The following interview was conducted by Skype between Los Angeles and Montreal

S. S. – the interviewee	J. G. – the interviewer

   
                                       

Jonathan: Your parents were born in Toronto. You spoke English at home and despite studying French at school your first significant exposure to French came in your teens. How did that come about?

Sherry: My mom was very forward-looking…meaning that she recognized that French was important in Montreal! That may sound very obvious now, but I grew up in a city that was still practically a colonial city—with a powerful and very self-sufficient English-language minority. What was experienced by some as intolerable change starting in the 1960s (those who felt threatened or excluded by a French-language city) was experienced by others as a period of social, economic and political excitement. The fact that I took a university-level French course while I was still in high school changed my outlook entirely. I was increasingly attracted to French-language culture.

Jonathan: You found Montreal to be comparable with Calcutta in certain respects. (You later wrote « Villes en traduction: Calcutta, Barcelona, Montreal », Presses de l'Université de Montreal, 2013). Can you expound on that comparison.

Sherry: Calcutta and Montreal were founded in the same historical period of colonialism—1609 for Calcutta, 1642 for Montreal. Montreal was founded as a French city, then there was the Conquest of 1759 which meant that Ville Marie became Montreal. Both cities were the products of spatial division—a more modern, spacious area which contrasted greatly with the rest of the city. Of course the colonial divides of India were very different from the colonial divides of Quebec—where two European powers were in competition, and where the indigenous presence had been largely obliterated. But the linguistic and spatial arrangements of Calcutta and Montreal share the same colonialist premise and the interaction between parts of the city shared similar dynamics. What I learned was that there was a great deal to be discovered when you looked at Calcutta and Montreal as cities in translation. The history of the Bengali Renaissance as it played out across Calcutta is rich and fascinating—the story of innovations in science and the arts that were a product of the interplay between communities. The same is true of Montreal, mutatis mutandis. A cultural history of the city since the 1940s for instance tells of numerous new pathways created across the city. Literary personalities such as Mavis Gallant, F.R. Scott or A.M. Klein have woven cultural ties between the French and English speakers, both in journalism and in poetry. What is important to note, however, is that translation is not always successful and that failed translation can also be useful to explore.

Jonathan: You went on to study Comparative Literature at Brandeis University in the USA, and did your Masters in Paris, obtaining a Diplome de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and a doctorate in literature compareé from the University of Montreal. Your career-path is somewhat unusual: although you were initially a literary translator you soon moved into the academic study of translating. Your positions have included Professeure du Département d'études françaises at Concordia University and membre de l'Académie des lettres du Québec.

The long list of books you've written includes "Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City", for which you reached the finals of the Ville de Montreal, Grand Prix du Livre. Although some might have regarded that as being an ivory-tower occupation, your writings were widely recognized, as witness the many prizes you have won, such as the Prix Andre-Laurendeau en Sciences humaines.

During your distinguished career, what advances have you seen in the role of the literary translator?

Sherry: The very fact of the expansion of Translation Studies as an academic field is a great success story of the last 3 decades or so. The growth has been exponential—books, journals, academic programs, summer schools, and the list goes on. The field is especially important in Europe, and literary translation is increasingly recognized as an important creative activity. Translators are getting more recognition, I think, in general—with the wonderful work of translators associations, of high-profile translators, and of academics who take the work of these translators seriously and are making their work the object of serious study. In Canada, literary translation benefits from government support and a certain degree of public recognition. But the same platitudes are often repeated. We still need to work towards further recognition of the creative value of translation—not only in relation to the Canadian scene but internationally.

Jonathan: Your very latest book, just published, "Translation Effects: The Shaping of Modern Canadian Culture" (written together with Kathy Mezei and Luise von Flotow, McGill-Queen's University Press, pp.496) deals, inter alia, with the subject of bilingualism. For the benefit of our readers who have not read it and may not manage to do so, could you give us one or two points on Canadian bilingualism?

Sherry: We argue in the book that official bilingualism has in many ways masked the multiform realities of translation within Canadian society. And so the book—which is a collection of 30-some essays—shows how translation is a factor is many aspects of literary and cultural life—through First Nations languages, immigrant languages, and the unequal transactions of French and English. While official bilingualism is an important element of our national self-definition, allowing the country to function, it only applies to the legal realities of the country. The cultural realities are messier, more unequal, but also creative of new mixtures.

Jonathan: So why has the Federal Government gone to such lengths to promote and preserve bilingualism?

Sherry: Official bilingualism in its current form was a result of the political unrest of the 1960s. There is a very significant separatist movement in Quebec, always ready to re-emerge, and in the 1960s it was very strong. Official bilingualism was one response to this crisis, promising a French presence from coast to coast. But Canada also has a multicultural policy, which gives cultural rights to 'ethnic' groups. These rights are sometimes in conflict with one another, or perceived as such. It is true that official bilingualism has remained in place for many decades now, and seems to have performed its task well. But while the government used to do all its translation in-house, it now outsources practically all translation tasks, and no longer ensures training.

Jonathan: Dr Paul Christophersen of the University College in Ibadan, Nigeria, in his book called "Bilingualism", is quoted as saying that it is almost impossible for a "so-called" bilingual speaker to achieve 100% efficiency in both languages. 

Sherry: Of course there is no such thing as perfect bilingualism. Bilingualism is almost always asymmetrical, however there are many Quebecers who function as well in one language as the other. Usually this is an oral skill. Writing is another story. There are very few people who write as well in one language as the other, and for instance, while many can read equally well in both languages, in Quebec the literary institutions are quite separate. But as for day to day functional bilingualism, there are an astonishing number of people who could claim this capacity in Montreal especially. And while French-Canadians in the past were 'forced' to be bilingual, it is now English-language Montrealers who are increasingly bilingual. But as for 100% efficiency, I would say that this is not really a useful marker. What is 100% efficient when language is concerned?

Jonathan: Mr John Woodsworth, a Russian-English translator who submitted a report to the Canadian government many years ago, proposed to CBC: Replace the current system of separate English and French-language TV networks by a single bilingual network, with a daily schedule of mostly (if not all) Canadian-produced programming originating alternately in English and French, with captions (sub-titles) provided in the second language.

Sherry: An interesting idea, but unlikely to happen. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulates these matters. Twenty years ago it closed down a bilingual radio channel that alternated between French and English. With the present government's stance on public broadcasting, we will be lucky to retain public broadcasting, never mind revolutionize it.

Jonathan: In the course of this brief interview, we have only been able to touch on the diverse fields of erudition that you bring to historical and cultural aspects of translating. Nevertheless, we hope to have given our readers an idea of what they may find in any of the numerous books that you have written. Many thanks.

 

 

 Sherry Simon – The Flow of Languages, the Grace of Cultures (in French)

 

 

We welcome back [1] to the ranks of our contributors John Wellington a New Yorker whose art finds its inspiration in Old Master paintings, religious and pop icons, cinema, music, and his fascination with devotion, idolatry and the use of male and female imagery in art and life.  He has shown in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Paris and London.  His paintings may be seen on the website: johnwellington.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU AND ME oil on aluminum, 68 x 48 inches See explanation below of the painting's legend [*]

John Wellington in his studio See "Studio Visit" video below [**]

 

John Wellington has recently released the first three volumes of Idols Demons Saints, a series of e-books based on his sketchbooks, showing the process of creating from the first inked line to a finished work of art. (See John Wellington : Idols, Demons and Saints by James F. Cooper)

John leads painting groups to Paris.

In the following article, John relates his friendship with Jean Giraud (1938-2012), the renowned French comic-book creator  known also by his pseudonyms Mœbius and Gir.

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In 1977 a French comic – Métal Hurlant – was translated and reproduced for the American market as Heavy Metal Magazine.  At sixteen years old, looking through issue number one, I was visually transported by the storytelling of a number of European artists that I, like my friends, had never heard of.  There was one artist, whose masterful line work and surreal story stood out for me, even above the other exceptionally talented illustrators collected in that first issue.  His contribution was a wordless tale titled Arzach and he signed it “Moebius.”  That was my introduction to Jean Giraud’s world – a lone rider, flying a saddled Pterodactyl-like bird across an apocalyptic landscape to rescue what he believed to be a damsel in distress.  As a teenager I copied Jean’s drawings using Rapidograph pens and coloring my attempts with Dr. Martin’s Dyes or watercolors.  I spent hours trying to understand and unravel Jean’s magic of showing form and texture through the elegance of his line. It would be a few years later at art school, that when looking at the engravings of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, and Hendrick Goltzius that I would begin to understand the genesis of Jean’s hatch marks.

A decade later in 1988, two incidents brought me to France, both involving my creative life.  The first was my participation in a show at Centre George Pompidou.  The second was my involvement in both the pulp and graphic novel versions of a story for Marvel Comics.

Jean Dethier, the then Director of Architecture at Pompidou, visited my studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn after seeing my painting Der Erzengle [2].  Monsieur Dethier invited me to be a part of the large scale show he was curating: Chateau Bordeaux.  Asking what I would need in order to participate in the exhibition I requested to be embedded in a winery to paint, sketch and find my inspiration.  Weeks later Jean proposed that I stay at Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande for five weeks as the guest of General and Madame de Lencquesaing.  They would provide a studio, car, and of course, room and board in their château.  For five weeks in the summer of 1988, I drove through the vineyards of Pauillac and neighboring villages, painted, ate, and of course drank the grand vins of the local wineries. 

To support myself during this time, I worked as a colorist for Marvel Comics.  A few months before the Bordeaux trip, the editors at Epic Comics (an imprint of Marvel) asked if I would color a two-part pulp comic of The Silver Surfer. “Pulp” was the term we used for low quality comics printed on newspaper and usually sold in newsstands.  The story was written by Stan Lee, the creator of many of Marvel's greatest superheroes, including Spider-Man, The Hulk, and Thor, but what made this job the best of my career in comics was that it was illustrated by Jean Giraud – Moebius – my teenage art idol.

Jean sent color notes to the Marvel offices at lower Park Avenue in Manhattan, consisting not of

actual colors, but rather the numeric and letter codes that were used to identify colors for comic books printed on pulp paper.  Jean marked up black and white xeroxed pages of his art with arrows pointing to letters and numbers like Y2R2, Y2BR3 and every other combination of Y (yellow), B (blue) and R (red) that could be made from 25% (2), 50% (3) and 100% of the dot pattern of those colors.  American pulp comics had a VERY limited color palette (the majority of the color choices looked a muddied greenish brown) and I don’t think Jean was ever happy with the results of the reductive and poor reproduction values of the final product.  Still, the two part pulp version of The Silver Surfer sold well and that summer as I was preparing to leave  for Bordeaux, I was asked to paint the pages of a high quality graphic novel version of the Stan Lee/Moebius The Silver Surfer.  This process was called “blue-line” as Jean’s pages were printed on large art board as blue, rather than black lines.  These could then be painted over in gouache or washed with watercolor where the pages would be scanned and photographed as original art with the black line work of Jean’s drawings overlaid on top of the painted pages.  

 

Before starting my five weeks of painting at Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande in Pauillac, I spent a week in Paris to meet with Jean Dethier and some of the other artists and architects that would be contributing work to Chateau Bordeaux.  Jean Giraud had agreed to meet me that week so that I could show him some of my finished pages for the graphic novel.  As excited as I was to finally meet the artist whose line work I tried to emulate a decade earlier, it was also my hope that he would not be disappointed in these painted pages as he had been in the already published pulp version.  And so it was with equal amounts of excitement and trepidation that I went off to meet Jean Giraud for a drink at Le Select on Boulevard Montparnasse on August 15th of 1988.

I was already sitting on the terrace of the café when Jean Giraud approached me.  I was 27 years old and he had recently turned 50.  He seemed to my young eyes both boyish and old.  Jean’s hair was wild, receding and greying, his face showing deep furrows around the brow of his forehead and along the creases of his mouth, but his eyes, framed by thin wired oval glasses, twinkled with youth.  After we ordered drinks from the waiter, I produced the pages I had colored.  He studied each one carefully and smiled when he returned them to the portfolio.  Relieved that he approved of my work, we turned our conversation to art.  He was working on a new series of abstract paintings that he was planning to show at Pompidou at some point.  He joked that he would avoid his opening as he feared the reaction to a body of work that was far different from what he was famous for. 

 

After drinks, Jean invited me for dinner around the corner at a vegetarian restaurant called Dietetic Shop on Rue Delambre.  The bright green facade and large yellow lettering made this petite bistro near impossible to miss on the tranquil street behind Boulevard Montparnasse.  At the time, Jean was a practicing “rawist” and Dietetic Shop prepared all his food uncooked as to his wishes.  At dinner we showed each other the drawings in our sketchbooks as we both always kept one with us.  Jean was one of those artists that could draw anything from imagination.  I have met a few more artists like him in the decades since, especially in the world of concept illustration and comic book art, but the type of visual memory skill that Jean possessed, has to this day, felt as much to me like a super power as a talent.

Earlier that evening, before our rendezvous, I had watched an interview show on television to help improve my poor French.  I described to Jean the strange man that was being interviewed; disheveled, unshaven, his eyelids heavy and swollen, and chain smoking Gitanes.

This man, wearing a denim jump suit, went out of his way to antagonize the host, and when a photo was shown of him looking both straight at the camera, and in profile – an American ‘perp” photo – I was sure he was a criminal.  Well, a criminal that could sing, as the show then played a video of this man performing the ballade Mon Legionnaire.  Jean Giraud laughed and knew exactly who I had seen on TV a few hours earlier, not a criminal, but the great singer and song writer Serge Gainsbourg, promoting his latest album You're Under Arrest.  To Jean’s astonishment I still had no idea who this person was, so after our dinner, Jean took me to a record shop on Montparnasse where I bought two cassettes for my Walkman.  And so that evening was not only the occasion of my meeting one of the great artists of my youth but also my introduction to Serge Gainsbourg. I became the proud owner of the cassettes, Melody Nelson, and You’re Under Arrest.  Within a year I would own many more of Gainsbourg’s albums, and become such a fan as to mourn his loss on March 2, 1991.

Two days later Jean invited me to his studio to hang out with him while he painted his abstract paintings.  I pulled out my gouache paints and started a small portrait of him working over the drafting table, while he made his acrylic paints and brush do magical things on the page.  We talked of fame, comics, films, and the struggles of being an artist.  And most importantly, we began a friendship.

Over the years, Jean would visit me in New York City.  Once he came at my invitation to lecture at the New York Academy of Art.  Another time, after drinks, we drew in each other’s sketchbooks where till this day I know I got the better part of the deal.  His drawing depicted two cowboys of the future meeting in a desert called Providence, references both to the city where I went to college and, I imagine, to our friendship.  Above the drawing, he penned the letters “GG,”  a reference to the black Siamese cat I had at that time.  To this day I treasure the sketch for many reasons.  But one is because of his love of America and specifically of “the Wild West.”  He once talked about his earlier comic book work done under the nom de plume “Gir.”  Blueberry depicted with astonishing accuracy, cowboys and indians, Winchester rifles, and every other accoutrement of that genre, and like Sergio Leone and his “Spaghetti Western” films, Jean illustrated these comic books before ever visiting the United States.

 

A decade almost to the week after our first meeting, in the summer of 1998 I painted my last portrait of Jean.  We had finished dinner at his Paris studio on rue Falguiere behind the Gare Montparnasse, and our sons went down to the courtyard to play.  While drinking wine, Jean and I talked about art, children, women and life, stopping our conversations only when I needed to paint his mouth.  That portrait of Jean, painted in simple bold hatch marks, might have impressed him more than any other work I had done up to that moment.  When it was completed, he held the painting in his hands and said “magic.”  That was what art and the act of creating was for him.  Decades later, it is still what the act of creating is for me.  Magic.

 

[*] YOU AND ME, one of twenty-one paintings from the IDOLS, DEMONS and SAINTS series, references John Wellington’s travels to Asia.  The stuffed toys, burning on top of the Great Wall of China, are based on a character created by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.  Other paintings from this series may be seen at http://johnwellington.com/demons.htm

[**] John Wellington – Studio Visit (6:51 minutes)
New York Academy of Art © 2013

 

  

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[1] John's previous contribution: "12 August – the day Jean-Michel Basquiat died 27 years ago at the age of 27"

[2] The Archangel, in German.