Translating Yasmina Reza’s Dans la luge d’Arthur Schopenhauer for the Stage

This article is the exegesis of the translation into English of two passages of a play by renowned French author, Yasmina Reza. It analyses the level of difficulties in translating Reza's personal style, from easier (pragmatics) to harder (lexis, punctuation). To make the play more stageable and speakable, some compromises led to minor losses of register but achieved similarity of effects. The long, often unfinished sentences presented another challenge and it was decided to keep the discomfort French audiences would feel by adhering to the sentence structure, a reflection of the characters' agitation, obsessiveness and even distress. The exegesis is followed by the reproduction of the translation in parallel with the original French text.