BOLLAND, Patrick
Montreal, Quebec
French-English

I work as a free-lance translator (and proof-reader); most of my work is in the humanities and social sciences, more specifically translating and adapting articles written in French (or written in English by francophone authors) for submission to English-language academic journals. My clients are typically CNRS researchers in France, although about a third of them are university faculty or researchers in Quebec. I have been doing this work for the last 10 years and most of the articles I have translated are about 6 to 8000 words. While much of my translation work is more “social science” than “literary”, quite a lot is at the humanities end of the social science spectrum.

        These less hard-nosed translation include: Spanish gypsy notions of “blood” (social anthropology), Foucault's influence on the anti-psychiatry movement in Italy, Young children's use of metaphors in the context of early detection of Asperger's syndrome, a lengthy Lacanian piece on “The Royal Family in psychoanalysis”, “The pathology of urgency” (psychosociology), “Politeness in the urban environment: Is city life still synonymous with civility” (environmental psychology), “The commercial sexual exploitation of children: The Montreal Police initiative” (social anthropology!), “Homosexual Parenthood and the making of the child's body” (sociology) and on legends about the origin of writing in ancient China (comparative linguistics).

        - A mixed bag! The original version (in French) in nearly all cases – there are about a hundred in all - has not been published, so I am unable to identify publishers and editors, and often am not even aware where my translations are eventually published!