Gender, Genetics, Translation: Encounters in the Feminist Translator’s Archive of Barbara Godard

Gender, Genetics, Translation

Gender, Genetics, Translation: Encounters inthe Feminist Translator’s Archive of BarbaraGodardEva C. Karpinski

York University, Canada

[email protected]

The article demonstrates the usefulness of textual genetics incorroborating the dynamic, process-oriented concepts of translationdeveloped by feminist translation theorists. Focusing on the Canadianscholar and translator Barbara Godard, the paper examines hertranslation manuscripts of Nicole Brossard’s L’Amèr: ou lechapitre effrité (1977) and Amantes (1980), published inEnglish as These Our Mothers (1983) and Lovhers (1986). Theauthor argues that genetic analysis has a potential to challengeconventional understandings of translation as a linear transfer ofmeaning in the exchange of equivalences and can supply evidencethat translation is a multidirectional, recursive, and dialogical processof thought and transformation, a creative combination rather than atransparent substitution of meaning. The graphic markings, layerings,and inscriptions on the archival drafts reveal complex intersubjectiveand interdiscursive foldings at the heart of translation and exposetranslation as a series of temporal re-readings. They bring into viewdifferent encounters and relationalities and reaffirm the view oftranslation as a cultivation of friendship and collaboration.

1. Introduction

Genetic criticism, which has been around since theearly 1970s, has had a relatively slow impact inNorth America, compared to other French intellectualimports such as poststructuralist critical theoryand deconstruction.1 More recently, textual geneticsas a study of the creative process, focused on the

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examination of authorial drafts, notes, manuscripts,proofs, and other documents that have come beforethe published text, has been associated with therevival of philological scholarship or thereinvention of “radical philology” as an antidote tothe predominance of cultural studies approaches inAnglo-American literary studies (Kinderman, 2009, p.8). Genetics occupies an interesting, if notslightly paradoxical, position: it marries a solidpositivist science grounded in archival researchwith poststructuralist philosophical theories of thetext as an endless proliferation of possibilities;it works from a double perspective of the text’sproduction and reception; it restores temporality tothe text while simultaneously refusing to privilegeeither strictly originary or teleological thinkingabout the text’s constitution; and, finally, itdemands that we immerse ourselves in and rigorouslystudy verbal environments and contexts rather thanmerely reconstruct “the sequential history” of thetext’s creation (Bellemin-Noël, 2004, p. 31). As theinterest in genetic criticism in Canadian andAmerican universities seems to be steadily growing,ecompassing interdisciplinary exploration of thegenesis of works of art in literature, theatre, andmusic,2 the theoretical and practical possibilitiesof textual genetics in translation studies stillremain largely unexplored.

This paper aims to demonstrate the usefulnessof genetic methods in corroborating the dynamic,dialogical, and process-oriented concepts oftranslation, put forth by feminist translationtheorists. Drawing on the work of the Canadianscholar and translator Barbara Godard, I examinedifferent drafts of her translation of NicoleBrossard’s L’Amèr: ou le chapitre effrité (1977) and Amantes(1980), the former published in English as These OurMothers (1983), the latter as Lovhers (1986). Godard’spapers are preserved in the Barbara Godard Fonds inthe Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections atYork University in Toronto, where Godard had worked

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as a professor until her death in 2010. Looking atthe extant versions of her manuscripts, roughdrafts, notes, and correspondence, I focus ofnecessity on a few selected passages of Godard’stranslation of Brossard’s texts. In doing this, Iadapt freely Pierre-Marc de Biasi’s strategy of“internal” genetics that traces the modifications asthey occur in a particular paragraph or passage(2004, p. 61). Figures 1 and 2 reproduce side-by-side the parallel fragments from Brossard’s L’Amèrand Amantes and Godard’s These Our Mothers and Lovhers intheir respective French and English versions. I willreturn to the passages in Figures 1 and 2 in thecourse of my analysis and will juxtapose them withtheir earlier rough draft versions in order to gainsome insight into the genetic development ofGodard’s translation. I argue that the geneticapproach has a potential to challenge clichéd andconventional understandings of translation as alinear transfer of meaning in the exchange ofequivalences and can supply evidence thattranslation is a multidirectional, recursive, anddialogical process of thought and transformation, acreative combination rather than a transparentsubstitution of meaning. Working in the translator’sarchive brings to light the invisible confluence ofcreativity, collaboration, and research that informGodard’s project of literary translation.

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Figure 1: Two sections from L’Amèr (p. 83) and TheseOur Mothers (p. 85).

Since the early 1980s, Godard was instrumental inmaking available to Anglo-Canadian readers radicalfeminist thought from Quebec. She practiced andencouraged translation and dissemination offrancophone women’s writing, through conferences andpublishing venues such as the Coach House QuebecTranslation Series and the bilingual feministjournal Tessera, which she co-founded in 1982. Shetirelessly promoted especially the work of NicoleBrossard, with whom she developed a long-timefriendship and collaboration. Godard begantranslating L’Amèr already in 1979, and continuedworking on this project for three and a half years.Her work on Amantes took longer and was completedbetween the years 1981-1986. Over the years, shealso published translations of Brossard’s PictureTheory (1991; revised and reprinted 2006), and Journalintime (1984; translated as Intimate Journal, 2004).3 Inaddition to translation, Godard also authoredseveral critical essays on Brossard as well asbiographical entries in British and Americanencyclopedias and literary dictionaries. L’Amèr andAmantes, together with Le sens apparent (translated as“Surfaces of Meaning”), form the so-called lesbiantriptych, in which Brossard rewrites female agencyby inscribing political lesbian identity as achallenge to patriarchal institutions. In L’Amèr shecoins the term fiction théorique, fiction theory, whichhas been embraced by other feminists in Canada as acreative-critical practice of revealing male-dominated representations of women and opening upthe space for women’s self-expression. As Godardexplains, fiction theory is “a narrative, usuallyself-mirroring, which exposes, defamiliarizes and/orsubverts the fiction and gender codes determiningthe re-presentation of women in literature and inthis way contributes to feminist theory” (1994, p.59). Inspired by the deconstruction of patriarchallanguage in both Anglo-American radical feminism

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(e.g., by Mary Daly and Dale Spender) and Frenchpoststructuralist feminism (e.g., by Hélène Cixousand Luce Irigaray), Canadian second-wave feministdebates on women’s exclusion from the patriarchalsymbolic order and language have given rise tometaphors of women as living in translation, forcedto use man-made idioms and inhabit dscourses thatare not their own.

Figure 2 The opening passages of the section called“Le barbizon” and “The barbizon Hotel for Women”from the published versions of Amantes (p.62-66) andLovhers (p. 60-62)

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2. Theorizing Feminist Translation in Canada

The emergence of feminist translation studies inCanada in the mid-1980s was an unprecedentedphenomenon. The reasons why a powerful theoreticaland practical interest in translation developed inthis national context are related to the remarkableconjunction of favourable circumstances, such asCanada’s official bilingualism and the government’ssupport of translation programs as part of itsmulticultural politics; the flourishing ofexperimental feminist writing in Quebec; thepresence of academic cultural mediators; and thevibrant scene of feminist cultural production,including feminist conferences and journals thatsustained the Anglophone-francophone exchanges.Godard pioneered early definitions and concepts offeminist translation in her talks at the Women andWords/Les femmes et les mots conference in Vancouver in1983 and in the 1984 and 1986 conferences ontranslation in Montreal. She was not the onlyfeminist translator working in Canada in the 1980sand 1990s. Other practitioners active in the fieldwho either translated feminist texts or self-consciously identified as feminist translatorsincluded Linda Gaboriau, Marlene Wildeman, PatriciaClaxton, Susanne Lotbinière-Harwood, Louise vonFlotow, and Howard Scott, the only man who describedhimself as a feminist translator (Flotow, 1991, p.71). Like Godard, Lotbinière-Harwood and von Flotoware also feminist translation theorists whosecontributions, next to those of Kathy Mezei, SherrySimon, and Annie Brisset, have helped to shape thediscipline of Canadian translation studies. Godardhas subsequently elaborated a feminist theory oftranslation in such essays as “The Translator asShe” (1985), “Theorizing FeministDiscourse/Translation” (which first appeared in the1989 issue of Tessera, “La Traduction auféminin/Translating Women”), and “Translating (with)the Speculum” (1991). In her approach totranslation, she always takes a gendered,

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politicized angle and considers translation in itsmultiple modalities as theory, institution, process,and craft.

In general, feminist theories of translationarticulate the critiques of masculinist models andemphasize female agency. The special alliancebetween feminism and translation is apparent intheir critical interrogation and rejection ofuniversal standards of meaning and value; theircommon challenge of traditional gender roles andhierarchies; and their shared focus on language asan instrument of social construction, historicallymarked by sexism and exclusion. Feminist discourseis viewed as always already double and translative,both in its recuperative thrust to inscribe women’sexperiences that have been erased or mis-representedwithin the dominant discourse, and in itsdeconstructive thrust to expose patriarchalstereotypes and images of women’s lives. Similarly,feminist translators “foreground female subjectivityin the production of meaning” (Simon, 1996, p. 13)by challenging several traditional tenets ofmainstream theories of translation. Thus the conceptof fidelity to the original that supports thehierarchical relation between source and targettexts is replaced by a greater freedom of invention,inviting an active intervention into the text in theprocess of translation as “transformance” ordialogical re-writing (Godard, 1990, p. 90). In “TheTranslator as She” (1985), Godard launches herclassic definition of translation as “creativetransposition” or re-writing in the feminine andalready insists on translation as a necessarybetrayal, or as fidelity to both languages.Consequently, the source-target duality isabandoned, opening up the intersubjective,interstitial, and productive “in-between” space oftranslation. Flaunting her presence, “the translatoras she” is an active reader becoming a writer, a co-producer of meaning rather than a passiveamanuensis. In “Theorizing Feminist

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Discourse/Translation” (1990), Godard gives thefullest articulation of her critique of a mimetictheory of translation based on transparency andequivalence, premised on the erasure of thetranslator’s mediating presence and the assumptionof a direct transfer of meaning from one language toanother. “A poetics of transparency” suppresses “thetranslator-function” and renders invisible thetranslator’s “manipulative work,” or what she calls“womanhandling” the text (Godard, 1990, p. 94). Byleaving the visible traces of the translator’ssignature in the text, this “anti-traditional,aggressive and creative approach to translation”(Flotow, 1991, p. 70) reinstates difference as apositive value and redefines the translator’sagency. Passivity and self-effacement give way tothe translator’s new authority as a co-creator ofthe text, its literary critic, cultural commentator,scholar, and artist. Similarly, a conscious,politically and ethically motivated interventioninto the text replaces the traditionally assumed,ideological neutrality of translation.

The feminist translator’s political andethical stance is manifest in such transgressive andcontroversial practices as “highjacking” the text(Flotow, 1991, p. 74), which may take the form ofremoving the misogynist content hostile to thetranslator’s agenda. Such feminist appropriation ofthe text is clearly a sign of politicizedtranslation. In her discussion of different types ofstrategies adopted by feminist translators, Luisevon Flotow mentions the importance of prefacing andfootnoting, in addition to “highjacking” andsupplementing, that is, compensating for thedifferences between languages (1991, pp. 74-75).Indeed, the translator’s preface accompanies everyone of Godard’s translations of Brossard, offeringtheoretical reflection on feminist translationpoetics to a wider audience. These prefaces performseveral functions, such as situating the work withinthe author’s oeuvre; providing a philosophical

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context for the work; assisting the reader inunderstanding the translated text by offering aninterpretation or a critical analysis thataccompanies the translation; flaunting thevisibility of the translator; and explicatingspecific lexical, semantic, or grammatical choices,especially given the fact that translation fromFrench into English involves moving “into aframework that tends to impose a different set ofdiscursive relations and a different construction ofreality” (Godard, 1986, p. 7). The challenges oftranslating from French into English are compoundedin Brossard’s language-centred, experimental textsthat call for innovative and creative solutions onthe part of the translator, confronting her with“the limits of translatability” (Godard, 1986, p.11). In particular, what contributes to the effectof mobility, multiplicity, and indeterminacy isBrossard’s frequent use of ellipsis, parataxis,wordplay, neologisms, and rich intertextuality, inaddition to her rejection of linear narrative,anecdote, and “representational detail” (Godard,1986, p. 9). Moreover, Godard’s prefaces areususally self-reflexive, performative pieces, whichsituate the translator in relation o the text, oreven theorize the role of the translator’s prefaceas a genre, as she does in introducing Lovhers. Ihave written elsewhere that she endorses a theory oftranslation as an act of reading and interpretationthat entails multiple pleasures stemming from thefascination with language, its infinite generativepower, its rhythms and wordplay (Karpinski, 2011, p.127). Indeed, similar to the way she ends her briefpreface to These Ours Mothers with an exhortation tothe reader “to make this the text of bliss it worksto be“ (Godard, 1983, p. 1), she concludes thepreface to Lovhers with “Reader, the pleasure of thetext is now yours” (1986, p. 12).

It might be useful at this point to engagepolemically with Rosemary Arrojo’s critique of“orgasmic” theories of translation proposed by

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feminist translation theorists such as SusanBassnett, Lori Chamberlain, Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, and Godard herself, whom Arrojo accuses ofperpetuating a similar form of sexualized violencethat they expose in masculinist models oftranslation exemplified by George Steiner. How isGodard’s experience of jouissance or “womanhandling”the text more innocent than Steiner’s idea of“penetration,” or “appropriative rupture” (Arrojo,1995, p. 69)? In collapsing feminist and non-feminist manipulations of the translated text intoviolence, Arrojo adopts a gender-neutral stance andignores the fact that power dynamics in translationmimic the social dynamics of gender inequality.However, the pleasure conceptualized in feministtranslation is collaborative and mutual, experiencednot from the position of domination but rather as arespectful and/or playful approach toward an other.

In Godard’s translation of L’Amèr, we find manyexamples of the intrusive strategies described byvon Flotow. There are translator’s notes andfootnotes, identifying sources for quotations thatremain anonymous in the source text, or explicatingthe meaning of such words as strix or promeneuse, usedby Brossard. Figure 1 shows two instances of thetranslator’s striking graphic intervention into thetext, intended to compensate visually for thepolysemic character of the source text. Brossard’scoinage la mourriture requires two words in English:“the feed/the dead,” similar to la bouche remue, whichbecomes “the mouth moves/moults. In both casesGodard opts for an experimental, graphically“blended” representation of the doubled meanings,breaking away with linear print. On the other hand,the archival dossier contains one of the earlierdrafts of the second passage on page 85 (Figure 1),which reveals her constant self-questioning andrestraint. Before translating the sequence la mer lesfilles roses sirens into “the sea pink girls sirens,” shetoyed with inserting the graphic symbol that wouldallow her to sound out all the meanings one hears in

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la mer (l’amèr, la mère, and la mer), but decided toremove it in the published version. Eventually, thissymbol has found its way to the title page of thebook (Figure 3). There is evidence in the archivethat, contrary to Arrojo’s stipulation, Brossardloved Godard’s creative interventions. In her letterto Godard, written on January 27, 1983, Brossarddeclares: “J’aime le titre et je crois qu’un(e)bonne maquettiste devrait donner au S tout sondéplorement” [I love the title and hope that a goodpage designer will give an S its full deployment].One can judge the results of her expectationslooking at Figure 3.

Figure 3: The title page of Godard’s publishedtranslation of L’Amèr, Coach House QuebecTranslations

3. The Confluence of Textual Genetics and FeministTranslation

The program of genetics to capture the movement of“textualization,” or to show the text’s multiple“becomings,” resonates positively with language-conscious theories of textuality and representation

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that fuel feminist translation studies. Geneticcriticism, which places the creative process at thecentre of its inquiry, is compatible with feministviews of translation as creative generation.Feminist scholars reject the notion of unitarylanguage and the text as a monolithic, self-contained whole, instead setting in motion anintertextual play of signification and, in a way,accepting “the idea of genesis as an open-endedaesthetic, or logic, of possibility” (Deppman et al,2004, p.5). Unlike poststructuralists, for whomintertextuality and free-play of signifiers aresynchronously present in any text, geneticists“privilege historical development and context”(Deppman et al, 2004, p. 5) and, like feministtranslation theorists, acknowledge the importance ofsocial, economic, and cultural forces such as genderthat influence the text’s development. A geneticanalysis of an “avant-texte” recoverable from thetranslator’s archive requires that we change ourunderstanding of the process of translation, whichin terms of traditional translation studies involvesa transfer of meaning from the source text to thetarget text (S>T). A genetic criticism’s notation oftranslation would account for its multiple temporalunfoldings ((S>T1, T2, T3…). Figures 1 and 2illustrate what a translation studies scholar cansee when s/he puts the source and the target textsside-by-side. What happens in between these two axes(of source-target) is invisible. Presented as the“original” and the “translation,” thesecorresponding French and English passages from thetexts published by Brossard and Godard, flank theinvisible scene of translation from which traces ofperformance, temporality, and process have beenerased.

Applied to the translator’s archive, textualgenetics can restore the dynamic visibility ofperformance and process that characterizetranslation as feminist transformance, andconsequently deconstruct both source and target as

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self-contained and bounded entities. A criticalconstruction of the “avant-texte” of a translatedwork can offer proof that translation is as much aproduct as it is a process of thought: not a uni-directional transfer of meaning but a series oftransformations, not a direct substitution but acombination of meaning. As a “reciprocal implicationof inside and outside,” translation involves “actionon multiple levels” (Godard, 2000, p. 59). Both astheorist and translator, following Deleuze, Godardembraces “the logic of AND, AND, AND” (2000, p. 60),which displaces the linear movement of translation“proper” as conversion from a source into a targetlanguage/culture, with the transversal work of“reversion” yielding the possibility of multipleversions (1997, p. 57). Supplying evidence ofmultiple drafts and multiple corrections on thesedrafts, textual genetics challenges the linearity ofthe translation process and the entire concept oftranslation as carrying over. Rather, it is an artof approach and many returns, circling, doubling ormultiplying: “a reworking of meaning” (Godard, 1995,p. 73). The process is recursive, repetitive,dialogic, and full of “contra-diction[s]” (1995, p.72). One sense of contradiction relates to takingaway the translator’s authority to fix meaning,temporarily to assign signifieds to signifiers,while simultaneously enhancing the translator’svisibility. The documents also show that as much astranslation is revealed to be a form of creativegenesis, the translator’s freedom is not absoluteand her choices are bounded by the limits set by theearlier texts and by the receptor language andculture.

4. Translation as a Temporal and Relational Process

Focusing on the development of one fragment, namelythe Barbizon section of Amantes, which according toGodard contains “the emotional core of the sequence”(1986, p. 10), and looking at Figures 4, 5, and 6,we can glimpse what kinds of actions and operations

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are involved in Godard’s translation praxis. Shestarts by drafting a handwritten rough versionbefore typing it into readable print, using amechanical typewriter. Both the handwritten andtyped up drafts are re-read, re-marked, and re-written several times, according to the textualtraces visible on the reproductions.

Figure 4: A handwritten draft of Godard’stranslation of “Le Barbizon” (reproduced withpermission of Alexis Godard, Clara Thomas Archivesand Special Collections)

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Figure 5: The typed up version of “Le Barbizon”with the translator’s handwritten corrections(reproduced with permission of Alexis Godard,Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections)

In addition to revealing a sequence of shifting,hesitant movements of translation, Figures 5 and 6include palimpsestic traces of the presence ofintersubjective relationalities involved in theprocess. Such reminders as “Check with Nicole” and

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“See Nicole,” scribbled in the margin (Figure 5), orcomments in handwriting that is not her own, showthat Godard lets in other voices. These graphicmarkings, layerings, and inscriptions aresymptomatic of the shift from representational tocombinatory economies of translation and visualizecomplex intersubjective foldings constituted throughthe process of translation. Taken together thesedrafts expose translation as a series of temporalre-readings, with material evidence of correctionsmade by hand, in pencil and different ink colour.Every time Godard reads, there is a record of somechange: using white-out, typing over, pasting on orsometimes returning to previous versions. In thissense, textual genetics reinstates temporality tothe process of translation by visualizing thesubjective time the translator needs to regulatedistance and proximity in order to achieve “thedetachment which comes from letting the text sit fora while” (Godard, 1995, p. 80). Here is how Godardconcludes the journal that she kept during her workon translating Picture Theory (her comments are alsopertinent to These Our Mothers and Lovhers):

No final version of the text is everrealizable. There are only approximations to beactualized within the conditions of different

enunciative exchanges. As such, translationis concerned not with ‘target languages’ andthe conditions of ‘arrival’ but with the ways ofordering relations between languages and cultures.

Translation is an art of approach. (1995, p.81)

Genetic explorations in the archive confirm Godard’searlier view that translation is always “an act ofreading…an interpretation, one among many possible,”“a practice of reading/writing” (1986, p. 7).

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Figure 6: Godard’s early draft of “Le Barbizon” withRay Ellenwood’s corrections in grey pencil andGodard’s modifications in blue (reproduced withpermission of Alexis Godard, Clara Thomas Archivesand Special Collections)

Moreover, Figure 6 contains evidence ofGodard’s important collaboration with Ray Ellenwood,her colleague and fellow translator, whosehandwriting is discernible on the draft. He callshimself “her innocent reader” (Interview), admittingthat she frequently consulted him for hisalternative suggestions and editorial comments onthe manuscript. While she tested on him herexperimental coinages and notations, he lent his earto her, always ready to catch any awkwardness oromissions and to smooth over literalness. Not beingan “expert” on Brossard, he mentions that Godardgave him her critical essays and preface materialsto assist him in his reading. Indeed, in the dossierthere is an extant copy of her paper called “L’Amèror the Exploding Chapter: Nicole Brossard at theSite of Feminist Deconstruction,” with theinscription “This should help you Ray inunderstanding L’Amèr.” On the verso of one of hisedits of These Our Mothers, he plays with different

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typographic arrangements of “sour,” “sea,” and“mother.” At the bottom, he adds an encouraging noteto her: “I think the idea of working out her[Brossard’s] puns in a concrete-visual way might bepursued more systematically (you do it withdeed/dead [or something]).” The significance of hiscontributions is further highlighted when oneconsiders Ellenwood’s handwritten note to Godard onthe verso of his proofs of Amantes, which shows thatshe got a little help from her friend in translatingthe title. He asks, “What do you think of LOVHERS?Is it a genuine coinage? I was delighted when Ithought of it, but who knows upon reflection…” Whenhe received this draft, the title was still aparaphrase “Women loving women/writing.” However,comparing the draft in Figure 4 to the publishedversions (Figure 1), we can see that she did notalways follow his suggestions. She made the finaldecision editing the passage, replacing “avowal”with his “declaration,” possibly for itsassociations with clarity and light, rejecting hisverb (begins) to be consistent with the source text,and adjusting word order in the sentence. Notsurprisingly, on the copyright page of the publishedbook there is a notice from Godard “gratefullyacknowledg[ing] the work of Ray Ellenwood in editingthe translation.”

In her theoretical considerations, Godardenvisions the possibility of such a paradigm oftranslation that would enable the foregrounding ofdifferent forms of connectivity and interdependency,of translation as encounters at the borders of theself. For Godard the feminist translator,translation functions as a theory and method ofcontact, movement, as a machine for “interdiscursiveproduction of meaning” (1995, p. 69). An examinationof her manuscripts adds yet another dimension tothis “avant-texte.” Scribbled on the verso ofdifferent translation sheets one finds her sonAlexis’ doodles, Godard’s lecture notes, andsketches for an academic essay on Marie Claire Blais

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that she was working on in 1981. The materiality ofthe archive yields such ephemeral traces of a lifelived while working on the manuscripts, evidencethat “life happens” all the while. The “avant-textes” of translation serve as a reminder thatmeaning-making occurs in a network of texts,relations, and social discourses., as well as in thematerial environments. By bringing into viewdifferent encounters and relationalities, textualgenetics supports the view of translation as amaterial practice that is also a cultivation offriendship. It allows us to hear dialogue andconversation in many voices in the archivaldocuments and reminds us that texts live in theworld.

5. Textual Invention: Translating Gender

Analyzing the two drafts in Figures 5 and 6, we canalso recognize the importance of sound and signifierin Godard’s frequent search for interlingualassonance and consonance, typographic play, andneologisms. She reiterates her earlier observationabout the translator as ventriloquist, drawingattention to the role of sound in Brossard’s poetry:it is the sound of words that initiates “theassociative drift” and generates new sequences(Godard, 1986, p. 10). To illustrate the primacy ofsound over meaning, Godard discusses an example ofmimicking the French assonance in her choice of“glaze and phrase” rather than “glass and verb” totranslate “du verre et du verbe” in the “TheTemptation” sequence of Lovhers (1986, p. 69). Shecomments on Brossard’s method of connecting “blocksof thought, words, by their sounds” (Godard, 1995,p. 71) that requires paying attention to the letter,or “translating for the signifier” (1991, p. 118).It means following from signifier to signifier,carefully constructing and reconstructing each word“to build up the sonorous as well as syntactic,semantic chains for wor(l)ding” (1995, p. 72). Onecan find good examples of Godard’s translating for

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the letter comparing the earlier drafts of “TheBarbizon Hotel for Women” to its published version(Figures 1 and 5). In the second section she keepsthe alliterations between the source and thetranslated text, correcting the phrase “to cross thegardens of the real” in the draft to a better choiceof “to pass through the gardens of the real” andthus achieving an interlingual consonance with “pourtraverser.“ Another instance of following thesignifier is her deliberation on how to translate“[la bouche] pleine d’intervalles” in the previousline. The obvious and easy choice would be “[themouth] full of intervals,” which appears in thedraft (Figure 5). However, in the final version(Figure 1) Godard went with “[mouth] round withintervals.” The reason why she opted for thisvariant has to do with the double repetition ofsounds in Brossard’s text: in the consonance between“pleine d’intervalles” and “round with intervals”and in the assonances of “bouche,” “pour,” and“tout” and “mouth,” “round,” and “through.” On theother hand, after struggling with the translation ofBrossard’s word play in “au jeu” (Figures 4, 5, and6), she decides to augment its effect usingtypography (italics) in the final “”in play” anddiscards her earlier attempts to bring “I” into playin “pla g I arism ” (plagiarism). Finally, I want topoint out one more striking shift in the directionof her thinking in translating the lines “femmes descourbes du feu de l‘édredon/à la peau neuve--------surface essentielle,” where “eiderdown/on the newskin” in the earlier draft is replaced by the final“fresh-skinned” as a modifier for “women.” Thisphrase constitutes Godard’s single departure fromthe almost literal, alliterative translation of allthe other lines in this section. One can read“fresh-skinned” as marking the difference oftranslation, a self-reflexive instance of thetranslator’s agency through which the skinned textis reassembled in the new skin.

What these documents illustrate is “a concern

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for attention to the production of meaning intranslation rather than for a re-covery of meaningor an evaluation of the truthfulness of ‘copy’ to‘original’" (Godard, 1991, p. 113). In particular,the issue of grammatical gender that Brossard’swriting deliberately disrupts in order to take afeminist political stance confronts the translatorwith the need to devise strategies that would allowfor a creative transformation of language. In herpreface to These Our Mothers, Godard explainsBrossard’s practice of dropping the silent ‘e’ fromsuch words as laboratoir in order to signal “theabsence of the feminine in the activities carriedout there” (1983, p. 1). Similarly, the word l’amèr,evoking associations with bitter, sea, and mother,gestures toward a gender neutral grammar by droppingthe “e” in mère. As part of “the critique of themasculine as a generic term” (Flotow, 1991, pp. 72-73), Brossard’s games with gender and grammar pose agreat challenge to her English translators. We havealready noted the closeness of Godard’scollaboration with Ellenwood and his help in solvingthe challenge of translating gender in the title ofAmantes, where “The female presence in ’amantes’…hasbeen transformed into “’lovhers’” (Godard, 1986, p.11). Other subversive inscriptions of gender occurthrough the uses of paraphrase, for example, the punon délire that has been paraphrased as “toread/delirium.” In Brossard’s text, ‘dé-lire’ meansboth “delirious and uncontrolled expression ofwomen’s realities and fantasies as well as theprocess of un-reading…or reading against the grain”(Flotow, 1991, p. 73). In Godard’s translation, thepolysemic phrase “JE N’ARRÊTE PAS DE LIRE” becomes“I DON’T STOP READING/DELIRING.”

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Figure 7: Godard’s queries to Brossard concerningL’Amèr (reproduced with permission of Alexis Godard,Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections)

6. Collaboration with the author

The motif of translation as a cultivation offriendship finds its particularly intense form inthe translator’s collaboration with the author.Godard began exchanging letters with Brossard in1979, after the publication of L’Amèr. She queriesBrossard about specific word choices, often askingfor clarification of meaning or grammar in thesource text, or requesting references for the

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citations used in the text (Figure 7). The archivalfolder contains Brossard’s letters with meticulousresponses to these questions (Figure 8)—a veritabletestament to the reciprocity in their relationship.She not only answers Godard’s queries but also readsand comments on the final draft (Mezei, 2009, p.212). In her Intimate Journal Brossard affirms theircollaboration in the February 3rd 1983 entry: “Ispent the entire day reading the English translationof L’Amèr for which Barbara Godard sent me the finaldraft” (qtd. In Godard, 1985, p. 197). The draftsreproduced here demonstrate that indeed Godard as afeminist translator has “been pushed into an activerelationship with [women writers’] words” (1985, p.194). There is also a postcard from Brossard, sentfrom Padua on June 16, 1983, in which she refers toGodard’s translation as “notre L’Amèr” [our L’Amèr].This document gives a glimpse of the degree ofmutual identification existing between the authorand the translator.

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Figure 8: Brossard’s answers (reproduced withpermission of Alexis Godard, Clara Thomas Archivesand Special Collections). The last sentence reads:“J’ai hâte de voir L’Amèr et Amantes en traduction.J’aime beaucoup tes traductions d’Amantes.” [I lookforward to seeing L’Amèr and Amantes in translation.I love your translations of Amantes.]

Finally, for Godard, whose ethics oftranslation mirrors her professional ethos asscholar and academic, “translating, like writing, isresearch” (2004, p. 18). In her own practice, shenot only talks about the thrill of recognizing andlocating quotations in the source text, that is, of

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reading intertextually as integral to thetranslation process; she also describes herself asreading along with the author. She mentions in hertranslator’s journal that while working on PictureTheory (1991), she read the same theoretical texts asBrossard, including Wittgenstein and Derrida, aswell as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and DjunaBarnes. Similarly, her Preface to These Our Mothersidentifies the influences of Derrida and Deleuze onBrossard, through such keywords as difference,erasure, deployment, intensity, and repetition.Mezei comments on the role of chance in thetranslator’s work: “For Godard, there is aserendipitous but consciously developed interactionbetween Deleuzian deconstruction, the act oftranslating Brossard, and the articulation of herown particular position on translation” (2006, p.210). In her essay “Deleuze and Translation” (2000),Godard recalls that while translating L’Amèr, sheattended Constantin Boundas’s lecture on Deleuze,which allowed her to make connections betweenDeleuze’s ideas and Brossard’s exploration of “newconfigurations of sense in an unsettling movement of‘deterritorialization’” (58). In her letter fromJanuary 27, 1983, Brossard confirms that she is justreading Deleuze’s Logique du sens because “il y a làdes chapitres qui touchent mes préoccupationsactuelles comme sens & non-sens, paradoxe, etc.”[there are chapters that touch my current concernssuch as sense and non-sense, paradox, etc.].Retelling this anecdote, Mezei asks if it is mere“coincidence, serendipity, or the translator’sintuition” (2006, p. 210).

7. Conclusion

Textual genetics allows the researcher to delvedeeper not only into the mechanics of translation asa craft, but also into its affects. I was struck byboth the affects generated by touching the archivalmaterials and the impact that the physicalorganization of the archive has on genetic

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theorizing of translation. Creating a palimpsesticlayering of meanings, the very contiguity and co-existence of multiple versions of the text supportGodard’s leaning toward metonymy rather thanmetaphor in her approach to translation. Thesepieces of a larger whole literalize the process oftranslation as growth by means of metonymicaccretion. She admits in her journal that she’s been“interested in exploring a metonymic or contingenttheory of translation focusing on these networksordering or relating signifiers, a theory in whichlanguages, texts, social texts, touch each other,”interanimate and contaminate each other (Godard,1995, p. 72-73). In many ways, textual geneticshelps to explore the synergistic relationshipbetween Godard the translation theorist and Godardthe translator. Insisting on the positive valorizingof difference, her praxis of translation is “an artof approach to an outside involving a repetitionwith a difference” (Godard, 2000, p. 56), each timeopening herself to an intimate relationship with thetext. With the translator viewed as the readingsubject becoming the writing subject, the process oftranslation necessitates approaching alterity or,more radically, “becoming-other” (Godard, 2004, p.23), discovering the unknown within the self. It isalso a process of composition “throughrecombination, re-configuration” (Godard, 1995, p.74). What genetics confirms, by revealing multiplechoices, substitutions, and corrections, is thattranslating entails not only “pleasure in the playof language” but also confrontation with thearbitrariness of language, turning translation into“a disorienting act of rewriting” (Godard, 2004, pp.12- 13). The graphic markings, layerings, andinscriptions on the drafts reveal complexintersubjective and interdiscursive foldings at theheart of translation and bear witness to acontingent theory of translation as languages andforms in movement. To engage in a feministtranslative praxis means engaging in a politics ofassemblage, finding evidence of heterogeneity,

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heteroglossia, and multilingualism, taking a bold,active, interpretive stance.

References

Arrojo, R. (1995). “Feminist, ‘Orgasmic’ Theories ofTranslation and Their Contradictions.” TradTerm 2,67-75.

Bellemin-Noël, J. (2004). “Psychoanalytic Readingand the Avant-texte.” In J. Deppman et al (Eds.),Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant- Tetxes (pp. 28-35.)Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.

Brossard, N. (1977). L’Amèr, ou Le chapitre effrité.Montréal: Les Editions Quinze.

--------. (1980). Amantes. Montréal: Les Quinze,Éditeur.

--------. (1983). These Our Mothers, Or: The DisintregratingChapter. B. Godard (Translated into Englishoriginal L’Amèr, ou le chapitre effrité, 1977). Toronto:Coach House.

--------. (1986). Lovhers. B. Godard (Translated intoEnglish original Amantes, 1980). Montréal:Guernica.

Capperdoni, A. (2014). “1989: The Heyday of FeministTranslational Poetics in Canada: Tessera’s SpringIssue on La traduction au féminin comme écriture.” In K.Mezei, S. Simon, and L. von Flotow (Eds.), TranslationEffects: The Shaping of Modern Canadian Culture (pp. 223-237.) Montreal and Kingston: McGill- QueensUniversity Press.

Contat, M. et al (Eds.). (1996). Drafts. SpecialIssue of Yale French Studies 89.

de Biasi, P.-M. (2004). “Toward a Science ofLiterature: Manuscript Analysis and the

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Genesis of the Work.“ In J. Deppman et al (Eds.), Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Tetxes (pp.

36-68.) Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UniversityPress.

Deppman, J., D. Ferrer, and M. Groden (Eds.).(2004). “Introduction: A Genesis of FrenchGenetic Criticism.” Genetic Criticism: Texts andAvant-Tetxes (pp. 1-16.) Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press.

Ellenwood, R. Personal interview with the author.Toronto, April 5, 2014.

Flotow, L. von. (1991). “Feminist Translation:Contexts, Practices, Theories.” TTR 4,2, 69-84.

Godard, B. (2000). “Deleuze and Translation.”Parallax 6,1, 56-81.

---------. (2004). “Introduction: The MovingIntimacy of Language.” In N. Brossard, IntimateJournal or here’s a manuscripts followed by Works of flesh andmetonymies. Barbara Godard (Translated intoEnglish original Journal Intime, ou Voilá donc un manuscrit,1984), (pp. 5-23.) Toronto: Mercury Press.

--------. (1983). “Preface.” In N. Brossard, TheseOur Mothers, or, The Disintegrating Chapter (p.1). Toronto:Coach House Press.

--------. (1986). “Preface.” In N. Brossard, Lovhers(pp.7-12). Montreal: Guernica Editions.

--------. (1990). “Theorizing FeministDiscourse/Translation.” In S. Bassnett and A.Lefevere (Eds.), Translation, History and Culture (pp.87-96). London and New York: Pinter Publishers.

--------. (1991). “Translating (With) the Speculum.”TTR 4, 2, 85-121.

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--------. (1985). “The Translator as She: TheRelationship Between Writer and Translator.” In A.Dybikowski et al. (Eds.), In the Feminine: Women andWords/Les femmes et les mots Conference Proceedings 1983(pp. 193-198.) Edmonton, AB: Longspoon Press.

--------. (1995). “A Translator’s Journal.” In S.Simon (Ed.), Culture in Transit: Translating the Literature ofQuebec (pp. 69-82.) Montréal: Véhicule Press.

--------. (1997). “Writing Between Cultures.” TTR10,1, 53-99.

-------- (Ed.). (1994). Collaboration in the Feminine:Writing on Women and Culture from TESSERA. Toronto: SecondStory Press.

Karpinski, E. C. (2011). “Re-membering Thinkingthrough Translation.” Open Letter 14, 6, 122-130.

Kinderman, W. (2009). “Introduction: GeneticCriticism and the Creative Process.” In W.Kinderman and J. E. Jones (Eds.), Genetic Criticismand the Creative Process: Essays from Music, Literature, andTheater (pp. 1-16.) Rochester, NY: Univesity ofRochester Press.

Mezei, K. (2006). “Transformations of BarbaraGodard.” In A. Whitfield (Ed.), Writing Between theLines: Portraits of Canadian Anglophone Translators (pp. 203-224). Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid LaurierUniversity Press.

Simon, S. (1996). Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity andthe Politics of Transmission. New York: Routledge.

Endnotes

1 The first major introduction of genetic criticismin the US occured in 1996, through the publicationof a series of representative essays by French

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practitioners, when Michel Contat, Denis Holler,Jacques Neefs, and Alyson Waters were invited toguest edit a special issue of Yale French Studies.

2 One must note here the important role of manyinternational collaborations sustained by theInstitut des Textes et Manuscrits (ITEM/CNRS) withCanadian and American scholars.

3 For a detailed trajectory of Godard’s translationsof Brossard and other Québécoise women writers,including selections published in feminist journals,see Alessandra Capperdoni’s essay (2014).

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Gender, Genetics, Translation: Encounters in the Feminist Translator’s Archive of Barbara Godard

Documents

Transcript of Gender, Genetics, Translation: Encounters in the Feminist Translator’s Archive of Barbara Godard