Magalie Lépine-Blondeau recently spoke to Marie-Louise Arsenault about her discomfort at seeing the excellent series The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up dubbed in France on Canal+ and like her, I said to myself: “We are dubbing the same language! »
“But anyway, what the fuck got into you?” Holy shit! These are two sentences – I’m not making this up – taken from the French-dubbed version of the series by Xavier Dolan, a very talented dialogist, from whom we amputate here the music of the verb and the vernacular Quebec poetry. essential characteristics of his work.
It’s like replacing the music of John Williams in the films of Lucas or Spielberg with Satie or Ravel. Or that Almodovar’s films were shown in black and white. It is an attack on the integrity of the work. And an insult to French spoken in Quebec. Coudonc, what got into them, christ? Chalice of the Tabernacle! as they say in the great polar spaces of the Eastern Townships.
I understand that in France, where the rate of unilingualism is close to 40%, French versions of TV series and films are very popular. The dubbing industry is flourishing and well protected there (any dubbed version must have been made in France). But Quebec French cannot in any way be considered a foreign language in France.
The French have the leisure to see Laurier Gaudreault in a subtitled version on Canal+. And we understand them to do so. The fact remains that the mere fact that a dubbed version of the adaptation of Michel Marc Bouchard’s play exists is nonsense.
We speak the same language. Déniaiser in France means the same thing as in Quebec. Let the French get silly. Let them make a minimum of effort to understand certain particularities linked to our regionalisms.
Would we have idea to double in Hollywood The Banshees of Inisherin or After sun for the North American public, on the pretext that certain Irish or Scottish expressions are less known in Edmonton or Tucson?
If I am able to make the effort to understand the expressions of a French fictional character, whether young or old, from Sarcelles or Marseille, a Frenchman can easily understand the dialogues of a series of Xavier Dolan without dubbing. Replacing Quebec church words with French sexist insults seems to me within reach of the most passive viewers.
It is all the more incomprehensible that Laurier Gaudreault was doubled that Dolan had popular successes in France with films that attracted more than a million spectators. And as far as I know, the French of Mommy is no more chastened or more Parisian than that of Laurier Gaudreault. The French have had time since The Decline of the American Empireto listen to our accent.
Obviously, the international influence of the French spoken in Paris is greater than that of the French spoken in Montreal. But the argument of normative or standardized French modeled on that of a so-called cultural metropolis is outdated and overrated. The majority of French speakers in the world live in Africa.
The Francophonie is not a metropolis that imposes its language everywhere in the world, without reciprocity. It’s a give-and-take relationship. French is not a stagnant language that hasn’t evolved since Molière.
It has been enriched with Italian, Spanish, German and even English expressions and words (I know, I know, vade retro satan). It is as colorful as the poetry of Aimé Césaire and the songs of P’tit Belliveau.
When I come across a slang or verlan word, or a regionalism, while watching a French series or film, I do something revolutionary: I consult a dictionary. It takes five seconds online.
That’s what I said to myself while watching the very comical politico-social satire directed, scripted and starring Jean-Pascal Zadi, In place, on Netflix. I didn’t immediately understand all the expressions of the character played by Zadi, Stéphane Blé, a youth center leader from the Parisian suburbs who almost reluctantly becomes the first black candidate in the French presidential election.
Zadi takes a sharp look at political and media manipulation, backstage games, shenanigans, low blows, hypocrisy. As well as on inequalities, racism, classism, unconscious prejudices, discriminations and the lure of meritocracy. With his sometimes good-natured, sometimes childish, sometimes caustic humor.
The actors in his series have North African, sub-Saharan, West Indian, Belgian and French origins. Some speak the language of the bourgeoisie or the bureaucracy, others the language of the street and the cities, still others those of the bled, of the French or African countryside.
They understand each other, despite cultural divides, despite their age differences, despite the spectrum of their accents, in their common language: French. If they had all been dubbed in French “from France”, French viewers would most certainly have found it ridiculous. Why would it be otherwise with a Quebec series? Tabernacle.