From carriage driver to PhD student

Dominique Pelletier, a graduate student in Concordia’s translation studies program, spent her days leading horses around the Old Port — until a fateful encounter.

Pelletier’s grandfather had taught her to drive a horse-drawn carriage or calèche. This skill inspired her to pursue work as an Old Montreal tour guide when she turned 18.

She learned to manoeuvre busy cobbled streets and earn the trust of her co-workers.

“Sometimes you and your horse have rough days, but it’s actually a really cool job,” she says. “You’re outside, you meet people from all over the world and you get to tell them about the city you love.”

After driving a calèche for more than 10 years, Pelletier embraced academia. In 2009, she enrolled in a specialized bachelor’s degree in translation at Université de Montréal.

Pelletier, who is mother to a six-year-old, Damien, earned freelance translation and descriptive video work in Quebec’s film and television industry.

A fateful calèche ride

On a late-summer evening in 2011, a calèche client asked: “What do you do?” She explained she was considering pursuing a master’s degree in terminology, but unsure.

“That happened to be Philippe Caignon, the chair of my department [Département d’études françaises] who specializes in terminology,” says Pelletier. “So he said, ‘That’s great, if you’re looking for an advisor I would be interested in directing a thesis with a subject like carriage-driving terminology — it has tons of historical value and you’re an expert.’”

One year later, Pelletier was sitting in a classroom at Concordia pursuing an MA in translation studies with Caignon as her supervisor. Her thesis, A Socio-Historical Approach on Carriage Driving Terminology, explores how carriage terminology is diversely used and provides extensive historical descriptions.

Last year, Pelletier received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) scholarship.

As for her freelancing, it has morphed into a personal subtitling business, and she has had the chance to teach in her field at the undergraduate level.

Judith Woodsworth, a professor in Concordia’s Département d’études françaises, first taught Pelletier in an introductory class. “She was really outstanding — always alert and curious,” recalls Woodsworth.

At Woodsworth’s behest, Pelletier presented at a graduate student translation conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She is currently outgoing president of the Concordia University Graduate Students Association and she helped organize a conference for the 2014 Association francophone pour le savoir congress at Concordia. She was twice on the organizing committee for the annual Voyages in Translation Studies conference.

“I would say she is one of the pillars of the department,” says Woodsworth. “She is very active in student activities and just a great woman all around.”

Pelletier’s hectic life will continue to gallop. She has been accepted at the University of Ottawa for a PhD in the fall. Her new thesis’s working title is Theory-practice Reflexivity in Terminology: A Study on Movements of Symbolic Capital in the Field.

Looking to the future, Pelletier envisions herself as a professor: “I would love to teach at Concordia. It would be my dream university because it corresponds to my values and the atmosphere is fantastic.”

• Want to study translation? Find out more about the programs offered at Concordia.