The Circulation of Cultural Knowledge in Bilingual and Multilingual Contexts: a Canadian Case Study

Agnes Whitfield (York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Email: agnesw@yorku.ca

 

ABSTRACT:

This paper examines how literary translations as cultural knowledge circulate in Canada. In keeping with the institutional support provided to literary translation between Canada’s two official languages, English and French, the first part of the case study addresses a bilingual framework. Bibliographical research shows gaps in literary translation activity between Anglophone and Francophone literatures. Many works that each culture values as literary classics, as award-winning books, or as objects of study in university courses are not available to the other culture in translation. Recent empirical studies including national surveys of booksellers, publishers, librarians and university teachers carried out by the researcher suggest that even when translations exist, there may be impediments to their circulation, i.e. to the access that readers actually have to the books through bookstores, library catalogues. These impediments include issues in inventory management practices, library cataloguing, insufficient editorial expertise in promoting translations and lack of public awareness of the value of translations for cultural exchange. The second part of the paper moves on to assess how these same issues in access also surface within a multilingual framework. Under the combined effect of globalization and the increasing importance of Canadian multicultural writers and readers, the circulation of cultural knowledge between Anglophone and Francophone literatures is increasingly connected to the circulation of translations of Canadian literary works in other languages both within Canada and internationally. In conclusion, based on insights from the Canadian context, some suggestions will be made as to how improving the patterns of access to cultural knowledge in bilingual and multilingual contexts can increase the potential of cultural exchange for creative, respectful and reciprocal knowledge building.