “cette gaine isolante” which back … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Parts, Patches, Processes

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Nathalie Stephens At Alberta. We are invited to partake of the morcellement of language. Translation, from the Latin, translates, for ‘carried across’. What we carry must be lifted and borne. What we carry risks further disintegration in the course of … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Leave a comment

Bridges

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Francois Lachance

In Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard we find the French: la poussière. On la disait de Pékin de Palmyre ou de Pompéi nous la paratagions à plien poumon on parlait de physiquement posséder la poésie Which Robert … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Translations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Humbling Exercise

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Peter Jay in the introduction to The Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Greek Epigrams gives pause — English has not always been spoken everywhere. Translation is an art of fiction. There is the fiction of the translator, who pretends to … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Leave a comment

Delicate Detical

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Francois Lachance

A transposition of letters. An accident. Detical. A hand-made hook which leads me to recall many years ago in my adolescence a slogan that adorned a billboard in Kapuskasing. The slogan “Keep Kap Klean” resisted translation or so it was … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Oink Omission

Posted on July 4, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Liner notes to a Compact Disc (1994 Berlin Classics 0011132BC) – compositions by Sofia Gubaidulina. Pierre Odinst translates Micheal Struck-Schloen’s text with the reference to the Bajan also known as the Schweinsorgel into French as baïan also know as l’orgue … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Leave a comment

Trapdoor

Posted on May 6, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Barbara Godard in the introduction to Tessera Volume 9 observes This position for the feminine as the spoken subject, rather than the subject of enunciation or subject of the utterance, poses difficulties for the woman writer. The French version differs … Continue reading →

Posted in Introductions, Translations | Leave a comment

Articles

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Georges Hugnet and Virgil Thomson find a fine way to translate a line from the portrait of Bernard Fay by Gertrude Stein. An article is a and an and the. is rendered Un article est un et une et le. … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Of Dandies

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Jean-Paul Daoust’s suite of prose poems Du dandysme contains a line sublime in its conveying of lassitude. Le dandy est une diva dans l’opéra d’une vie inutile. Easy enough to translate the beginning: “The Dandy is a diva” but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Translations | Leave a comment