An English Translation of Antonine Maillet’s La Sagouine by Sebastian Singh

Antonine Maillet's classic work La Sagouine, translated from Acadian French vernacular into English, done by Language and Culture Major Sebastian Singh of the class of 2018. La Sagouine is a founding text of Acadian culture. It, along with Longfellow’s Evangeline, is a story exclusive to these people. But Evangeline was published in 1847 and in English no less. It is a text that is about and external to the Acadians because it is not in an Acadian language. La Sagouine is about an Acadian, by an Acadian, for the Acadians, in Acadian French no less. But there Anglophones run into a problem; how can an Anglophone even start to try to read a text that is not in French or English? How can a non-Acadian read such a text by any other means than translation? And then how can one translate from “not French” into English? I faced all of these struggles, in my translation, so you the reader wouldn’t have to, and I sincerely hope that you can gain from my struggles and enjoy this text and hopefully get something valuable from it, as I have. This text is the kind of rambling you hear from an old opinionated gossipy washerwoman in a small community, and because of that it’s funny sometimes, it’s serious sometimes, and it always flows. It’s presented in a series of monologues in which: you hear about who’s sleeping with whom, who’s got money, who wastes theirs, and what misadventures are noteworthy. And you don’t have to do anything but nod along and eponymous La Sagouine will keep you entertained for many hours, because she’s got a story to tell and you can listen.