Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City

The divided Montreal of the 1960s is very different from today’s cosmopolitan, hybrid city. Taking the perspective of a walker moving through a fluid landscape of neighbourhoods and eras, Sherry Simon experiences Montreal as a voyage across languages. Sketching out literary passages from the then of the colonial city to the now of the cosmopolitan Montreal, she traces a history of crossings and intersections around the familiar sites and symbols of the city - the mythical boulevard Saint-Laurent, Mile End, the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Mont-Royal. Translating Montreal follows the trajectories of adventurous cultural translators such as Malcolm Reid, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein - pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s - Pierre Anctil, whose translations from Yiddish to French are emblematic of the dramatic reroutings now occurring across the Montreal landscape, and contemporary writer-translators such as Gail Scott, Erin Moure, Jacques Brault, Michel Garneau, Nicole Brossard, and Emile Ollivier. Simon argues that translation is a dynamic and subtle tool for analysing cultural contact.An original take on cultural relations in the city, Translating Montreal explores the emergence of the new Montrealer. No longer Franco-Quebecois,
Anglo-Quebecois,

immigrant, or ethnic, the new Montrealer is a citizen of a mixed and cosmopolitan city.