ABSTRACT
The comic scenes use plays on words that only an audience with knowledge of both languages can fully understand. As Jean-Claude Salle writes: The use of the French language in several scenes reveals the same critical intention, the same questioning of theatrical conventions. The scene in which Henry tries to conquer the heart of the French princess Catherine turns into a linguistic battle meant to reaffirm the supremacy of the English language. Faced with this, the French translator has to decide between two perhaps equally unsuccessful alternatives. Most translators acknowledge this impossibility, and simply transcribe, if sometimes in italics, the parts in 'Shakespearean French', correcting the more glaring errors without actually rewriting the text. Genevieve and Daniel Bournet, two translators from Marseilles, chose to translate Shakespeare's peculiar French into medieval French. The most acute translation problems stem from the scenes in dialect.
