“Un ‘Pygmalion’ québécois: une victoire”: Éloi de Grandmont’s Translation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

Abstract

Éloi de Grandmont’s 1968 translation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, staged by Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in their 1968–69 season, featured dialogue in standard French as well as joual, paralleling Shaw’s dichotomy between Cockney and Standard English from the 1941 source text, and also reterritorialized London’s environs to Montreal. Grandmont’s translation of Pygmalion highlights translation as creative and productive, rather than derivative and secondary, work because it reconstructs and reterritorializes, rather than mimics, a Shavian Montreal. Adapting the original play demonstrates how language influences and constructs identity through the layering of various other linguistic and cultural constructions. This article therefore demonstrates the impact of Grandmont’s proactive translation of Shaw’s Pygmalion, serving to inspire later sociopolitically proactive translations in Quebec, and analyzes how the translator foregrounds Québécois identity during the formative period of La Révolution Tranquille.