Sheila Fischman | |
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Born | Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada | 1 December 1937
Occupation | Translator |
Sheila Leah Fischman CM CQ [1] (born 1 December 1937) is a Canadian translator who specializes in the translation of works of contemporary Quebec literature from French to English. [2]
Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, [3] she was brought up in Ontario. She holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. Fischman is a former editor of the Montreal Star 's book section, as well as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and a broadcaster for CBC Radio. [4] She is a founding member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada and founding co-editor of Ellipse: Œuvres en traduction/Writers in Translation. She lives in Montreal.
Fischman has translated nearly 150 Quebec novels into English, including works by such noted Quebec authors as Michel Tremblay, Hubert Aquin, Jacques Poulin, Suzanne Jacob, Anne Hébert, Marie-Claire Blais, Roch Carrier, Yves Beauchemin, Kim Thúy, Dominique Fortier and François Gravel.
Since 1987, Fischman has received 14 nominations for the Governor General's Award for Translation, receiving the prize in 1998 for Bambi and Me, her translation of Michel Tremblay's Les vues animés. She has twice won the Canada Council Prize for Translation (in 1974 and 1984) and the Félix-Antoine Savard Award offered by the Translation Center, Columbia University, for Heartbreaks Along the Road by Roch Carrier (1989) and The First Garden by Anne Hébert (1990). [2] Her translation of Pascale Quiviger's The Perfect Circle was a finalist for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and her translation of Am I Disturbing You by Anne Hébert was a finalist for the same prize in 2000. Four of Fischman's translations have been selected for Canada Reads: Next Episode by Hubert Aquin in 2003; Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin in 2005; The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay in 2009; and Ru by Kim Thúy in 2015. Her translations won the competition in 2003 and 2015.
In recognition of her work, Fischman has received honorary doctorates from the University of Ottawa and the University of Waterloo. In 2000, she was invested into the Order of Canada and, in 2008, made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec. [1] [5] She won the 2008 Molson Prize for the Arts. [6]
Michel Tremblay is a Québécois novelist and playwright.
Roch Carrier is a French Canadian novelist and author of "contes". He is among the best known Quebec writers in English Canada.
Jacques Poulin is a Canadian novelist with a quiet and intimate style of writing. Poulin studied psychology and arts at the Université Laval in Quebec City; he started his career as commercial translator and later became a college guidance counselor. Only after the success of his second novel, Jimmy (1969), was he able to devote himself completely to his writing. Poulin has written fourteen novels, many of which have been translated into English by Sheila Fischman, and published by Cormorant Books.
This is an article about literature in Quebec.
Anne Hébert, was a Canadian author and poet. She won Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, three times, twice for fiction and once for poetry.
Radio-Canada has aired National Hockey League (NHL) broadcasts, usually Montreal Canadiens', under the La Soirée du hockey brand; which was the French language equivalent of the English Canadian CBC's NHL broadcasts Hockey Night in Canada. Similar to its English language counterpart, the show used "The Hockey Theme" as its theme song. The show ran from 1952 to 2004.
The Prix Athanase-David is a literary award presented annually by the government of Quebec as part of the Prix du Québec to a Quebec writer, to honour the body of his or her work.
Linda Gaboriau is a Canadian dramaturg and literary translator who has translated some 125 plays and novels by Quebec writers, including many of the Quebec plays best known to English-speaking audiences.
Volkswagen Blues is a French-language road novel by French-Canadian writer Jacques Poulin, his sixth, originally published by Québec-Amérique in 1984.
Hubert Aquin was a Quebec novelist, political activist, essayist, filmmaker and editor.
Next Episode is the debut novel by French Canadian author Hubert Aquin, published in 1965.
The Hockey Sweater is a short story by Canadian author Roch Carrier and translated to English by Sheila Fischman. It was originally published in 1979 under the title "Une abominable feuille d'érable sur la glace". It was adapted into an animated short called The Sweater by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1980 and illustrated by Sheldon Cohen.
Pan Bouyoucas is a Greek-Canadian author, playwright and translator.
Virginie is a French-language Canadian television series that aired Monday through Thursday on Radio-Canada. It debuted in 1996. The show examined the public and private lives of teachers, students, and families at the fictional Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc high school. It frequently dealt with controversial social topics, such as teen drug use, ethnic prejudice, divorce, and other subjects touching on contemporary Quebec life. "Virginie" was a téléroman-style drama that often used "cliffhangers" in the storylines. It aired 120 episodes per year of 30 minutes each.
Adieu Alouette was a Canadian television documentary anthology series on the life and culture of Quebec. It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada for the network and aired on CBC Television in 1973.
Kim Thúy Ly Thanh, CM CQ is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer. Kim Thúy was born in Vietnam in 1968. At the age of 10 she left Vietnam along with a wave of refugees commonly referred to in the media as “the boat people” and settled with her family in Quebec, Canada. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, and restaurant owner. The author has received many awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010, and was one of the top 4 finalists of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2018. Her books have sold more than 850,000 copies around the world and have been translated into 31 languages and distributed across 43 countries and territories. Kim Thúy lives in Montreal where she devotes her time to writing.
Ru is a novel by Vietnamese-born Canadian novelist Kim Thúy, first published in French in 2009 by Montreal publisher Libre Expression. It was translated into English in 2012 by Sheila Fischman and published by Vintage Canada.
Donald Winkler is a Canadian documentary filmmaker and French-to-English literary translator. He lives in Montreal with his wife Sheila Fischman.
Marie-Danielle Croteau now 71 years is a Canadian writer of youth literature living in Quebec and Central America.