L’animalité du discours des protagonistes en traduction française et anglaise de la pièce « Le Chien » de Jean-Marc Dalpé

Abstract

The oral character inherent to a theatre and the hybrid or multilingual character of modern French Canadian literature invests it with functions that pertain strictly to the spoken word and that translator must take into account. This paper examines translation strategies proposed and applied in English and Standard-French translations of the play Le Chien, written by Franco-Ontarian playwright Jean-Marc Dalpe. In the play Le Chien the hybrid character of language and abundance of swearwords constitutes a symptom of inability to communicate of protagonists and animality of their discourse. This specificity, crucial in terms of interpretation of the play, is the major obstacle in translator’s work because he needs to target the specific, English and French-speaking audience which is unilingual and doesn’t have the same cultural experience.