Translating Montreal: Where Blueberries Are Not Myrtilles by Neil Smith
Last time I was in Paris, two men travelling on my train got into a fight when one dared address the other using tu.“Vous m’avez tutoyé, monsieur! Vous m’avez tutoyé!”A face was slapped. A beret was knocked askew.Their hullaballoo over tu reminded me of the time I was at my Montreal gym and asked a fellow if he’d finished with the bench press.“Avez-vous terminé?” I said.Looking vexed, he replied, “Pourquoi tu me vouvoies, ’stie?”If you haven’t lived in Quebec long, you might foolishly think Quebec French and French French, c’est du pareil au même.They aren’t the same diff. As a writer, you must understand this.Say you publish a novel in English that creates enough buzz that a publisher in France—call it Éditions Les Nombrilistes—buys French rights. You’re thrilled: your franco friends can discover what a creative artiste you are.Les Nombrilistes hire a Frenchman named Didier to translate your Mile End novel, The Fractured Hipster. Sadly, Didier has never set foot in Montreal.When Le branché débranché comes out, your young protagonist, Julian, buys his cigarettes chez l’Arabe, goes out with a nana, wears pull-overs and baskets, washes his clothes at a pressing, and eats myrtilles and pastèque. He swears by yelling, “Putain de merde!”Quebecisms—dépanneur, blonde, chandail, espadrilles, buanderie, bleuets, melon d’eau, câlisse—appear nowhere in your book. Didier and the Nombrilistes have Gallicized both Montreal and Julian to death.If this erasing of Quebec colour and culture happened to Leonard Cohen’s Les perdants magnifiques and Mordecai Richler’s Le monde de Barney, it can happen to Le branché débranché.Should you be upset? Would Michel Tremblay be peeved if that pregnant fat lady next door, in her English incarnation, watched the telly, travelled on the tube, ate crisps and swore by screaming, “Bollocks!”?How to ensure this tragedy doesn’t befall your hipster? Consider doing what Ann-Marie MacDonald did for Fall on Your Knees. In her contract with French publisher Flammarion, she specifically requested a Canadian translator, someone who can render an English Quebec story more faithfully.If your publisher still foists Didier on you, insist he preserve your novel’s Quebec colour. If your French is weak, have a Québécois friend read Didier’s translation far in advance of the pub date.Remind the publisher that if the book is too France-ified, the Quebec press will lampoon it and Quebec readers ignore it.Les Nombrilistes and Didier might insist les Français will be perdus and even démoralisés if they come across a word like dépanneur.Tell them that when you read a book set in, say, New Zealand, you don’t expect to understand every expression either, but the context usually helps you make a good guess.Tell them one of the joys of reading is discovering a new culture.Tell them les Français desperately need to learn that.And if they still argue with you, you may need to slap a few faces and trample a few berets.