Posted September 14, 2026

Behind the Scenes – Translator

Leanna, you have an extraordinarily successful playwriting career, but you also do some of the finest translation work in Canada. Since September 30 is International Translation Day, we thought it might be fun to talk to you about that aspect of your work.

First, let me pick myself up off the floor after being bowled over by that extremely kind introduction… nearly there… aaand we’re back.

How closely do you work with authors? Do you have an established process, or do you approach each project differently?

The process has to be malleable because the circumstances are completely different. Rébecca Déraspe is constantly working on three ambitious projects with terrifying deadlines, all while raising her beautiful kid. Christian Bégin is usually involved in multiple television projects and even has his own line of food products, Curieux Bégin, based on his hit lifestyle show! Those two tend to be quite hands-off, and I’m very careful about what demands I make on their time. At the other end of the scale, David Paquet, who is extremely fluent in English, always wants to go over word with a fine-tooth comb: he wants to understand why I made each choice, what the effect is in English, how it differs from the French, is there maybe something better. I am a perfectionist anyway, but David’s plays take more time and more drafts than any others in my practice. Fortunately, he’s brilliant and has also become a good friend, so it’s worth it!

What are the particular challenges of translation? What do you find most difficult about it?

The challenges are “all of it!” I refer to theatrical translation as “the art of dissatisfaction,” because you are never quite going to feel content with the equivalents you managed to find for particular aspects or moments. Certain challenges come back over and over, like the challenge of the English words and even whole sentences that are scattered throughout the vast majority of Québécois plays that are set in a modern context. Good luck fully translating the various cultural meanings, the political weight, and often the fierce wit of that!

Often the first decision I have to make about a translation is, “Where are we?” Are we pretending that we are still speaking French in Montreal, trying to keep as much of the words and rhythms and references as possible? That approach can ultimately lead to exoticizing and foreignizing. Which in turn can lead to the receiving culture saying, for example, “Well, we don’t act that way. We’re not implicated in the playwright’s examination of human foibles: it’s just those people.” Or, even worse: “How quaint. How very French.” However, if I go to the other extreme and successfully transplant the text seamlessly into my own language and culture (changing, say, a Diane Dufresne allusion to Kate Bush) am I not performing an act of erasure? Exoticism and erasure: those are the rock and the hard place that I constantly have to navigate between.

Of course, there are many other challenges: come buy me a coffee on the Plateau and I’ll tell you about them! I take some comfort in that everything I find particularly hard about the work is exactly the stuff that AI is fundamentally incapable of processing. AI could currently do maybe 60% of my job. It’s that last 40% (of authorial intention, cultural context, rhythm, poetry, subtext, and the voices of individual characters as captured by individual writers) that I think will stump it for decades to come.

What do you love most about translating other playwrights’ work?

I love the unique and intimate connection I can achieve with the work of some of the most brilliant writers of our time. I love the second when, after a long struggle with an image or a play on words that seems impossible to replicate, the puzzle piece slides perfectly into place. I love sharing this gorgeous and crucial writing with people from my own culture, which (as a Gen X) I compare to the pleasure of sharing a mixtape of new music with a dear friend. I love the surprise and delight in the rehearsal room when an actor wraps their head around an aesthetic or a POV they’ve never encountered, and their body responds to this stimulus with something exciting, something never seen before. And I love, love, love being there when the public connects with the voices of these writers: when audiences in Vancouver or St. Louis laugh or gasp at the same lines as in Montreal, and are surprised to be so well understood by someone from far away who is writing in another language. Those are the moments that make us all feel a little less alone.

What’s next up on your very busy schedule?

I’m doing three new surtitle translations this fall: Rébecca Déraspe’s Janette and Fanny Britt’s The Ghost in the Machine for Théâtre Duceppe, and Isabelle Hubert’s Rose for Théâtre Bluff. (In the spring, I will create performance translations—which are much more high-level—for the latter two.) I’m also teaching translation at Playwrights Workshop Montreal, doing a panel at the American Literary Translators Association’s annual conference in Portland, and publishing two more translations, including Mohsen El Gharbi’s Omi Mouna. And workshopping my translation of Nathalie Doummar’s Sissi with Ruby Slippers Theatre in Vancouver. And teaching at the Banff Centre and the Quebec Writers Federation. And then entering a state of catatonia some time in December, probably.