Earlier this year, Sheela Mahadevan had the honour of meeting award-winning Canadian writer and translator Émile Martel in Montréal. In this interview, he provides fascinating insights into his multilingual experiences, the creativity involved in literary translation, and the intersections between translation and creative writing. He also describes the unique experience of familial and collaborative translation in the process of translating the much lauded Life of Pi, written by his son Yann Martel, into French.
Sheela Mahadevan (SM): Émile, you live in Montréal, a city in which code-switching between French and English is commonplace, and you have spent your career writing between various languages: French, English, and Spanish. Could you say a little about your relationship to all these languages, and why you employ French as your literary language?
Émile Martel (EM): Several thousands of us here in Québec are descendants of the first French colonists who came to this region at the start of the seventeenth century. Our collective identity has always been linked to the fact that we speak French; along with the Catholic religion, this is the bond which has enabled us to survive, especially after the English conquest in the middle of the eighteenth century.
I believe that French is the most bountiful of all languages, for it always faithfully provides me with the words I need to describe a particular emotion, object, or location. And I find it musical when it is read aloud. I don’t think I’ve ever begun composing a literary text in English or Spanish spontaneously and unconsciously; not only would my vocabulary be more limited, but I’d feel like I was translating.
My relationship with Spanish is that of an adopted child. When I came to learn Spanish, I was already somewhat competent in English, but I really wanted to read the works of Federico García Lorca in the original language. My professors at Laval University fueled my enthusiasm; I was granted a scholarship to study in Madrid from 1960–1961 at the age of nineteen, and I spent that year entirely immersed in the Spanish language.
SM: Your recent novel Georgette au milieu du monde (2019) offers various reflections on the act of writing in French, and you refer to “des mots qui ont jailli de mes doigts gantés de langue française” (words gushing out from my fingers which were wearing the gloves of the French language). I wondered if you could say a little more about this phrase. It seems to suggest that French is like a garment that can easily be swapped with another language. How far does this image reflect your own multilingual experiences?
EM: I suppose that the image comes from my perception of the French language’s elegance. It also has a secondary meaning, referring to the fact that I could potentially write in another language. The situation is comparable to that of a pianist who might wonder what his music would sound like if he were to play it on the violin.
SM: Your collaborative translation practice is especially unique, in that you and your wife have translated the works of your son Yann Martel and his wife Alice Kuipers. Could you describe this familial translation experience and the specific challenges and opportunities involved in the process of translating the work of family members? In particular, could you say a little about the process involved in the translation of the Booker-Prize winning novel Life of Pi?
EM: This story is special for us, because as parents, the experience of translating Life of Pi made us better translators, and as translators, it made us better parents. In the translation process, all those involved share their emotions. It’s a real joy when the codes are broken, and the meaning is revealed. Then there’s the challenge of putting it all down on paper and conveying the message. I don’t really re-read the passage we’re translating in advance; I just jump straight in and translate rapidly, writing question marks along the way if necessary, and sometimes I note down alternative possibilities. That’s the first draft, the first stab. Next, I pass the passage to my wife, my co-translator, to share my initial impressions and doubts, as well as what has been successful in this first attempt. She returns the pages with comments, question marks, and sometimes an exclamation mark to indicate a good choice of word or phrase. I then re-read the passage, include or query the suggestions she has made, and I read it aloud while she has the original in front of her. The process of reading the translation aloud is both necessary and unavoidable; it always reveals surprises or mistakes, and often both. The discussions with my co-translator are always stimulating; we discuss the decisions that need to be made, as well as aspects of the translation which need to be fine-tuned.
In the case of a text written by our son Yann, or his wife Alice, we’ll discuss any queries over the phone before we print the quasi-definitive text, and there will be further readings of entire chapters later on. Then the process is opened up to others; it involves further research, further discussions with the author, and the work is presented to the editor, proofs are read, and then, finally, one has the pleasure of seeing the book itself: a tangible object which you can hold in your hands.
What was particularly interesting in the case of Life of Pi was that Yann was with us when we had to submit the manuscript to the editor in Québec. He came over the previous night, spent part of the night reading the novel, and was taken by surprise on several occasions. We had a final read through, and I must admit that he said that certain passages were more interesting in French than in English!
I’d like to highlight a particularly fascinating aspect of this process: we were translating the work into the mother tongue of the author. We had come full circle, and I found this particularly gratifying. We are of Québec origin, and despite a nomadic life, we have never lost this identity. Our language is our abode, and the trajectory of our son, a novelist writing in English, coming back home to the French language, was particularly moving and meaningful.
SM: Are there any particular works by other writers which inspire your creative writing and translation processes?
EM: I have a favourite author: Georges Perec. What I admire about him is his linguistic prowess. He’s like a boy who you give a Meccano set to, and a day later, he’s built a whole town. He exudes a boundless passion for language. I can’t think of a translated text which has inspired me, but some aspects of my writing rituals, such as the act of writing under certain restrictions, are undoubtedly inherited from Perec, but he wouldn’t necessarily recognize them. For example, I’ve used seven hundred words for each of the sections of Georgette au milieu du monde.
SM: At times, processes of translation and creative writing intersect in your work. Georgette au milieu du monde, for example, offers various reflections on translation, and you have also employed various creative strategies in your translation work. In your translation of Trinidadian-born Canadian writer André Alexis’ novel Childhood (Enfance), you draw on the work of French writer Ronsard to translate aspects of Shakespeare’s sonnets embedded within the text, and you have also used Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard to translate certain parts. Could you say a little more about the intersections between translation and creative writing in your work?
EM: To put it simply, the writer within me doesn’t translate, and the translator within me doesn’t write. They don’t speak to each other, and they don’t even live on the same floor in my house. But it’s hard to block the staircase between the two floors. The poetry that I read for the purpose of translation doesn’t ever inspire me to reach for a pen and paper and write a poem myself, nor does it spark any idea that I’d pursue later on. So there seems to be a division between the writer and translator within me.
SM: Processes of rewriting are thematically depicted in Georgette au milieu du monde, in which the protagonist rewrites and adapts the work of Molière and Flaubert, turning poetic form into prose, and prose into verse. How far do you think that translation is an act of rewriting?
EM: I’m careful not to translate poems I like too much. I’d end up betraying them, because I’d have liked to write them myself. I am equally resistant to translating poems I don’t like, because I’d be capable of destroying them! I believe that literary translation is a creative act. The translation expresses the same emotion as the original, but the original work is rewritten in the process, dressed up in a different outfit, given a distinct perfume and offered as a present to the reader.
SM: You have previously served on the jury for the Canadian Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation. What makes a good translation, in your opinion?
EM: I wish to be taken by surprise when reading the translation, it’s not just about accuracy. The translator has the privilege of adding to the work, but he mustn’t remove anything; this is especially true for poetry. The translator should be polite and courteous to the poem, showcasing what he finds, and being faithful to its spirit.
Translating is about accompanying and respecting the original version, but not replacing it. The reader shouldn’t be aware that a translation is a translation. It should read like an original Québécois book. Translation is a profession which involves humility. There is no such thing as a perfect translation, because there is never one single or definitive translation.
This interview was conducted primarily in French and has been translated by Sheela Mahadevan. It was funded by a UKRI-Mitacs Globalink Research Award.
Émile Martel is an award-winning Canadian writer and translator. He is author of around fifteen volumes of Francophone Québécois prose poetry, among other works. He was awarded the prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award in 1995 for his poetry collection Pour orchestre et poète seul. He has translated a number of English and Spanish works into French, including the works of André Alexis, Miguel Hernández and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and he was awarded a doctorate in Spanish Literature from the University of Salamanca. Along with his wife Nicole Perron, he has translated the works of his son Yann Martel, including Life of Pi, which was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2002. He has also translated Yann Martel’s 101 Letters to a Prime Minister: The Complete Letters to Stephen Harper (101 Lettres à un Premier Ministre: Mais que lit Stephen Harper? 2011).
Sheela Mahadevan is a doctoral candidate, translator, and educator at King’s College London. Her research on literary translation, translation theory, and francophone literatures is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. She studied French and German literatures at the University of Oxford, and was awarded a UK-Canada Globallink Award for research into literary translation at Concordia University, Montreal (2021–2022). She was recently awarded scholarships for French translation courses at the British Centre for Literary Translation (2021) and Bristol University (2022). She currently teaches French Literary Translation and Comparative Literature at King’s College London.
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