Sociocultural pertinence in translation: Dario Fo's "Mistero buffo" and its Quebecois transfiguration.

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate, through a case-study, the sociohistorical and ideological constraints to which the activity of translation is subject. Underlying the source text that was chosen--Dario Fo's Mistero buffo--there is one particular ideologeme which can be summed up as follows: 'the people have always been exploited'. In Michel Tremblay's 1973 translation, this ideologeme is converted into a different ideologeme: 'the Quebecois have always been exploited'. In order to shed light on this radical transformation, both plays are first situated in their sociocultural contexts and then analysed in terms of the social discourse that prevailed at the time of their reception in Italian and Quebecois society respectively. In this descriptive study the concept of 'pertinence'--as opposed to the translation's aesthetic merit per se--is employed as the chief criterion for interpreting translational shifts; the pattern of these shifts indicates that they are motivated principally by Tremblay's desire to make Mistero buffo correspond to the target audience's horizon of expectations.