Des Rochers, Arianne (2026). “Are French Translation Textbooks Compatible with Critical Pedagogies? Unpacking Linguistic Ideologies in La traduction raisonnée,” in Renée Desjardins et Valérie Florentin (eds.), Transformative Teaching in Translation, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 99-128.
This chapter analyzes the specific ways in which La traduction raisonnée (Delisle and Fiola, 2013) conceptualizes language and translation. Through this analysis, it emerges that this approach, heavily influenced by contrastive stylistics, is rooted in linguistic ideologies steeped in instrumentalism, logocentrism, and modernist ideas of rationality, clarity and purity. Given that the aim of critical pedagogies is to enact social change through the development of students’ critical consciousness and through democratic, anti-authoritative approaches, the prescriptivist and normative posture of La traduction raisonnée is shown to be incompatible with pedagogies that center social justice and emancipation from (linguistic) oppression. Finally, this chapter aims to start a conversation about the fraught linguistic ideologies informing what Echeverri has called the “Canadian tradition of translation teaching” (2017), and to highlight the need for developing alternatives that are less concerned with the quality of French translations and the linguistic performance of students, and more attuned to the social and hermeneutical dimensions of the process of translation, as well as to the changing needs of students and to the imperatives of social justice.
Des Rochers, Arianne (2025). “De l’éthique à la relationalité : repenser la traduction littéraire en contexte colonial,” Meta, 70-1, p. 1-19.
This article explores some of the ethical and political issues raised by the translation of Indigenous literatures into English and French in Canada. Considering the settler colonial linguistic context that determines literary translation in Canada, as well as the positionality of non-Indigenous translators in relation to these literatures, the article attempts to answer the age-old question of how to translate well. The article turns to some of the concepts and tools offered by the ethical turn in translation studies, in particular those of Antoine Berman and Lawrence Venuti, whose limits it demonstrates in a settler colonial context like Canada. Arguing that the ethics of translation alone cannot guide us through the delicate enterprise that is the translation of Indigenous literatures in a settler colonial context, the article explores a different line of thought, that of relationality. Drawing on the work of Édouard Glissant as well as on the concept of relationality in the Indigenous epistemologies of Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Lauren Tynan, this paper suggests prioritizing decolonial methodologies, which insist on the centrality of relationships and collaborations in work processes, rather than on an assessment of a project based on a (textual) analysis of its finished product.
Des Rochers, Arianne. (2025). “Cartographier la langue : frontières linguistiques, traduction, colonialisme,” Circula, 21-22, p. 108–132.
This article explores, from a theoretical angle and through the lens of translation, the notion of linguistic borders, specific to European and colonial ideologies of language, which continue to define the dominant approach to language in the Canadian colonial context. Refuting the conventional idea that translation stems from linguistic borders, and following instead the hypothesis that translation is precisely one of the main activities that create such borders, the article suggests that a transformation of Western and colonial conceptions of language will require a radical redefinition of translation. The article first explores the centrality of borders in the modern definition of translation, before outlining the colonial discursive regime on language. It then explores the role of translation in the (re)production of linguistic boundaries today, and offers avenues for a redefinition of translation, with a postlingual and decolonial aim.
Des Rochers, Arianne (2025). “La traduction des littératures autochtones de l’anglais vers le français au Canada : portrait socio-historique et empirique, de 1970 à 2023,” Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture, 16-1, p. 1–27.
This paper presents the results of a collection of bibliometric data aimed at documenting, on a quantitative level, the translation of published Indigenous texts from English into French in Canada. Inspired by the socio-historical approach to translation proposed by Gisèle Sapiro, it aims to fill the lack of in-depth, empirical studies relating to the translation of Indigenous literatures in Canada by providing an overview of these practices, conceived as a socio-historical phenomenon that needs to be synthesized. After presenting the advantages of such an approach within translation studies, the article outlines the methodology and criteria used to select the corpus for the data collection. Statistics from the data collection are then provided, from which certain patterns emerge according to specific variables (translated authors, publishing houses, years, etc.). Finally, avenues for reflection and research are offered by way of conclusion.