For this week’s #FarcesFriday, our director discusses the process she used to turn medieval French scripts into modern English, and how language takes a role in one of our plays.

            Let me begin with an admission: I don’t speak French. (At least, not yet!) My lack of multilingualism is one of the things in my life that I deeply regret, and I have Opinions about the lack of languages in early education in America that contributed to this. The reason I’m leading with this information is that tackling medieval French farces comes with some extra challenges, and that a knowledge of language- or lack thereof- actually plays an important part in Master Pierre Pathelin. 

            My first order of business was to round up as many iterations of Pathelin and The Washtub as I could- in modern English, in modern and medieval French, in clear cases where the words “inspired by” could be appended to what were very loose adaptations, even in one case a manuscript facsimile that I couldn’t possibly read. The point was to get a sense of what seemed essential to the text, and what approaches other people had taken (if, for example, it was clear just from comparing structures and lineation that entire chunks had been excised for a particular edition, that was information worth having, especially because, as you’ll see, I would also cut certain parts from the “original” for our script). It also gave a sense of the evolution of how the plays were received: the early twentieth century, for example, invariably “cleans up” anything deemed offensive, while more recent iterations take a more warts-and-all approach that prioritises the historicity of the piece.

            Then I fed every non-English version I could into a couple of language-translation websites. Yes, I know Google Translate isn’t always that fantastic! That’s why I used more than one, to check them across one another. And then I compared those results to all the modern English translations in books, to see if they were in the neighbourhood of translations created by actual humans who are competent in French. 

            And then, with more than a dozen versions laid out on a table in front of me, I wrestled out our script. What, of the options that made the most sense, sounded best? Were there parts that were just too idiomatic to translate at all? Were there lines that every single translation, book and online-translator, agreed upon? I won’t lie- this wasn’t fun. I’m genuinely terrified that I’ve got something important wrong. As a final fail-safe, before it goes out for reading and performance, it will be read and critiqued by someone who does read medieval French, and can tell me if I need to do some serious editing, or if it’s come out as a reasonable version of the plays. 

            As much as this process has been, let’s be honest, neither easy nor fun, I have no regrets about the time that’s been put into it. On a personal level, it’s inspired me to really attempt to learn French! (Just doing this much work on it, I can definitely read more of it than I could before this project came along.)

            But the major reason this work is pertinent applies to the Pathelin play in particular. (The Washtub doesn’t use language as a dramatic plot-point.) In one of the scenes, Pathelin tries to convince the clothseller that he, Pathelin, is sick to the point of being delusional. He does this by babbling random things in various languages and French dialects. He may be spouting imbecilities in terms of content… but he is actually speaking in those languages, or at least a reasonable enough degree that translation is possible. Yet it’s worth noting that, probably like my own efforts, there are those who have called into question just how much of those languages Pathelin had correct, and how much was true gibberish. If his skills are up to this feat, it’s an incredibly impressive one, given his background as a man who claims more education than he actually has. But to those who have said it would be impossible for the writer to create this scene with knowledge of such breadth… well, let’s just say that I have multiple friends who, though not professional linguists, can comfortably read and write in more than a half-dozen languages, so I am unconvinced by the impossibility of this! It’s worth remembering that, for the upper and professional classes of medieval France- the people who would have written these plays, and at least a reasonable portion of their audience- being at least moderately bilingual was not unusual, as they would have needed French and Latin to conduct legal business, and while education was a privilege, classical languages were seen as a normal part of education, not as luxurious extras.

            Having attempted to put together a plausible iteration of Pathelin, there remained the challenge of putting that scene back into some sort of language that wasn’t English, but would be at least potentially identifiable- knowing whathe’s speaking is part of the joke. I have seen several suggestions on how to achieve this: use the original language, use your own language’s dialects, or use whatever “nonsense” your language might offer up. I felt that using the original language was an enormous lift for actors, especially as this project is for a reading, where they won’t be spending months wrestling with how to pronounce and memorise lines of medieval Limousin or similar. Sadly, dialect in English is mostly moribund- though I hold very dear memories of trying to understand my late adopted grandfather’s delightful Yorkshireisms, neither his children nor theirs use those words and phrases. Instead I went with the third option: modern nonsense, in the form of Pig Latin (familiar enough to most children) and what the internet informs me may be a version of “bubble talk” or “ob”, but I grew up knowing as “Jabay Tabalk”, ‘Jay Talk’, named after the family friend who taught it to me. (I considered trying to use Cockney Rhyming Slang, the one seemingly-nonsense language I do encounter among adults occasionally, but I couldn’t make sense of how an entire paragraph would actually work, and I don’t want to mock a genuine cultural phenomenon.) Hopefully, these choices will result in something not necessarily automatically coherent, yet familiar enough to be recognised as ‘nonsense’! 

            This is also where I must confess to some excisions. The scene with different languages in Pathelin is quite extensive- extravagant, really, in its delight in his macaronic prowess! But it can grind the play to a juddering halt; the point is quickly made, and, dramatically, doesn’t require quite the belabouring it gets. I’ve cut it down to giving Pathelin just two “babbling languages”, just to keep things moving. It loses some of the delight of excess, but it’s dramatically more sound.

            I hope that the result of all this playing with words is a pair of plays that keeps the comic spirit of the original, even if the words aren’t quite the same, and that it even briefly allows the audience to consider just what can be done by playing with language, although I don’t recommend taking any lessons from Pierre Pathelin himself, however clever he is with speaking them.