Michel Tremblay: Plays in Scots, edited by Martin Bowman, is a two-volume set of the translations by Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay of eight plays by Michel Tremblay translated from joual, the vernacular French of Montreal, into contemporary urban Scots. Between 1989 and 2003, these translations received professional productions in major theatres in Scotland, and several of them toured beyond Scotland to Montreal, Toronto, New York State, and London. Michel Tremblay’s exceptional plays found a second home in their Scots guise, emphasizing the political and cultural resonance between Quebec and Scotland. Unlike most translations of plays into Scots, these scripts are not adaptations. Keeping the plays in their original setting, the translators set out to show that a play in Scots does not have to be set in Scotland or have Scottish characters. In 2007 The Scotsman of Edinburgh described the première of The Guid Sisters, the first of the plays by Michel Tremblay to be translated into Scots, as one of the top twenty Scottish theatre events of all time. In addition to editing the scripts, Martin Bowman has provided ten introductory essays: one to each volume as a whole and one to each of the eight scripts. These introductions (125 pages) document the extraordinary success in Scotland of Michel Tremblay and, in so doing, provide a comprehensive work about collaborative translation and the use of vernacular languages in translations for the theatre.
Jane Koustas is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario where she also directed Canadian Studies. She served as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin. She currently serves as the President of the International Council for Canadian Studies. Professor Koustas’ research interests include English-Canadian literature in translation, translation theory and practice, translation history in Canada, Quebec and Irish theatre and theatre translation. In 2017, she was granted the James A. Flaherty Visiting Professorship to pursue a comparative study of Quebec and Irish theatre. Professor Koustas was awarded the Governor General’s Award for International Canadian Studies in 2022.
Nicole Nolette is the Canada Research Chair in Minority Studies (SSRHC, Tier 2) and an Associate Professor at the Department of French Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her first book, Jouer la traduction. Théâtre et hétérolinguisme au Canada francophone, published with the University of Ottawa Press in 2015, received the Ann Saddlemyer Award from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research in 2016 and the Award for the Best Work in Theatre (2014-2016) from the Société québécoise d’études théâtrales. Her second book, Traverser Toronto. Récits urbains de traduction théâtrale, is forthcoming with the Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Janusz Przychodzen obtained his PhD from McGill University and was granted postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Toronto. In 2007, he began his academic career at York University. Professor Janusz Przychodzen is the author of three monographs on literary theory and Quebec literature, has co-edited and edited nine books on the aesthetics and poetics of ordinary language from a transdisciplinary perspective, Quebec literature and social discourse analysis. He has contributed to numerous book chapters, articles in peer-reviewed journals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. He has also presented papers internationally, given guest speeches in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, and led research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). His research expertise encompasses Canada-Asia intercultural relations, as well as the imaginary of the Americas and the Caribbean.
