Abstract

The letters of Franco-American architect Joseph François Mangin weathered the turbulent Age of Revolutions. They include eyewitness accounts of key moments in Haitian and American history, and details of his influential work as an architect in New York City. There are also yet unverified claims that testify to his work on the Erie Canal and drawing the plans for the city of Chambly, and its neighboring canals in Quebec, Canada. The letters testify to the transnational existence of a man who played an active role in designing New World structures and to the debates and conflicts that bore upon such activities at the time.
I will use the opportunity of translating the letters to develop an ecotouristic approach geared toward conservation of the foreign past. One that provides an aesthetic experience rooted in the present, and that privileges conservation by endeavoring to work at the crossroads of history and translation.
The recent foregrounding of time in Translation Studies led me to reconsider it as a variable in research foregrounding space. This led me to reconsider the metaphor of travel developed by Susan Bassnett, in order to ponder the ethics of mediating temporalities, and the potential of time travel as a sub-metaphor to discuss the negotiation thereof. The form employed by the author, the context of the translation itself, led me to revisit Bella Brodzki’s reflections on translation as intergenerational transmission and develop the sub-metaphor of letter-writing, to ponder how one generation answers another.
The untranslatable past manifests in the letters as terms and expressions no longer applicable, expressions specific to the culture and idiom of the time, and idiosyncrasies inherent to a man of that time—all of which lend the text undeniable authenticity. Efforts were made to manifest these elements in a text recast in the present, by featuring loan words, and annotations intended to host the foreign past. Paratexts were added by later generations, when the letters were transcribed, to guide the reader; because the translation is for Joseph François Mangin’s African-American descendants, their reshaping also required careful consideration.
This translation and its commentary emphasize the translator’s role as mediator of temporalities, the intergenerational nature of the endeavor and its potential for agency and conservation. They are intended to contribute to research in the translation of historical texts possessing literary qualities.