Brisset studied recent Québécois drama translations that were designed to form a cultural identity in the service of a nationalist agenda. In this extract she relies on Henri Gobard’s concept of linguistic functions to describe the ideological force of Québécois French as a translating language. In the politicized post-1968 era, nationalist writers fashioned Québécois French into what Gobard calls a “vernacular”, a native or mother tongue, a language of community. Between 1968 and 1988 Québécois translators worked to turn this vernacular in a “referential” language, the support of a national literature, by using it to render canonical world dramatists, notably Shakespeare, Strindberg, Chekov, and Brecht. In these translations, Québécois French acquired cultural authority and challenged its subordination to North American English and Parisian French. Brisset’s work illuminates the cultural and political risks taken by minor languages and cultures who resort to translation for self-preservation and development.