This article addresses the play Hosanna by Michel Tremblay and its English translation by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco in Toronto during the 1970s. By entering the workshop of translation, we propose that of the two linguistic and cultural elements that marked the audiences of Hosanna, the Montreal sociolect joual and the queer subject matter, the second was less privileged in the work of the translators. We turn to the intersection between queer studies, translation of sociolects, and genetics of translation to show that where the translators sometimes linger on the queer aspects of the play, they mostly work, draft after draft, on constructing a language for Tremblay’s characters.