Trainspotting: Translation of Swearing

Martin Bowman had worked with Bill Findlay translating mainly the works of Michel Tremblay from working-class Montreal French, or joual, into the equivalent Scots. He was born in Montreal: his parents were Scots.

Wajdi Mouawad was a twenty-eight year-old director and one of the stars of his generation in Montreal theatre. He had written and produced several plays of his own as well as working as a director and actor. Wajdi was born in Beirut, fleeing with his family from the war there when he was six. Then after eight years in Paris, he moved to Montreal in his mid-teens. He is fluent in the French of both sides of the Atlantic.

When they were working on the translation, Wajdi was also in the process of adapting Don Quixote for the stage.

'He would sit across from me as we were having intense discussions on the nature of the art of translation, in other words, trying to figure out which joual word for a frequently used obscenity would be most appropriate for a particular instance of the word in Trainspotting and wave his hand over his laptop and dream of the meeting in there of Francis Begbie and Don Quichotte himself. For Wajdi is perfectly placed to render both standard French as a suitable voice for Cervantes and to recreate into joual the language of Welsh's Scots speakers.'

Read more ...What is Joual?

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