ABSTRACT
The propensity of English to allow the same word to be used both as a noun and as a verb is imported in the Cree language, while a Cree word is exported in the English text. Unsurprisingly though, if Robert Dickson borrows names of sweets from the English, he decides to transpose cultural references when equivalents in ‘standard’ French would have ostracised his target readers. Given Dickson’s choice to borrow Cree words and sentences as they were, heterolingualism was apparently only an issue when French was involved in the source text. Moreover, beyond cultural and phonetic allusions, the vocabulary used by Dickson remains one of the surest signs of the further hybridisation of the text in the translation process. If the coexistence of Cree and English rhythms and sound patterns participates in the hybridisation of the source text and does not facilitate the work of the translator, Highway sometimes goes one step further by deconstructing the linguistic codes of English.
