Guest Blog: Thinking of Yu: What does the translator do?

Today's Guest Blogger: John Murrell, translator of Thinking of Yu

What does the translator do?

I try to reproduce exactly the same music that the original author wrote, but on a different instrument.

I try to make an English trombone sing like a French violin.

This is intricate, painstaking work, one word, one punctuation mark at a time.

And, when translating theatre, the work is even more intricate – because I must reproduce not only the voice of the original author, but the several different voices of the several different characters. In the case of Thinking of Yu, I had to find the appropriate tough but disappointed, caring yet hurt, English poetry of the character Maggie – who was called Madeleine in French, a language in which toughness and disappoinment, care and hurt, flow more smoothly and reach greater heights without the need for so much climbing equipment as they require in the more literal and sometimes plodding English language. I don’t know if that’s clear, but that’s how it felt.

Then I had to find a different voice, a different music, for Jerry, Maggie’s “accidental friend”.  In French, he’s called Jérémie, and his use of French makes it immediately clear what social stratum he comes from, where and how much he’s been educated, and what his work life would be like. Our use of English, at least in western Canada, does not immediately reveal so much about us; our language is a great leveler in many ways. This is a good thing, I think.  But it means that I sometimes had to add a line, or at least a few words, to Jerry’s speeches, to catch the beautiful revelatory subtlety of Carole Fréchette’s Jérémie in a down-to-earth Jerry, who also cares and hurt, but keeps his care and hurt hidden in a way that would be impossible for him to do in French.

The third character in this inspiring play – Lin – has the same name in English as in French.  But that was the only thing which was easy about translating her.  Lin is a recent Chinese immigrant to Canada. In Carole’s original, she is learning French from Madeleine; in my translation, she has to be learning English from Maggie.  In the original, there are lots of references to French grammar and syntax, to French verb tenses, which are part of the play’s charm and humour and poetry.  None of this could work in an English version, because we neither have the same names for our verb tenses and grammar, nor the same education in the mechanics of our language, that French-speakers have. So, again, I had to try to be that trombone, aching to sound like the violin – keeping true to Carole’s intentions, her profound compassion for the human beings about whom she writes, the clarity of her revelations, while speaking with a different voice and to different ears and sensibilities.

It’s an honour to do this kind of work, but it is labour-intensive, and can turn one into a nit-picking neurotic if one is not careful.

Because I’ve spent most of my 40-year career in theatre writing plays of my own, in my own language, I am able to appreciate the beautiful humanity and exquisite precision with which Carole Fréchette composes her plays.  I’ve translated eight of them now – or eight-and-a-half, if I count the short play Entrefilet (News Item, in my translation), which is a sort of “Making of Thinking of Yu” piece.  I love bringing my knowledge and experience of theatre to the table, in order to help introduce English-speaking and English-hearing audiences to the work of this superb playwright from Québec, without whose poetry and compassion we would all be the poorer.

John Murrell, translator and playwright

January 2012