Translating Ferron, Ferron translating: Thoughts on an example of "translation within"

In both La nuit (1965) and its "corrected" version, Les confitures de coing s (1972), Jacques Ferron has inserted into his own text a French translatio n of an English poem by Samuel Butler, and through this insertion and the e xplicit thematization of translation that occurs in the surrounding passage s of dialogue, he has foregrounded translation in an extraordinarily critic al way. What is the function of translation between cultures of unequal pow er? What gets to be translated? Who chooses? Who produces the translation? Whose ends are being served? Through these implicit questions translation i s being subtly problematized. But what meaning does all this hold for the E nglish translator? How is he/she to situate translation in the light of the author's problematization of the act? This, ultimately, is the question un derlying my translator's reading of these passages in Ferron's two texts.