Traduire le non-sens dans le théâtre ionescien

In the criticism of literary translation, the studies about theatre play translations have remained secondary to those of the novel and poetry. The theatre has such characteristics as the stage and verbal expression that it is different from other literary genres. Therefore, it requires from translators to be more cautious during the translation process of a play and to transfer its own characteristics into the target language, especially if it is a kind of theatre like the theatre of the Absurd. Eugene Ionesco, one of the most important writers of the theatre of the Absurd, has not only demolished the traditional rules of theatre, but also renewed its language. The characteristics of this kind of theatre such as the language games and the meaningless expressions are not understandable at first glance and create a language barrier that the translator should overcome. From this process of understanding, the nonsense appears as an indispensable notion of each translation process. In this case, on the one hand the translator searches the meaning of nonsense expressions or words, on the other hand he must also be concerned to find equivalence and to make the untranslatable translatable. Like all other translations, Turkish translations of Ionesco’s theatre plays also present good examples of nonsense in translator decisions. In this study, we will analyze and compare these decisions against nonsense within the framework of Ionesco’s plays, translated from French into Turkish from 1962 to the present day.