Donald Winkler | |
|---|---|
 Donald Winkler in 2018 | |
| Born | Donald Winkler 1940 |
| Alma mater | University of Manitoba Yale School of Drama |
| Occupation(s) | Filmmaker, Translator |
| Spouse | Sheila Fischman |
| Awards | Governor General's Award |
| Website | www |
Donald Winkler (born 1940) is a Canadian documentary filmmaker and French-to-English literary translator. [1] [2] He lives in Montreal with his wife Sheila Fischman. [3]
Winkler was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up loving theatre. [4] He was introduced to French through his mother who studied the language in Romania before coming to Canada when she was fifteen years old. [1] As a student, he took French courses alongside his literary studies at the University of Manitoba where he graduated in 1961. [1] He also went on to do graduate studies at the Yale School of Drama. [2] In his early twenties, he spent a year and a half in Paris teaching English where he enjoyed watching films at the Cinématheque and the little Latin Quarter art houses. [4] When he returned to Canada, he was drawn to Montreal because, for him, it was "the only city in the country at that time cosmopolitan enough". [4] The city was also the headquarters for the National Film Board of Canada, where Winkler first began making films. [4] He applied for an apprenticeship position that did not require film experience and was hired in 1967 when one of the three initial applicants declined the offer. [4] He learned the trade on the job and within a couple of years, began working on his first film. [4]
Winkler has been an independent filmmaker since leaving the National Film Board where he worked as a documentary film director and writer from 1967 to 1995. [1] His films primarily deal with the arts and culture in Canada. [1] He wrote and directed a number of films that look into the lives of Canadian playwrights, writers and musicians such as Irving Layton, F. R. Scott, P. K. Page, Al Purdy, Earle Birney, Ralph Gustafson and Tomson Highway. [1] In the year 2005, he entered his three films: Moshe Safdie: The Power of Architecture, The Pines of Emily Carr and The Colour of Memory: Conversations with Guido Molinari into the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal. [5]
In 1993, his documentary film Breaking a Leg: Robert Lepage and the Echo Project was a Genie Award nominee for Best Short Documentary at the 14th Genie Awards. [6]
Winkler first began translating Quebec literature in the late 1980s. [2] Although he never studied translation, he has since translated over 25 works including novels, poetry and essays. [7] [8] He is a member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada. [9] Carmine Starnino describes Winkler as "one of [Canada's] most gifted and highly decorated practitioners." [10] Winkler describes the process of translation as "a constant quest for perfect pitch" and a "sophisticated word game". [3] [7] A successful translation, in his words, gives readers "some sense of what it’s like to be in another culture’s skin". [7] His translations have been described as "seamless" and "wonderful". [11] [12] Sheila Fischman, his spouse, is also an award-winning translator. He describes her as the "doyenne of Canadian literary translation". [3]
Donald Winker has won the Governor General's Award for Translation three times:
His work was also nominated for the Governor General's Award on three separate occasions. [13] [14]
Donald Winkler was nominated for the Giller Prize twice:
In addition, he won the Quebec Writers’ Federation's Cole Foundation Translation Prize for his translation of The Major Verbs by Pierre Nepveu, [2] and in 1987, he received an honorable mention at the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada’s John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation for his translation entitled Rose and Thorn: The Selected Poetry by Roland Giguère. [17] Winkler's translation of Arvida by Samuel Archibald was also short-listed for the 2016 Best Translated Book Awards. [18]
| Title [19] | Author | Year |
|---|---|---|
| And God Created the French | Louis-Bernard Robitaille | 1997 |
| Are You Married to a Psychopath? | Nadine Bismuth | 2010 |
| Arvida | Samuel Archibald | 2015 |
| A Secret Between Us | Daniel Poliquin | 2007 |
| Conversations with Jean-Paul Riopelle | Gilbert Erouart and Jean-Paul Riopelle | 1995 |
| Crac | Paul Savoie | 2016 |
| Eucalyptus | Mauricio Segura | 2013 |
| Exile | Gilles Vigneault | 2010 |
| Forty-Seven Stations for a Ravaged Town | Jacques Rancourt | 2015 |
| In the Name of the Father | Daniel Poliquin | 2001 |
| Jeanniot: Taking Aviation to New Heights | Jacqueline Cardinal and Laurent Lapierre | 2013 |
| Latest News from the Cosmos | Hubert Reeves | 1997 |
| Malicorne | Hubert Reeves | 1993 |
| Montcalm & Wolfe: Two Men Who Forever Changed the Course of Canadian History | Roch Carrier | 2014 |
| Of Jesuits and Bohemians | Jean-Claude Germain | 2014 |
| Partitia for Glenn Gould | Georges Leroux | 2010 |
| Pluriel: An Anthology of Diverse Voices | Various authors | 2008 |
| Romans Fleuves | Pierre Nepveu | 1998 |
| Rose and Thorn: The Selected Poetry by Roland Giguère | Roland Giguère | 1988 |
| Rue Fabre: Centre of the Universe | Jean-Claude Germain | 2012 |
| Terracide | Hubert Reeves | 2009 |
| The Bad Mother | Marguerite Andersen | 2016 |
| The Lyric Generation: The Life and Times of the Baby-Boomers | François Ricard | 1994 |
| The Major Verbs | Pierre Nepveu | 2012 |
| The Storm | Léon Courville | 1995 |
| The Universe Explained to my Grandchildren | Hubert Reeves | 2012 |
| The World of the Gift | Jacques T. Godbout | 1998 |
| To the Spring, by Night | Seyhmus Dagtekin | 2013 |
| You Will Love What You Have Killed | Kevin Lambert | 2020 |
Daniel Poliquin is a Canadian novelist and translator. He has translated works of various Canadian writers into French, including David Homel, Douglas Glover, and Mordecai Richler. Poliquin and his hometown of Ottawa are the subjects of 1999 documentary film L'écureuil noir, directed by Fadel Saleh for the National Film Board of Canada.
Steven Heighton was a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and singer-songwriter. He is the author of eighteen books, including three short story collections, four novels, and seven poetry collections. His last work was Selected Poems 1983-2020 and an album, The Devil's Share.
The Literary Translators' Association of Canada (LTAC) is an association of literary translators from across Canada.
Sheila Leah Fischman is a Canadian translator who specializes in the translation of works of contemporary Quebec literature from French to English.
Arvida is a settlement of 12,000 people (2010) in Quebec, Canada, that is part of the City of Saguenay. Its name is derived from the name of its founder, Arthur Vining Davis, president of the Alcoa aluminum company.
Dany Laferrière is a Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist who writes in French. He was elected to seat 2 of the Académie française on 12 December 2013, and inducted in May 2015.
Pierre Nepveu is a French Canadian poet, novelist and essayist. As a scholar, he specializes in modern Quebec poetry, in particular the work of Gaston Miron. He taught at the French Studies Department of Université de Montréal from 1979 until his retirement in 2009.
Pan Bouyoucas is a Greek-Canadian author, playwright and translator.
John Glassco was a Canadian poet, memoirist and novelist. According to Stephen Scobie, "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations." He is also remembered by some for his erotica.
Nigel Spencer is a writer, translator, and professor of English living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has thrice received the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for translation, in 2002, 2007, and 2012. He was also awarded a 'Proclamation of Recognition' by President Lansana Conté of the Republic of Guinea.
Lazer Lederhendler is a Canadian literary translator and academic.
Anne McLean is a Canadian translator of Spanish literature. She began to learn Spanish in her late twenties and developed her language skills while living in Central America. Some years later in England, she took a master's degree in literary translation at Middlesex University. McLean has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, Javier Cercas, Evelio Rosero, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and Carmen Martín Gaite.
The John Glassco Translation Prize is an annual Canadian literary award, presented by the Literary Translators' Association of Canada to a book judged the year's best translation into either English or French of a work originally written in any language. The winning writer is awarded $1,000 and a free membership to LTAC.
Liedewij Hawke, usually credited as Liedewy Hawke in English, is a Dutch/Canadian literary translator.
Samuel Archibald is a Canadian writer. He is best known for his short story collection Arvida, which won the Prix Coup de cœur Renaud-Bray in 2012, and was defended by Bernard Landry in the 2013 edition of Le Combat des livres. Its English translation by Donald Winkler was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Paul Gagné is a Canadian literary translator currently working in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. With his wife Lori Saint-Martin, he has translated over seventy English language books into French, including the works of authors such as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Klein. He holds a master's degree in French literature from Laval University.
Lori Saint-Martin was a Canadian author and literary translator. Her first novel, Les Portes closes, came out in 2013. Working with her husband Paul Gagné, she translated over seventy English language books into French, including the works of such authors as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Klein.
Biblioasis is a Canadian independent bookstore and publishing company, based in Windsor, Ontario.
Hugh Hazelton is an American-born writer and translator, living in Canada and specializing in Latin American works and their interactions with Canadian works. He is multilingual and translates French, Spanish, and Portuguese into English.
Susan Ouriou is a Canadian fiction writer, literary translator and editor.
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