The Linguistic and Social Constraints of the Quebec Community in "Les Belles-Soeurs" and their Cultural Adaptation in "Las cuñadas"

Abstract

This article compares Les Belles-Soeurs by Michel Tremblay (1968) and Las cuñadas, the adaptation into Spanish by Itziar Pascual (2008), and it focuses on the writing context of the source text and the reception context of the adaptation, as well as on the characteristics of the language of both texts. Tremblay presented a critical portrait of the Quebec women and he wrote in joual, a variety of Quebec’s French. In 2008 many of the women problems described in the source text have been already solved, but Pascual, in order to actualize the values or her text, introduces some changes to reinforce the elements of universality included in the source text. In order to maintain the specificity of the language used in the source text, Pascual does not choose a geographic variety of Spanish, but different registers of the language, mainly the colloquial register.