Europe on Stage

Translation and Theatre

Gunilla Anderman

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781840022209
• eBook ISBN: 9781783192298
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

For any play originating in a different culture and society to be favourably received in English translation, timing and other factors of reception are often as important as the purely linguistic aspects. This book focuses on the problems of reception and translation into English encountered by European playwrights now regularly staged at British theatres, such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Brecht, Anouilh, Lorca and Pirandello, among others. Introduced by discussions highlighting different approaches to translation in general and the difficulties inherent in the translation of drama in particular, the book concludes by looking at what is lost in translation and the means by which adaptions and new versions may help to restore the balance.

Chapter 1

EUROPE ON THE ENGLISH STAGE

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, the supremacy of French culture and language was such that when Victor Hugo was asked, during a visit to England, whether he didn’t find it inconvenient not to speak any English, he replied, ‘When England wishes to converse with me, it will learn to speak French.’¹

Victor Hugo wrote at the height of a several-century-long period of French cultural domination, which placed French literature in a firmly-established central position in Europe. For translation, this meant that a norm was created against which foreign literature was compared and, not surprisingly, often found wanting. In the case of drama, plays in translation into French were accepted only on French terms and if they were adapted to French theatrical norms. For the first French stage production of Hamlet in 1769, in order to meet French audience expectations, the translator Jean-François Ducis felt the need to ‘domesticate’ Shakespeare’s play for the Comédie Française. To fit the literary requirements of neo-classicism prevailing at the time and its demands for the unity of time, place and action, Hamlet never leaves Elsinore, where the action takes place during a 24-hour unbroken period of time, with sub-plots such as the death of Ophelia and the gravediggers’ scene all removed. As a result, in translation into French, Shakespeare’s play emerges in its adjusted form as having been written by a contemporary of Racine.² The position of cultural domination held by France for several centuries had left its mark on the approach taken to translation.

This illustrates how, when translating into a language of the status of, for example, eighteenth-century French, a high degree of adjustment is normally required in order to conform to the poetic norms prevailing in the target culture. For translation in the opposite direction, on the other hand, less adaptation is usually required, as familiarity with the culture and literary tradition of a language in a leading position can usually be assumed among the speakers of the languages of smaller nations.³

The supremacy of France brought about a French-speaking elite throughout Europe, able to converse with each other in French irrespective of their own native language. But the status of French was also such that speakers of the same language might use French to indicate their social status. As a result, the use of French became a powerful tool for dramatists wishing to illustrate dominance on stage. The device was used for example by Chekhov in Three Sisters, in order to show the social pretensions of the poorly-educated Natasha, who stoops to conquer only, in the end, to rule the household and, symbolically, the whole country. It is also one of the linguistic means used by Strindberg to lay bare Jean’s social pretensions in Miss Julie, and, similarly, by Ibsen when in Ghosts Regine distances herself from provincial Norway by peppering her speech with rendez-vous, pardon and merci.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, however, the cultural dominance of French was challenged by the phenomenal spread of English, starting in earnest after World War II. During the last 25 years, English, reinforced by the now worldwide use of e-mail, has acquired a supranational momentum which has proved unstoppable. In no small measure, this new world domination of the English language has been helped by the United States. As the British Empire, which had helped to spread English all over the world, declined, the rise of American power and culture has ensured that the English language now holds the position once held by French. The joint Anglo-American literary tradition has also established its undisputed leadership. Not long after their publication in English, books by English and American writers appear in translation into the languages of Europe; television programmes, as well as full-length screen films, rapidly find their way into European homes and cinemas, dubbed or subtitled into the languages of individual nations. And in the case of English and American drama, classical as well as contemporary plays in translation are the standard fare at national and studio theatres in smaller European countries. Judging from the lesser frequency with which foreign plays in translation reach the English stage, there has been, until more recently, limited reciprocity, particularly in the case of plays written by contemporary European playwrights.

In many respects, the present-day Anglo-American literary situation resembles the French one, in particular in the heyday of its literary and linguistic European hegemony. While best-selling English and American writers of all genres travel with ease into other European languages, European works in English translation are rarely met with the same degree of enthusiasm. The deciding factor behind this one-way traffic is clearly not the size of population: with a population of well over eighty million, Germany is as open to the import of Anglo-American literature in translation as are the inhabitants of the smaller European nations. In a study undertaken on behalf of the European Commission in the early 1990s, the UK, with the second largest publishing industry in the world, had the lowest rate of translation of the then eleven member states. Figures showing the percentage of translated books out of a total publishing output of the member states at the time are exemplified in this table:

The figures do not appear to have changed significantly during the decade following the publication of the Commission’s study. On 20 February 1998, The Bookseller put the total number of books published in the UK at around 100,000 with a translation rate of 2–3 per cent, out of which a maximum of 380 titles (approximately 19 per cent) are likely to be in the literary domain. The number of books published in translation in Ireland closely reflects those in the UK, confirming the position held by translated literature in yet another English-speaking country.⁴

The same asymmetry holds true for Anglo-American theatre: while classical and contemporary playwrights writing in English figure prominently in translation on European stages, the same cannot be said about European playwrights in the UK and the USA. Again, this is hardly surprising. Most European youths are now learning English as their first foreign language and, through English-speaking films and television and American mass culture, audiences are not likely to be left dumbfounded by either British or American social and cultural references on stage. As a result, the translation of contemporary drama originating in the English-speaking world can usually remain faithful to the playwright’s work with limited need for adaptations, versions or rewrites, an approach that also characterises the method of staging the work of other European playwrights in translation. In smaller European nations the learning of foreign languages plays an important role, as knowledge of other languages constitutes a lifeline to the outside world, and familiarity with the work of classic and contemporary European playwrights usually minimises the need for adaptation. As a result of this asymmetrical literary exchange, it is no coincidence that the candidate selected for the Nobel Prize in Literature frequently takes the English-speaking world by surprise. Chosen by a committee reflecting a long-established acceptance of literature, including drama, in translation, the criteria for selection are those of the speakers of Swedish, not always acting in accordance with the postulates of prevailing Anglo-American literary traditions. Conversely, European writers whose work departs markedly from that of the playwrights of the Anglo-American tradition are almost inevitably to be found wanting when their work appears in English translation. This gulf between literary traditions remains largely unacknowledged by European playwrights as well as English audiences.

The introduction of modern European drama onto the English stage has not been helped by the inclination of early translators into English to espouse a respectfully faithful approach to the task as they felt befitted the subject matter. While the light French theatrical fare appearing on the London stage during the early part of the nineteenth century lent itself to adaptation, Ibsen’s modern drama did not. However, this difference in approach between the translation of French light comedies on the one hand, and the reverent treatment given to Ibsen by his translator William Archer on the other, reflects a continuing debate about translation that can be traced back to the days of the Romans, two thousand years ago. Should the translation stay as close as possible to the original or should it be adjusted to better meet the expectations of the target actors and speakers?

Having conquered Greece, the Romans set about adopting and imitating Greek civilisation. Wishing to emulate the defeated Greeks not only socially and politically but also in the arts, including poetry, it became necessary for well-to-do, educated Romans to learn Greek. Cicero and Horace, translators of the ancient Greek classics into Latin, were the first to draw the distinction between the word-for-word and the sense-for-sense approach to translation. The difference in approach is made clear in Cicero’s De optimo genere oratorum v. 14, around 46 BC. Here Cicero rejects the word-for-word approach and explains that he has rendered the speeches by Aeschines and Demosthenes into Latin not only as a translator (‘ut interpres’), but in addition, as a speaker (‘ut orator’). In Odes iv.II, Horace discusses in detail the problems encountered when translating the Greek poet Pindar, stressing that what was involved was not a work being imitated but the art of emulation which entailed ‘bending the techniques of another author to one’s own subject and language’.⁵

Cicero’s concept of a translation as having an independent value as a creative achievement was matched by the approach of St Jerome whose translation of the Bible, commissioned by Pope Damasus in 384 AD, marked a turning point in Bible translation. Jerome stated that he had rendered the text sense-for-sense and not word-for-word, following the principles as laid down by Cicero. Adhering to this approach was, however, not always free from dangerous consequences. Often referred to as the master of modern English, William Tyndale (1494–1536), paid with his life for rendering the Bible into accessible English, defying the Church which demanded exclusive access to the divine word of God in Latin.

In the seventeenth century, the importance of making the foreign ‘import’ as acceptable to an English readership as possible was acknowledged by Abraham Cowley (1618–67), who even went as far as declaring, in the ‘Preface’ to his Pindarique Odes (1656), that in his translations he had ‘taken, left out and added what I please’. Cowley’s somewhat cavalier approach also serves to exemplify one of the three basic principles of translation formulated by the poet John Dryden (1631–1700) towards the end of the century. Dryden called the type of translation favoured by Cowley ‘imitation’, an approach that allowed the translator to abandon the text if necessary in an attempt to recreate the ‘spirit’ of the original, not dissimilar to the type of rewrite often applied to European drama in English translation. For the word-for-word type of translation Dryden coined the term ‘metaphrase’ while he referred to Cicero’s sense-for-sense, more balanced approach to translation as ‘paraphrase’.

Owing to the deposition of James II, Dryden lost his long-held posts as Poet Laureate and Royal Historiographer, which had previously allowed him to devote his poetry to public issues. Instead he now turned to translation in order to voice his views, choosing foreign texts that lent themselves to this form of indirect social and political commentary. Receiving attractive contractual terms from his publisher, Dryden benefited handsomely from the subscriptions to his translations: his complete version of Virgil pocketed him more than £1000.⁶ Dryden’s approach also exercised considerable influence on Alexander Pope (1688–1744), whose translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey kept readers enthralled. In his Life of Pope (1779), Samuel Johnson comments that here was a translation of Homer made ‘for his own age and his own nation’.⁷ It was also at this time that the work of the translator was recognised as an artistic creation in its own right. The judicial pronouncements in Burnett v Chetwood (1720) established that a translat...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Europe on the English Stage
• Chapter 2 French Drama: the Forerunner
• Chapter 3 Henrik Ibsen
• Chapter 4 Anton Chekhov
• Chapter 5 August Strindberg
• Chapter 6 Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler and Bertolt Brecht
• Chapter 7 Luigi Pirandello, Eduardo de Filippo and Dario Fo & Franca Rame
• Chapter 8 Federico García Lorca and Ramón del Valle-Inclán
• Chapter 9 Lost and Gained in Translation
• Bibliography
• Index