Traduire l’oralité du vaudeville : La puce à l’oreille / La pulce nell’orecchio de Georges Feydeau

Abstract

This article examines, in the Italian version of a vaudeville by G. Feydeau, several problems of restitution and translation of orality effects. The analysis distinguishes between orality, as the representation of speech in the written line, and oralisation, as the vocal realisation of this line on stage, both in French and in Italian. Orality is evaluated in the written code, whereas oralisation is judged in relation to the oral norm; it will be seen that strong infringements of the written code do not automatically imply a significant variation in oralisation in relation to standard speech. We will therefore study how the Italian version renders the numerous exclamation marks, how it translates certain phonospoken markers, whether it transposes the characters' articulatory failures and how discourse markers are treated. In the face of these different points, a general tendency emerges: the translation significantly attenuates the characters' enunciation and reduces the presence of affects. In the Italian version, the immediate pathos is less prominent in the characters' speech, while Feydeau's orality serves to dynamise the model of worldly conversation while reproducing it.