Ottawa, December 16, 2005
Linguistic Duality and Diversity: Building New Solidarities
Notes for an address at the Joint Conference of the Observatoire de la traduction littéraire and the Chaire pour le développement de la recherche sur la culture d’expression française en Amérique du Nord
Dr. Dyane Adam - Commissioner of Official Languages
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Ladies and Gentlemen:
I’m very pleased to be here with you today to wrap up two days of intensive work. You have provided a lot of food for thought on the role of translation in expressing diversity in the face of globalization and standardization.
Your discussions are all the more timely because Canada became on November 23 the first country to ratify the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. This convention is very important for us, because Canada’s cultural diversity and its two official languages are a fundamental part of our Canadian identity.
So today I would like to say a few words on how linguistic duality and cultural diversity complement each other as Canadian values. I will then discuss the contribution of translation to the expression of Canadian identity.
I. Linguistic duality and diversity
Ensuring linguistic equity is no small task; it’s a constant call for solidarity. It is everyone’s business. Every day, in thousands of ways, our fellow citizens discover that their social and linguistic reciprocity is the foundation of their values.
Canada is unique precisely because of its ability to draw upon its rich past to build solidarity based on equal opportunity, inclusiveness, and respect for individuals and communities.
The relationship between the recognition of both English and French as official languages and our ability to manage multiculturalism is obvious. I wonder how we will ever be able to combine equality and pluralism in the future if we cannot establish equality between our two major linguistic communities today.
Linguistic duality and diversity create social capital. They help us develop inclusive pluralism, which is open to the world. They also help us build close relationships with many regions and states in Europe, the Commonwealth, the Francophonie, and Asia.
In short, our success in managing diversity is more closely related than you’d think to our ability to promote our linguistic duality to the world. But unfortunately, there is not enough commitment in this area. This is why, in a study1 we published last year, we asked the federal government to reorient its international policy. We want our linguistic duality to be fully integrated into Canada’s economic and trade policies.
Of course, promoting our linguistic duality will also help raise the profile of many Canadian accomplishments in the area of translation. Our translators, particularly our literary translators, fully understand the contribution they make to dialogue among our citizens of diverse backgrounds.
II. Translation is key to ensuring equality in Canada
For many of us, our first contact with another culture was through a translated work of literature. For me, as a child, it was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Then in university I fell in love with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, then Tolstoy, then Goethe . . . and I still have a passion for discovery . . .
In Canada itself, how would we understand our neighbours if we had not translated Gabrielle Roy, Hugh MacLennan, Michel Tremblay, Margaret Atwood, Hubert Aquin, Neil Bissoondath, Charles Taylor, Dany Laferrière, Northrop Frye, Roger Lemelin . . . the list goes on and on.
Translating our literary works lets us see the world through other people’s eyes. It lets us learn about other Canadians, and discover the new language and culture hidden in the text like buried treasure. It shows us that people who seem very different at first glance are actually as much alike as our brothers and sisters.
As philosopher and translation professor Jean-René Ladmiral suggests, translation wards off the curse of Babel by showing us "a constructivist vision of the Universal,"2; in other words, by helping us understand the essence of humanity through other cultures and ideas.
On a more immediate level, in Canada, where we see the ever-increasing contribution of immigrants from all over the world, the language professions will continue to be essential to modern governance. Translation is key in ensuring that citizens and public servants have fair and equal access to the day-to-day workings of our country, through parliamentary business and debates, laws, court decisions, and all types of documents for public servants or general use.
One year ago, in a speech at the Fifth Symposium on Translation, Terminology and Interpretation in Canada and Cuba, I mentioned the Translation Bureau of the Government of Canada as a world leader in the field. With 1,750 employees, including 1,150 translators, interpreters and terminologists all over Canada, the Translation Bureau today provides a full range of language products and services, including interpretation, translation and multilingual services. In comparison, the European Union today employs some 2,000 translators, including 500 for Parliament, not counting interpreters.3
Furthermore, Industry Canada estimates there are some 15,000 self-employed workers in language industries.4 The market value of language teaching and translation in Canada is estimated at $750 million.5
In light of the language industry’s importance to Canada, it is not surprising that our expertise is internationally renowned. Tools developed here, including the Translation Bureau’s Termium and the Grand dictionnaire terminologique produced by the Office québécois de la langue française, are widely used elsewhere, particularly in Europe.
The federal government’s Action Plan for Official Languages,6 announced in March 2003, set out an investment of $10 million over a period of five years. One of the key points of the plan was to create a language technologies research centre.
This centre has now been established, and is housed in a new building adjacent to the Université du Québec en Outaouais. It has also received $15.2 million in additional funding from Economic Development Canada and the Quebec Department of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade.
The Translation Bureau is also examining the possibility of creating a portal that would offer a single point of access to the first national electronic collection of linguistic, terminological and technolinguistic tools produced by federal institutions or provincial and territorial partners in both official languages. Such a portal would make it possible to consolidate Canada’s huge linguistic assets; the entire language industry would benefit from this kind of development.7
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you and thank you for your dedication. Translation is a tough job, often solitary and always difficult. However, thanks to your efforts, cultural expressions and identities, especially that of Francophones in North America, can be shared with the entire world.
You promote dialogue among our fellow citizens, and it is this very dialogue, based on equality of our two official languages and recognition of our diversity, that encourages us to live together with dignity and respect.
Thank you.
1. Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Open to the world—Linguistic duality in Canada's international relations, 2004.
2. Ladmiral, Jean-René. “Entre Babel et Logos” (Between Babel and Logos). In a special edition of Le Nouvel Observateur (World’s 25 Great Thinkers). December 2004/January 2005, p. 12.
3. Le Saux, Annie. “Les enjeux de la traduction en Europe” (Challenges for translation in Europe). In Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France (French Libraries Newsletter), Vol. 48, No. 5., 2003, p. 83–84.
4. Privy Council Office. The Next Act: New Momentum for Canada's Linguistic Duality. 2003, p. 61.
5. Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. A Look at Bilingualism. 2004.
6. Ibid.
7. Privy Council Office. Mid-term report for Official Languages. 2005.
