Inspired by the vitality and uniqueness of Quebec literature, Carol Barko emigrated to Canada/Quebec in 1992, hoping to translate Quebec novelists. Instead, she found the Women’s Studio at the National Film Board of Canada for which she translated documentaries, later working with cinematographers Jean-Claude Labrecque and Philippe Baylaucq. She had studied French literature at Stanford University, California. While writing her Ph.D. thesis (“Mallarmé and Valéry”), she taught French literature at Oberlin College, Ohio. Oberlin sent her to St. Georges de Beauce in January 1970 to shepherd a group of students for a month of immersion in French. In 1979 she left the academy to work as a translator in diverse genres, while teaching courses on 20th century women writers of fiction at Columbia University and The New School.

Obituary from The New York Times.

Translated Works

Baylaucq, Philippe, The Art of Time, Montréal: InformAction, 2000.

Baylaucq, Philippe, Mystère B., Montréal: InformAction & Passerelle Production, 1998.

Bourgault, Hélène, End of a Millenium, Montréal: National Film Board of Canada, 1993.

Chalon, Jean, Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney, New York: Crown Publishers, 1979.

Cixous, Hélène, Inside, New York: Schocken Books, 1986.

Duras, Marguerite, Green Eyes, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Labrecque, Jean-Claude & Michel Faubert, Our Wayfaring Tales (subtitles, with Kathleen Fleming), Montréal: Les Films de la Traîne Sauvage; Québec: le Musée de la Civilisation Française, 1996.

Pellerin, Ginette, Evangeline’s Quest, Montréal: National Film Board of Canada, 1996.

Rached, Tahani, Doctors with Heart (TV version), Montréal: National Film Board of Canada: 1994.