One of the essays on the North translated into the greatest number of languages
In cooperation with the organization in Harstad of the first major Arctic Arts Summit, which brought together more than 400 people and circumpolar organizations, on the initiative of Maria Utsi, this project carried out by the International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic of the Université du Québec à Montréal in cooperation with many other international partners, aimed to translate into the greatest number of languages of the North and the Arctic, including Indigenous languages, the essay by Professor Daniel Chartier, entitled What is the imagined North? Ethical Principles, based on the inaugural conference of the Arctic Arts Summit in June 2017 in Norway.
Originally planned in 7 languages - French, Norwegian, Northern Sami, English, Swedish, Danish and Russian - the essay was published in 8 different editions. To illustrate the diversity of languages of the North and the Arctic and the importance of multilingualism to understand images of the North, each of these editions contained a different set of 7 languages. All books have been published in print, distributed by the Presses de l'Université du Québec, but are also available as a free digital download in all languages.
Subsequently, the project was extended to other circumpolar languages, which were also the subject of 8 other multilingual editions, always with a set of different languages: in Inuktitut, Icelandic, Faroese, Japanese, German, Finnish, Yakut, Estonian and Polish.
This essay was thus the subject of 16 different editions in as many Northern and Arctic languages, each containing a different set of 7 different languages and available in print and digital format. It is therefore one of the essays on the North translated into the greatest number of languages. The project aims to promote Northern languages, such as Inuktitut, Yakut, Faroese, Estonian and Northern Sami, for which there are few translations and even fewer translations of essays.
The different editions of this book were launched in 9 different events, which took place in Harstad (Norway), Montréal (Québec), Paris (France), Tokyo (Japan), Yakutsk (Sakha Republic), Rovaniemi (Finland), Rostock (Germany), Tartu (Estonia) and Warsaw (Poland), during the period from June 2017 to December 2022.
In addition to the Arctic Arts Summit (first in Harstad, then in Rovaniemi) and the Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as all the translators, the partners of this project are numerous: the University of Tartu, the Northeastern Federal University in Yakutsk, the Maison du Danemark in Paris, Place des Arts in Montréal, the University of Bergen, the University of the Faroe Islands, the University of Rovaniemi, the Japanese Association for Québec Studies, the Centre de recherche sur la littérature et la culture québécoises, the Rikkyo University, the University of Iceland, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität University, the University of Warsaw and the Presses de l'Université du Québec, all thanked for this extraordinary initiative.
This book aims to lay the methodological bases of the multidisciplinary analysis of images of the North as a complex, plurilingual, pluricultural and variable cultural object. The objective is both to “recomplexify” the North and the Arctic, which have been simplified for a long period; to include the Indigenous point of view, which has been often overlooked; and to lay the ethical foundations for the study of the North and the Arctic from a cultural point of view.
Here are the 15 editions of this book, each of which is presented on its own page.
In order, in French, German and Inuktitut;
in Norwegian, Japanese and English;
in Icelandic, Estonian and Faroese;
in Finnish, Yakut and Swedish;
in Northern Sami, Russian and Danish;
In Polish.
You can see the details of each publication by clicking on its cover.