Canada in Galicia? Or Galicia in Canada? Translating Erín Moure

Abstract

Although “[c]urrent copyright law ensures that translation projects will be driven by publishers, not by translators” (Venuti 1998, 48), minority-language literary systems such as the Galician one in Spain –in unbalanced competition with the globalized hegemonic system of the Spanish language–, give more room to the influence of what Sandra Ponzanesi defined as “relatively neglected agents of literature-making”, including academics and other authors (2006, 112), but also reputed translators who may be authors and/or academics themselves. We propose to examine here the confluence of interests operating in the circulation of Erín Moure’s poetry and essays in Galicia, her incorporation of Galician culture and language to her own production published in Canada, and her role as translator of Galician poetry into English. Our essay will be a dialogue with three implicated voices that will pay attention to the agents intervening in this particular process of cultural transfers between Canada and Galicia, including the academic context provided by the diverse conferences and seminars organized at the U. of Vigo by Belén Martín-Lucas that propitiated the encounters of Moure with poet Chus Pato and author/translator María Reimóndez; the role of Chus Pato as promoter of the translation of Moure’s work in Galicia; Reimóndez’s decisions as translator of Teatriños (2007); and the ongoing creative process of collaboration, influence and interest that has led Moure to translate Pato for Anglophone readers. This bidirectional cultural interaction is thus participating in a transnational Galician culture that recognizes Erín Moure as a “diasporic Galician in Canada”, at the same time that her critics and readers treasure Moure’s contribution to a transnational Canada. It is also the product of a shared belief in transnational feminist cooperation and creativity interweaving women in diverse contexts.