Dramatic Licence: Translating Theatre from One Official Language to the Other in Canada by Louise Ladouceur (review)

Dramatic Licence: Translating Theatre from One Official Language to the Other in Canada, originally published in French as Making the Scene: la traduction du théâtre d’une langue officiel a l’autre (2005), appears in a fluid translation by Richard Lebeau, opening to English-speaking readers a sharp analysis of how Canadian plays in translation reflect broad cultural and political forces that impact the transfer of drama from one cultural context to the other. This book is no less important for underscoring the complexities of translation culturally and within the theatre context specifically. Louise Ladouceur provides close analyses of twelve important plays, six of which were translated from English to French and six the other way around. In her analyses she draws on the important work of Annie Brisset and Sherry Simon on translations of Québécois work, as well as the work of other translation theorists within a global context, including the Tel Aviv school of linguistics and Antoine Berman’s theories of literary translation. Ladouceur’s analysis is firmly grounded within an understanding of the complicated network of signs operating onstage, following Tadeusz Kowzan’s approach.

The book argues that in the context of Canada and Canadian cultural politics, in which there are asymmetric positions of power, translation acts differently depending on which context it is enacted in. Ladouceur analyzes the translation of texts between 1959 and 2000, tracing different stages within this period in which translation shifted in its function, and highlighting the ways in which translation reflected the broader politics of power in each stage. She begins with 1959–60 and shows that English-speaking theatre, which had been borrowing heavily from British and American drama, turned to Québécois popular plays, considered “non-threatening,” in order to represent a more Canadian repertoire. The Quiet Revolution and the creation of a new type of Québécois drama reliant on distinctive regional features changed this borrowing, making Québécois plays less viable and desirable for an English-Canadian audience. The founding of various new theatres in Toronto in the early 1970s paradoxically created a new audience for Canadian plays, and once again the solution was the translation of plays from the francophone repertoire. For Ladouceur, Michel Tremblay epitomizes this period, with his appeal to these more experimental venues. However, Ladouceur shows how, despite the triumphant success of Tremblay in both contexts, and despite the bourgeoning Canadian English-speaking theatres, language remained a predicament for the transmission of plays from one context to the other. Tremblay’s plays most vividly reflect this obstacle of language in their use of Joual, the language associated with the French-speaking working class of Montreal. Ladouceur shows that, lacking proper introductions to the published translations, the plays became markers of the success of a Canadian repertoire, while at the same time erasing the Québécois contextual specificity and the political dimension of language.

As increased support by the Canada Council for the Arts in the 1970s and 1980s changed the equation by ushering in a new generation of anglophone writers, in francophone Canadian theatre the 1980s marked the introduction of greater lyricism and poetic language, and the creation of a “visual theatre,” all of which posed challenges when translated into the anglophone context. As Ladouceur eloquently states, for anglophone audiences the francophone insistence on language as a site for identity was often overlooked. In recognition of the obstacles to translation the Centre d’essai des auteurs dramatiques was established in Quebec in 1987 as a centre for translating works. This marked greater empowerment for Quebec, which now became a hub for translation both of anglophone plays into French and francophone plays into English. In her conclusion, Ladouceur reiterates a point that was threaded throughout her book: the centrality and complexity of translation in the process of bringing a play from one language and culture to...