GG and the City: What Canada’s Major Translation Award Reveals about Its Metropolises

Myriam Legault-Beauregard^*

University of Ottawa
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2540-043X

Literary culture in Canada is generally associated with the most populated cities, Toronto and Montréal. Linda Leith indicates that, until the 1960s, Montréal was the “heart of Canada” and the “cradle of contemporary Canadian literature in both English and in French” (17). Eventually, Toronto “emerged as the literary capital of Canada,” whereas Montréal became the literary capital of Quebec, in part because of “rival nationalisms” (21). Each of the “Two Solitudes” (to quote Hugh MacLennan’s famous title) therefore has its own literary headquarters. As Jane Koustas puts it, “Canadian translation practice is frequently blamed for the rift between the two solitudes while simultaneously, and paradoxically, summoned to reconcile them” (124).

Despite the funding mechanisms put in place by Canadian authorities to foster translation between the two main linguistic communities, such as funding by the Canada Council for the Arts, it is still common that Canadian literary works are translated abroad. Indeed, many of English Canada’s biggest literary stars have been translated in France (e.g., Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood, to quote a few examples from Koustas’s Les Belles étrangères: Canadians in Paris). After all, Paris—as Pascale Casanova’s works have proved—holds a special power when it comes to literary consecration. It is also true that some of Quebec’s best-known authors, such as Réjean Ducharme, have been published in France. Of course, other “centres of consecration” exist, as Rainier Grutman remarks (7), and Francophone writers can also benefit from having their books translated and published in New York or London. However, being published or translated in another country is not accessible to all, and Canada’s largest cities nowadays boast several publishing houses, whether for original books, or for translations. There are also other Canadian cities where literary activities, including translation, take place, and I intend, in this article, to explore to what extent this is the case.

My objective in this article, then, is to uncover the dynamics between Canada’s major literary centres as regards translation and, specifically, literary awards in that field. Arguably, as Owen Percy explains, literary awards “deserve . . . to be paid heed as cultural forces that can exert significant pressure on literary and actual markets, and that can also even (re)construct the fields that they propose to speak for in their consecrations” (8). For this purpose, I will investigate the places where finalist and award-winning translated books have been published, in their original language, and then in translation. Subsequently, I will consider the places where Canadian award-winning translators are domiciled. As will be seen, my research confirms that while Toronto is indeed predominant when it comes to English-language literature in Canada, Montréal still holds an important position in both languages, especially in the translation sector.

CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

To shed some light on the dynamics between cities where translations are published in Canada, I will use figures from an exhaustive database on Canadian prizes that I have created. The information about laureates was mainly obtained through the reports and websites of Canadian prize-granting organisations, such as the Canada Council for the Arts (henceforth CCA), which administers one of the most prestigious suites of literary prizes in the country, namely the Governor General’s Literary Awards (henceforth GG). This set of awards is divided into fourteen categories, seven in English (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Young People’s Literature—Text, Young People’s Literature—Illustrated Books, and Translation), and their respective equivalents in French. As for the data gathered about the translations of award-winning books, it was mostly collected through Aurora, the Library and Archives Canada catalogue which also queries the WorldCat search engine. My database, divided by literary genres, encompasses the titles of the winning books, the publishing houses, the dates of publication of the originals and of the translations (if any), the names of the authors and translators, as well as some sociodemographic data concerning them, and the cities and countries where the publishers are based. While most of the data relates to prizes won for original books, I have also created a special section for Canadian translation prizes in which I worked in the opposite direction: instead of querying whether an award-winning book had been translated, I sought to find information about the original books that had won an award in translation.

Significantly, translation prizes are much rarer than those awarded for original books, and they also obey different principles. As Juan Zapata and Valérie Le Plouhinec put it, “unlike their literary counterparts, which have been largely covered by the media and studied by field theory sociologists, translation prizes have not yet sparked much interest among researchers” (1, translation mine). In Canada, translators can aspire to a few of these distinctions, mainly: 1) the John Glassco Translation Prize, given by the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada (henceforth LTAC), which can only be won for a first book-length published translation, from any language; 2) the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation, which “is awarded in even-numbered years to the French translator of a book by an English Quebec author and in odd-numbered years to the English Quebec translator of a book by a French author” (Quebec Writers’ Federation); and, 3) most notably, the aforementioned GG Awards in the “Translation” (French-to-English) and “Traduction” (English-to-French) categories, for which all eligible genres are considered.

In the following section, I will take a closer look at the GG awardees and finalists in both categories from the inception of the prize until 2022. My decision to include the finalists is based on the fact that these categories have only existed since 1987: thus, including the finalists provides a more complete picture of the literary landscape in Canada. It is noteworthy that the CCA used to offer a prize for translations from 1973 to 1986, distinct from the GG, but this prize was not considered in this research, since information about it is no longer available. It should also be noted that the CCA “funds activities linked to the translation of Canadian literary works or dramatic works into French, English, an Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit or Métis) language . . . for Canadian publication or presentation” (“Translation”). Indeed, these grants attributed for Canadian works have important implications for what gets translated. The Council also organises an annual Fair of Translation Rights, which further emphasises the role which it plays in the industry. Another important point is that it can be misleading to consider the English-to-French and the French-to-English GG categories as symmetrical: on the one hand, the Canadian English-speaking public is far more numerous than the French, and on the other, the numbers of works submitted to the translation prize are somewhat unequal, although they can fluctuate from one year to another (on average, around 25 for French-to-English, and around 40 for English-to-French).

WHERE DO AWARD-WINNING BOOKS GET PUBLISHED?

A. THE ORIGINALS

When we consider the French books translated into English and then nominated for the GG, at the forefront is Montréal publisher Les Éditions du Boréal, with 32 nominations out of 166. It is followed by Leméac, also based in Montréal, with 26 nominations, including 5 translations of books by the prolific, canonised author Michel Tremblay. Three other Montréal publishers (Québec Amérique, XYZ, and VLB, with 8, 8, and 7 nominations, respectively), have also produced several originals. Many more Montréal-based publishers with fewer nominations are also represented in the database, for a total of 130 books (78% of finalists). Québec City comes in second place with 15 original books, from publishers Alto (6 nominations), Les Presses de l’Université Laval (4), L’Instant même (3), and Septentrion (2). Also, six original titles were published in Paris, but mostly within the first ten years of the prize’s existence, with only two more recent nominations: Perrine Leblanc’s Malabourg (2014, Gallimard), translated as The Lake by Lazer Lederhendler, a finalist in 2015, and Si tu m’entends, by Pascale Quiviger (2015, Albin Michel), also translated by Lederhendler, who won the prize for his translation, If You Hear Me, in 2020.

Perhaps it is a sign of Canada’s (or Montréal’s) literary vitality that we observe a decrease of award-winning translations of books originally published in France, but a broader comparison of all books published in the country and overseas would be necessary to contextualise these observations further. Considering the 36 laureate titles, 27 books (or 75%) were published in Montréal, three in Paris, two in Québec City, one in Trois-Rivières, one in Moncton, one in Chicoutimi (Saguenay),^[1] and one for which the location of the publisher is unknown. Clearly, from the inception of the prize, Montréal has dominated the landscape for the publication of French originals, especially with long-standing houses such as Boréal and Leméac, established in 1963 and 1957, respectively.

However, when it comes to where English originals are published, Toronto predominates. More than a hundred of the 157 titles^[2] nominated for the English-to-French category were originally published in Ontario’s metropolis. Identifying the very first publisher and city of publication can pose a problem for books written in English, more so than for French books, as English-language publishers often maintain imprints and divisions based in different cities, with fusions and acquisitions over the years. Furthermore, many books by well-known authors are published (simultaneously or within a few years) in Toronto, New York, and London. For these simultaneous releases, all the places were noted in the database; therefore, to state that more than a hundred titles were published in Toronto can mean that certain titles were, at the same time, published elsewhere.

The most frequently nominated original publishers were Knopf (22 nominations), McClelland & Stewart (16), Harper (12), Random House (12), and House of Anansi (8). When it comes to the laureates, 23 out of 36 (64%) were books published originally in Toronto. The cities where laureate titles were originally published—beside Toronto—were New York (3), Montréal (3), as well as one awardee each from Cambridge, MA (USA), Regina (Saskatchewan), London (UK), Edmonton (Alberta), Washington, DC (USA), and Kentville (Nova Scotia). The total was 35 rather than 36, since Greg MacArthur’s play The Toxic Bus Instrument was translated by 2011 laureate Maryse Warda from an unpublished document. Interestingly, the overall publication of English-language originals was more frequent in the United States than it was in Montréal. Only three laureate titles (1991, 2003, and 2004) were published there, out of nine finalists from that city. As for Vancouver, the third-largest metropolitan area of the country, it was home to eight nominated original titles, but no laureates. Hence, Toronto appears to be the main source of books that eventually get translated into French, if we base our knowledge on translations subsequently nominated for the GG. However, if we combine both language categories, we will see that more laureate books were originally published in Montréal (27 in French, and 3 in English) than in Toronto (23, in English only).

B. THE TRANSLATIONS

If we now consider the translations themselves, an overwhelming majority of the finalists in the GG English-to-French category were published in Montréal. Out of the 157 translated books that were finalists from 1987 to 2022, 131 (83%) were released by a publishing house based in Montréal. The percentage is slightly lower (29/36, or 81%) when we consider the laureates only. Québec City comes next, with 19 finalists (12%), including 5 awardees (14%). Hence, Montréal and Québec City are home to 96% of the translated books that have been finalists to this prize, and to 95% of the winning titles. As for the seven other cities or communities where finalists were published, the details of these nominations can be seen in Table 1, below. Bold font indicates that the book won the award.

Table 1 requires some commentary. Firstly, despite being described by most sources as a French writer (she was indeed born in France), Michèle Causse obtained her Canadian nationality in 1992 and some of her books, including this translation, were published by the now-defunct les Éditions Trois, in Laval, Montréal’s neighbour island. Marie José Thériault’s translation, published by Calmann-Lévy in Paris, is quite exceptional, since most translations published in France are authored by French, and not Canadian, translators, unless we consider co-publishing projects where a French and a Canadian publisher work together (cf. Beaulieu and Buzelin). The year 2020 seemed to be the most diverse in terms of places of publication, and the fact that two of the three jury members lived outside of Quebec can prove instructive. Nonetheless, in recent years we seem to be witnessing a certain diversification in the publishers’ headquarters, with six titles published outside of Montréal or Québec City since 2016, compared to only three in the period between 1987 and 2015. The fact that the CCA now insists on (regional) diversity in its guidelines for jurors may suggest an explanation. Verifying all the books submitted to the prize over the years of its existence is beyond the scope of this article, but it would be worthwhile to see how many publishers outside of Montréal and Québec City submit their books, and to check if they are nominated more or less often than their counterparts from bigger cities.

Let us take a closer look at the publishers. Of all the 157 finalists, as many as 51 translations (32%) were published by the Montréal-based Éditions du Boréal, including 14 of the 36 laureates (39%). The next most often nominated Montréal publishers are Leméac, with 9 nominations (6%), including two laureates (6%), Éditions Québec Amérique, with 9 nominations (6%), including one laureate (3%), and Les Allusifs,^[3] with 8 nominations (5%), among which were two laureates (6%). As for Québec City, Alto, a publisher founded in 2005, already represents 13 finalists (8%), including 3 laureates (8%).

Whereas Montréal and Québec City alone account for nearly all the English-to-French finalists, with only a few publishers represented on the list, the situation seems, at first glance, to be more triangular for the other language pair, since most of the finalist publishers are distributed between Toronto (89/166, or 54%), Montréal^[4] (35/166, or 21%), and Vancouver (27/166, or 16%). These figures must be put into perspective by considering the actual laureates. Toronto, with 22 of the 36 winning books, holds a higher proportion of laureates (61%), while Montréal’s rate of victories is similar to its rate of nominations, with 8 awardees (22%). Vancouver, however, is home to only 3 winning titles (8%), even though it holds an appreciable share of nominations. Only two nominated publishers are based in Vancouver: Talonbooks (with 21 nominations^[5]—including 3 laureates) and Douglas & McIntyre (with 6 nominations). If we look at Montréal, a few different publishers appear in the list, but Véhicule Press (with 10 nominations, including 4 laureates) and McGill-Queen’s University Press (with 2 laureates among 7 nominated books published in Montréal, or in Montréal and Kingston) have the best record. Toronto’s publishers garnering the most nominations are Coach House Books (18 finalists, including 4 awardees), and House of Anansi (17 finalists, including 4 awardees). House of Anansi, founded in 1967, stands out as one of the publishers listed both for originals and translations, while bigger publishers are more often associated with originals, and smaller independent publishers (or university presses)—with translations.

There are 11 locations—besides Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver—where finalist books were published, so the landscape seems more diverse than in French, with 7 cities (other than Montréal and Québec City) where French-language finalist publishers were located. Table 2, below, shows which titles and translators were published outside of the three largest cities in Canada. Again, bold font indicates a laureate.

Let us note that there are three laureates on this list, while there was only one for French. The genres are also more diverse, with all categories represented except for drama. It is also interesting that three of the translations published in the Atlantic provinces originate from the same translator, Jo-Anne Elder, who does live in this area, while the ones published in Winnipeg originate from people living in Montréal (Hugh Hazelton) or in Nova Scotia (Ben Vrignon). The case of Susan Ouriou, who lives in Alberta and is the translator of many finalist titles published in that province, is also noteworthy, since she has been nominated for translations published in other Canadian cities, particularly Toronto and Vancouver.

In summary, while most of the translation activity is concentrated in Montréal—especially into French, but into English as well—not that many award-winning English books were originally published in Montréal. Toronto, for its part, appears to be the main source of books that are eventually translated into French, and also the place where a little more than half of French-to-English translations get published—although, as the next paragraphs will show, few translators reside in the Ontarian metropolis.

WHERE ARE THE TRANSLATORS BASED?

Information on where the translators live (or have lived) was obtained from biographies, publishers’ websites, or other sources, such as archived CCA press releases, the LTAC’s directory, and even social media. It was much easier to find biographical information about those translating from French to English than the other way around, in part because many of the Francophone translators seem to have retired earlier than their Anglophone counterparts. English-speaking translators were sometimes still active, or their illustrious literary career meant that their lives are well documented in encyclopaedias or academic sources. They also seem to be more inclined to include their place of residence in their official biographical notices. Another challenge was the fact that some translators had moved in the course of their career, but the exact moment was impossible to pinpoint without reaching out to the translators themselves—a step that was not possible in the context of this research. A distinction must also be made between the number of finalist books and the actual number of people nominated, since many translators have had this honour more than once. The fact that some worked in tandem also needed to be considered.

Among the 66 individual translators who have been finalists in the French-to-English category, 18 cities or towns of residence were represented in total. Most translators were living in urban areas in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, as shown in Table 3.

It is worth mentioning that among the 34 Montrealer finalists, many were nominated several times, including Sheila Fischman (19 times), Lazer Lederhendler (10 times), David Homel (10 times, including 4 with Fred A. Reed), Fred A. Reed (9 times altogether), Linda Gaboriau (9 times), Rhonda Mullins (7 times), Patricia Claxton (6 times), Donald Winkler (6 times), and others, which means that a large majority of the finalist titles (116 out of 166, or 70%) were translated by someone (or two people) living in Montréal. Most of the finalists who worked in tandem—twelve pairs in total—were living in the same city, usually in Montréal or in the Ottawa/Gatineau region. In an age of digital communication, one could think it has become easier to collaborate across the country, but the only two exceptions were the 2007 finalists Robert Majzels (Vancouver Island) and Erin Mouré (Montréal), as well as the 2021 finalists Helge Dascher (Montréal) and Rob Aspinall (Guelph).

Considering the laureates only, out of the 36 winners of the French-to-English prize, 30 (83%) were from Montréal. Among the remaining six, there is Robert Majzels (awardee in 2000), a long-time Montrealer now established in British Columbia, and two other translators domiciled in Quebec: Judith Cowan (2002, Trois-Rivières) and D. G. Jones (1993, originally from Ontario, but has lived a long time in the Eastern Townships). Little information is available about 1991 laureate Albert W. Halsall, but archival records indicate that at the time he was a professor at Carleton University, Ottawa. The other two laureates, who live further from Quebec’s metropolis, are Susan Ouriou (2009, finalist six more times) from Calgary, Alberta, and Wayne Grady (1989, finalist three more times), from Kingston, Ontario.

None of the laureates—and only a handful of the finalist French-to-English translators—were associated with Toronto: Patricia Sillers (1987), Agnes Whitfield (1992), Bobby Theodore (2000), Liedewy Hawke (2002, 2004, 2008, and 2010) and Vivian Felsen (2018). Among these, Agnes Whitfield had lived for a long time in Montréal before moving to teach at York University, and was likely still living in Ontario in 1992 when she was nominated. This is not to say, however, that Toronto has no translation activity. In Traverser Toronto, Nicole Nolette has emphasised the importance of several theatre translators from that city, most notably John Van Burek, a translator of many of Michel Tremblay’s plays—not among the GG finalists, however. Nolette also stresses that Bobby Theodore—another Torontonian drama translator, and GG finalist in 2000—was highly influenced by Montréal translators Linda Gaboriau, Maureen Labonté, and Shelley Tepperman, all GG translation prize finalists. Interestingly, theatre (as well as young people’s literature) accounts for a small percentage of translations nominated for the GG, in both language pairs.

As regards the places of residence of English-to-French translators, an obvious difference with the other language pair is the number of nominated tandems: 36, i.e. three times more than for French-to-English. Among these, husband-and-wife Paul Gagné and the late Lori Saint-Martin were finalists 23 times, and laureates 4 times. Both used to live in Montréal, like most of the other translators, regardless of the language pair. Indeed, 108 out of 157 books (69%) were translated by at least one person living in Quebec’s metropolis, a slightly lower percentage than for French-to-English (70%). Most winning books, too (23 out of 36, i.e. 64%) were translated by someone domiciled in this city; surprisingly, however, that represents a lower number than in the other language combination (with 30, or 83%, of the laureates living in Montréal). 83 individual English-to-French GG finalists were identified, whereas only 66 different French-to-English individual translators were nominated. Not surprisingly, a few more cities or towns (23, compared to 18 for the other language combination) were represented. Most translators lived in Québec City (6) and Ottawa (4)—after Montréal, of course, home to at least 48, not counting those who live in its suburbs.

MONTRÉAL’S HEGEMONIC PRESENCE IN THE TRANSLATION UNIVERSE

Montréal’s role in the translation industry is quite understandable, if one takes into account the fact that both Francophone and Anglophone communities have been very active on the literary scene since the foundation of the city. Surely, with several universities teaching literary arts (including translation), a considerable number of publishing houses, an important annual book fair, as well as numerous bookshops, libraries, and other cultural venues, Montréal has the potential to attract and retain translators, whether they work in French or English. As Sherry Simon points out, a third language important to Montréal has been Yiddish (Villes 191): its new bridges with the Francophone community, thanks to scholar and translator Pierre Anctil, are amply described by Simon (Translating 96–97). Interestingly, many recent GG finalist books touch on matters related to Yiddish, as well as, more broadly, Jewish communities in Montréal. Apart from the works of the aforementioned Anctil (2018 and 2022), examples include poems by A. M. Klein (2007), and Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné’s recent retranslations of Mordecai Richler’s novels.

As a cosmopolitan city, Montréal is also home to many other languages, and thus conducive to other interactions with the two official language communities. Indeed, according to Daniel Chartier, “migrant literature has become one of the emblems of the end of the 20th century, especially in Quebec” (303, translation mine), and among the most successful literary figures of the province are newcomers whose first language was neither of the main languages (e.g., Kim Thúy with Vietnamese or Caroline Dawson with Spanish), but who decided to write in French, and have subsequently been translated into English—in itself proof of recognition.

Nick Mount states that Montréal has been “the centre of poetry in Canada since the 1920s” (96), but argues that the CanLit boom is actually the “story of how Toronto finally became the cultural capital English Canada never had” (11). The data on translation of award-winning books show, however, that Montréal remains an important hub of this literary activity. Other Francophone cities might become more visible in the future: Québec City, with publisher Alto leading the way, has been gaining ground in the last two decades, with many of its celebrated translators also being well-known authors, such as Catherine Leroux and Dominique Fortier. A few kilometres away, in the Wendake community, the future of Les Éditions Hannenorak, founded in 2010, also looks promising, with author and translator Daniel Grenier (an acclaimed novelist himself) being nominated twice in recent years for translations of Cree writer Dawn Dumont. Indigenous literature is gaining popularity with the public and juries since the last decade, as awareness related to First People’s realities increases. However, Ottawa, the capital, seems to play a modest part in the literary translation publishing industry, despite being situated at the border of Quebec and Ontario, home to many bilingual individuals, and the exact place where the GGs are managed and awarded by the CCA. A few very successful translators, with several nominations each—such as Daniel Poliquin, himself a recognised author—are domiciled there, but not as many as we might expect for such a region. Nevertheless, with Les Éditions L’Interligne’s new collection “Vertiges/Traduction,” we may see more titles from Ottawa in the coming years, as with Benoit Laflamme in 2022.

CONCLUSION

The presented data generally corroborates what has been observed before: original English books are mostly published by bigger houses in Toronto, mostly translated in Montréal, by Montrealers, and then brought out in translation either in Toronto, by smaller presses, or in Montréal, sometimes in Vancouver. As for French books, most of them are published in Montréal, both originally and in translation, also by Montrealers. I have not investigated the places of residence of all the original authors, but just among the finalists we can find several Anglophone authors currently residing in Montréal—some of them, like author and translator David Homel, cumulating two roles. This would then be another relevant set of data to study. Hence, the notion that Montréal is losing ground to Toronto would need to be nuanced by these observations around translation and prizes.

For instance, examining all the submitted books and their provenance would help contextualise these numbers further. Boréal, for example, has been nominated often, but it would be informative to compare its success rates to those of newer publishers, such as Alto. Much could also be gathered from the differences between bigger commercial English language publishers and smaller independent presses. It would also be very helpful to study the respective locations of the jury members who picked these particular finalists and laureates: do the jurors’ surroundings influence their tastes, and are they more likely to choose books that relate to life in bigger cities? To what extent does being domiciled in an urban setting influence the number of contracts that a translator can obtain, as there are surely more networking opportunities for city dwellers? And how do translators, mostly living in Montréal, get in touch with publishers, located mostly in Toronto? The role of the Translation Rights Fair, organised every year since 2011 by the CCA, should also be examined further in that regard. Certainly, the fact that, since 2016, the Fair has been held during the “Salon du livre de Montréal” reinforces the idea that this city plays a central role on the translation scene. Finally, does the fact that many authors and translators live in metropolitan areas mean that award-winning books mostly tell urban stories? A close reading of these books would be an apt way to see which Canadian cities are depicted, and in what manner. That, however, is beyond the scope of this article, which I see as pointing towards possible further research in this exciting field.