Literary Translation

Bonté III was five years old. A cow at that age is at her prime. Prime is an accounting term. A dairy farm is a business and must be managed as such. From this perspective, Bonté III's days were numbered. Numbered is not an empty word. She had been a good representative of her breed. A cow, after all, has no need to try to be a cow. Her life is that of a cow: a predetermined cycle that is easily reflected on a balance sheet. She eats. She drinks. She ruminates. She urinates. She defecates. All this has a cost. She ovulates. She bears a calf. She gives birth. She produces milk. All this brings money. [...] Tit for tat. The only thing left to do for Bonté III was to call the butcher. The Fate of Bonté III is a story of love and loneliness with colourful characters, a reflection on life and the vital need to be useful to someone or to something.

Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue: An Experimental Translation by Chantal Wright is a hybrid text, innovatively combining literary criticism, experimental translation, and scholarly commentary. This work centres on a German-language prose text by Yoko Tawada entitled 'Portrait of a Tongue' ['Porträt einer Zunge', 2002]. Yoko Tawada is a native speaker of Japanese who learned German as an adult. Portrait of a Tongue is a portrait of a German woman-referred to only as P-who has lived in the United States for many years and whose German has become infected by English. The text is the first-person narrator's declaration of love for P and for her language, a 'thinking-out-loud' about language(s), and a self-reflexive commentary. Chantal Wright offers a critical response and a new approach to the translation process by interweaving Tawada's text and the translator's dialogue, creating a side-by-side reading experience that encourages the reader to move seamlessly between the two parts. Chantal Wright's technique models what happens when translators read and responds to calls within Translation Studies for translators to claim visibility, to practice "thick translation", and to develop their own creative voices. This experimental translation addresses a readership within the academic disciplines of Translation Studies, Germanic Studies, and related fields. - This book is published in English.

Death may seem a grim subject matter but, in the capable hands of Suzanne Myre, nothing is beyond humour. Though at times sincere, sorrowful, and even a tad gruesome, Death Sentences is also wry, mordant, and amusingly ironic. Death Sentences features 13 unique short stories, thematically united by death, sex, and existential angst. Solitary and dejected characters explore Montreal's parks and alleys, seeking comfort and contending with their own everyday tragedies. A woman contemplates the deadly consequences of an almond croissant; another escapes her worries in a monastery. Precocious children's fates are intertwined with a Rottweiler's. Young girls fall in love with the most unlikely partners and a woman seeks salvation in a most unconventional way. The tales in Death Sentences intrigue, surprise, and entertain, from one page to the next.

First published in 1963, in East Germany, They Divided the Sky tells the story of a young couple, living in the new, socialist, East Germany, whose relationship is tested to the extreme not only because of the political positions they gradually develop but, very concretely, by the Berlin Wall, which went up on August 13, 1961. The story is set in 1960 and 1961, a moment of high political cold war tension between the East Bloc and the West, a time when many thousands of people were leaving the young German Democratic Republic (the GDR) every day in order to seek better lives in West Germany, or escape the political ideology of the new country that promoted the "farmer and peasant" state over a state run by intellectuals or capitalists. The construction of the Wall put an end to this hemorrhaging of human capital, but separated families, friends, and lovers, for thirty years. The conflicts of the time permeate the relations between characters in the book at every level, and strongly affect the relationships that Rita, the protagonist, has not only with colleagues at work and at the teacher's college she attends, but also with her partner Manfred (an intellectual and academic) and his family. They also lead to an accident/attempted suicide that send her to hospital in a coma, and that provide the backdrop for the flashbacks that make up the narrative. Wolf's first full-length novel, published when she was thirty-five years old, was both a great literary success and a political scandal. Accused of having a 'decadent' attitude with regard to the new socialist Germany and deliberately misrepresenting the workers who are the foundation of this new state, Wolf survived a wave of political and other attacks after its publication. She went on to create a screenplay from the novel and participate in making the film version. More importantly, she went on to become the best-known East German writer of her generation, a writer who established an international reputation and never stopped working toward improving the socialist reality of the GDR.

This novel paints the portrait of a Lebanese family that has settled in Montreal. The central figure is Dounia, a 75-year-old mother and grandmother. Hers is a story of loss-she first leaves her own village to live in her husband's hometown, and then is wrenched from her homeland, not once but twice, to live in a strange land whose language and customs are foreign to her. Dounia can neither read nor write, and she speaks only Arabic. Illiterate yet perceptive, nourished by Lebanese proverbs and pearls of wisdom, she has a unique and captivating voice. She struggles, yes, but manages to achieve fulfilment in her new world: "My home is where my grandchildren are, clinging to my neck, calling me Sitto Dounia […] in my language. I want to die where my children and my grandchildren live." Abla Farhoud was an actor and playwright before becoming a novelist in 1998 with the publication of this novel, the French title of which was Le bonheur a la queue glissante, awarded the France-Québec – Philippe Rossillon Prize. Other novels followed, including Le Sourire de la petite Juive (published in English as Hutchison Street), Le dernier des Snoreux, and the posthumous book Havre-Saint-Pierre. Abla Farhoud passed away in 2021. Back in Lebanon, we did everything outdoors rather than staying cooped up within four walls. Sure, we stayed in the house in winter, but it was so short. I don't know how that dark mood dissipated, nor at what moment I started noticing that there was a sky here, too, and that it was sometimes quite blue and very beautiful. It took me around ten years, I think. Ten years without a sky-that's a long time. Born in Lebanon in 1945, Abla Farhoud immigrated to Canada in 1951. She later moved back to Lebanon and spent some time in France. She studied theatre at the Université du Québec à Montréal and wrote several plays. In 1998, she published her first novel, Le bonheur a la queue glissante, for which she was awarded the Prix France-Québec – Philippe Rossillon. A number of acclaimed novels followed. Abla Farhoud passed away in 2021. She is survived by her children-musician Mathieu Farhoud-Dionne, also known as Chafiik, and singer-songwriter Alecka Farhoud. This is the story of Dounia, a Lebanese woman who struggles with her new life in Quebec. Isolated by language and cultural barriers, she nevertheless has the resilience and strength of character to evoke both the tragic and joyful moments of her family life. Abla Farhoud's classic first novel brings the Lebanese immigrant experience in Quebec to life through the story of a mother, Dounia, raising her French-speaking children in a new culture. This sensitive rendering of the novel in English translation allows Dounia's story to unfold with dignity. Le bonheur a la queue glissante, by acclaimed author Abla Farhoud, is a masterful work. Yet, despite the positive reception the novel has received at home and abroad, it has never been published in English in its entirety. The translation of Abla Fahroud's first novel will bring one of the jewels of Canadian literature to new audiences, in Canada and abroad, while filling a major literary gap in Canada. With more than 18,000 copies sold in the original French in Quebec, this bestseller has its place in our catalogue of literary works by great Canadians. Translated by Governor General's Literary Award winner for Translation, Judith Weisz Woodsworth. This masterfully written novel is a story of resilience - broaching topics such as war, domestic abuse, and resettlement - but also of love and hope. Foreword Acknowledgments Happiness Has a Slippery Tail Glossary of Proverbs Works by Abla Farhoud