When the City of Montreal needed help, McGill was up to the task
In 2005, Montreal’s City Council adopted an important and innovative document: The Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities. It serves the dual purpose of setting out the “deal,” so to speak, between the city of Montreal and its citizens, and of setting an example for other major cities, thus positioning Montreal as a leader, nationally and internationally.
The strategy seemed to work, as about two years after the Charter’s adoption, Michèle Bernier, a multilingual woman who advises the City on international relations, received a phone call from someone in Argentina who thought the Montreal Charter did a pretty good job of laying out what participatory democracy is all about, and might make a great model for cities in South America. Was there a Spanish version available?
There wasn’t, but it just so happened that Bernier was enrolled in Translation Studies at McGill, where the program includes opportunities to gain field experience whereby students get an opportunity to do some “real-life” translation together as a class. The Charter project seemed like a perfect fit for the advanced Spanish class, and Mayor Gérald Tremblay, for whom both the Charter and the idea of positioning Montreal in the world have been central priorities, was thrilled with the idea.
“We had Latin America wall to wall,” explained Dr. Archibald, including students from Argentina, Mexico, and Columbia. Two of the students were lawyers who could help ensure that any legal interpretation of the Spanish would be similar to that of the primary French text, and others were second and third generation immigrants who could provide crucial context, having lived in Montreal their whole lives. The lecturer, Daniel Zamorano, was himself from South America, where translation departments are typically housed in law faculties – so translating a charter of rights and responsibilities was right up his alley, too.
Receiving no compensation for their labour, the students had a different motivation. “It was done almost as a public service,” Dr. Archibald said, one that illustrates the relationship of Continuing Education’s commitment to serve “as a bridge to the community.”