Humour Me: Translating Laughs From French to English by Neil Smith

Today we invite Neil Smith, translator of You Crushed It, to the blog to share his thoughts on the process of translating humour from French to English! Read on for insights into how Neil overcame one of the biggest challenges faced by translators. Off to Neil! 

Humour Me: Translating Laughs from French to English by Neil Smith

You Crushed It is set in the world of stand-up comedy. The young Quebec comedians in Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard’s novel base their success on the jokes they tell and the laughs they earn. Translating this world from French to English posed a big challenge, humour being notoriously hard to adapt into another language.

I had to translate not only funny gags but also jokes that bomb. For example, at a Montreal comedy club, the main character, Raph, tries out a lame bit that mocks baby boomers. He says that although boomers do everything on their iPads, they never learn to use their tablet properly. In the original French, he says that watching them use an iPad is like listening to a little francophone kid trying to speak English. He then imitates the kid butchering English. The audience barely laughs.

In my translation, I move away from the original. Raph says instead that watching boomers on an iPad is like watching a three-year-old use an Etch A Sketch. He then pretends to be a little kid madly twisting the knobs of the toy.

Why the change?

First, I like that an iPad somewhat resembles an Etch A Sketch. But, more important, I feel that directly referring to the English language in a translated novel risks pulling readers out of the story. When we read a translation in which the characters seem to be speaking fluent English, our brain tricks us into thinking that the story was originally written in English. So it can be disconcerting to remind readers that no, in fact, these characters might not know how to speak English at all.

Another deliberate shift in meaning in my translation occurs when, in his one-man show, Raph complains about stand-ups who slip corny puns into their acts. In the original, he makes a pun on the French words for “dishwasher” (lave-vaisselle) and “armpit washer” (lave-aisselle), two terms that sound alike.

Obviously, a literal translation wouldn’t fly in English. To adapt the pun, I first considered using “armadillo” and “armoured dildo,” a naughty play on words that appears in Margaret Atwood’s novel Life Before Man.

Finally, however, I opted for something very different from the French. Raph’s pun becomes this: “The present, the past, and the future walk into a bar. It’s tense.”

Now, I don’t like to alter meaning in my translations without good reason. Here, though, the pun on verb tenses reflects the very structure of the novel, since You Crushed It features chapters written alternately in the present, past, and future. Plus the tone of the book is decidedly tense. The English pun, in other words, is meta.

When I stray from the original text in a translation, I always run my suggestions by the author. Luckily, Jean-Philippe was very open to the weird solutions I came up with.

As his novel is about the comedy world in Quebec, it naturally mentions some real-life comedians and performers here. But since Québécois celebrities aren’t necessarily well known to English Canadians, I sometimes adapted the cultural references.

For instance, when Raph is doing a table read of the first draft of his one-man show, a script editor tells him in the original French version that no one expects Raph to “shit out Louis-José Houde on the corner of the table.” Although one of Quebec’s most famous stand-ups, Louis-José Houde is little known among anglos. In English, I say instead that no one expects Raph to pull John Mulaney out of his ass.

In another scene, Raph’s manager, Thomas, says he’s glad that Raph is looking after his health, but he warns him against becoming a fitness buff and looking like Éric Bruneau. A slim, handsome, dark-haired actor in his thirties, Éric Bruneau is well known to francophones in Quebec but not to anglophones in Canada. In my translation, he transforms into another slim, handsome, dark-haired actor: the British movie star Robert Pattinson.

Thomas also claims that fatter comedians are no longer funny if they lose a lot of weight. The example he gives in French is Katherine Levac, a real-life francophone comedian who has slimmed down (and, incidentally, is still funny). In English, I switch the sex of the person and refer to Jonah Hill, an American comedian who, now that he’s thinner, is better known for the dramatic roles he plays in films.

In another chapter in the French version, Raph brings up the lowbrow Québécois comic Mario Jean making bad jokes about lawn mowers. In my English translation, Mario Jean becomes the American stand-up Larry the Cable Guy joking not about lawn mowers but about Walmart, one of Larry’s favourite topics in his act.

Comedians aren’t the only ones who undergo a cultural metamorphosis in the book; murderers do, too. Thomas reassures Raph that he can act like a prick and no one will care since he’s talented. “You could be Jeffrey Dahmer,” Thomas says, “and everyone would forgive you.” In the original French, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is in fact Guy Turcotte, an infamous Québécois doctor who stabbed his two young children to death in 2009.

Of course I could have kept the Québécois references in my translation and briefly explained who these people are. But because the original French often touches on anglophone culture (the song “Life Is a Highway,” the actor Ashton Kutcher, the podcast host Joe Rogan, the movies Air Bud and Home Alone), I felt I had some leeway to adapt the francophone references to the anglophone world.

These cultural shifts include not only people but also television programs and movies. In one scene, Raph wonders whether people truly like him and says he feels like the character in Le dîner des cons, a French film in which Parisian businessmen pretend to befriend a dim-witted fellow and ends up humiliating him. In my English translation, the reference becomes the film Carrie about the timid American high school student pranked at her prom.

I didn’t adapt every cultural reference, however. Real-life Québécois celebrities who make short cameos in the book—comedian Mariana Mazza, actor Anne-Élisabeth Bossé, talk show host Guy A. Lepage, singer Marie-Mai—remain as is in my English translation.

One last detail that did change markedly is the title. In French, the novel is called Haute démolition, which translates literally as “high demolition.” Although very different, my English title, You Crushed It, preserves the violence of demolition in the word “crush.” Since the entire book is narrated in the second person (“You told yourself nothing bad could happen” is the first line), I wanted the pronoun “you” to appear in the title. And what are comedians told when they come offstage after a killer set? “You crushed it!”

In Jean-Philippe’s novel, Raph crushes it. But he also crushes everyone around him: his best friend, his manager, his girlfriend. He crushes and he gets crushed. His life may be comedy, but it’s no laughing matter.