Adaptation of Quebec comedy shows in Europe : between necessity and alteration? ; Adaptation des spectacles d'humour québecois en Europe : entre nécessité et altération ?

Our case study analyses the adaptation of Québec comedy shows in Europe and its potential effects on the authenticity of the original work. We studied various shows in both French and English created by three comedians from Québec: Stéphane Rousseau, Louis-José Houde and Sugar Sammy. The three of them are famous in their home country and they all tried to export their work to Europe, especially to France, but did not enjoy the same level of success. Stéphane Rousseau’s work is characterised by a thorough adaptation of his show with a subtle erasure of his accent. LouisJosé Houde chose to modify his texts very slightly but adopted universal topics. Finally, Sugar Sammy opted for a nearly complete rewriting depending on his new target audience and gave a large space to improvisation. We dedicated our theoretical chapter to the sociolinguistic situation in Québec, the definition of humour and its translation (even transadaptation) in the fields of stand-up, drama and audiovisual productions. We chose analysis tools such as the classification of jokes based on the issues they create in audiovisual translation (Zabalbeascoa, 2001), humoristic devices taught in the École nationale de l’humour de Montréal (Ouellette & Vien, 2017a) and philosophical theories of humour, such as the incongruity theory, the superiority theory and the relief theory (Carroll, 2014). We proceeded to compare Stephane Rousseau’s show, named Rousseau in Québec, to its French adaptation written by Franck Dubosc, Stéphane Rousseau: One-man-show to measure the extent of the modifications made. The study of Québec versions of two skits performed by Louis-José Houde in Paris, Goglu and La Guadeloupe, aimed at showing cultural elements that could explain the untranslatability of some jokes. Finally, the ‘improvisations’ performed by Sugar Sammy in French and English in France, Canada and the USA showed signs of adaptation in a rewriting. We have been able to confirm a part of our hypothesis verifying that the adaptation of a Québec comedy show is ...