The Translator on Stage

Geraldine Brodie

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781501322105
• eBook ISBN: 9781501322129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Literature

In today's theatre, productions of plays that originated in another language are frequently distinguished by two characteristics: the authorship of the English text by a well-known local theatre specialist, and the absence of the term 'translation'-generally in favour of 'adaptation' or 'version'. The Translator on Stage investigates the creative processes that bring translated plays to the mainstream stage, exploring the commissioning, translation and development procedures that end with a performed play. Through a sample of eight plays that span two thousand years and six languages-including Festen, Don Carlos, Hedda Gabler and The UN Inspector -and that were all staged within a three-month period, Geraldine Brodie brings in a wide range of theatre practitioners to discuss their roles in the translation process and the motivations that govern London theatre translation activities. The Translator on Stage is informed by specially conducted interviews with the productions' producers, artistic directors, directors, literary managers, playwrights and specialist translators, including Michael Grandage, Rufus Norris, David Eldridge, Juan Mayorga, David Johnston and Mike Poulton. It sheds new light not only on theatrical translation procedures, but also on the place of translation in society today.

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Introduction: The Role of the Translator on the London Stage

Translation in theatre

In theatre, where is the translator? Identity and position feature largely in the projection of performance. The title of a play, the author, the actor, the director, perhaps others, will be squeezed into the publicity for a new production. This implicit recognition of the significance of agency and collaboration often extends in translated theatre to the name of the translator. But who and what does that name represent? The prominent acknowledgement of an individual intervening between the source playwright and the target audience differentiates theatrical practice from other sites of translation. In a published literary text, for example, the name of the translator may appear on the book jacket but is more frequently to be found somewhere in the opening pages, often tucked away in small print. The conspicuousness of the translating agent in theatre, however, comes at the expense of the visibility of translation as a practice and a process: the proffered production is often labelled a ‘version’ or an ‘adaptation’, terminology which disguises translational activity. Furthermore, the named ‘adaptor’, contributing theatrical reputation, or ‘celebrity’, to the production’s credentials may not command the language of the original text. In these cases, a further agent is called upon to provide a ‘literal translation’, an expansion of the translation procedure which is habitually overlooked by practitioners and public alike. How, then, should the translator be identified?

This book investigates the agency of the translator in theatre, with specific reference to plays in performance on the mainstream London stage. By mainstream, I refer to a grouping of theatres situated around the West End theatre district of London which stages a broad range of productions from different periods and genres, aiming to attract a wide audience made up of both regular and occasional theatre-goers. Although this activity is frequently assumed to be the preserve of commercially owned theatre, there are a number of high-profile theatres, among which the Royal National Theatre¹ is prominent, subsidized by a combination of public funding and private donations. These organizations produce work which competes in the mainstream sphere, and may go on to appear in commercial venues if successful critically and at the box office. Thus, even when such theatres are not commercially owned, they are commercially operated and therefore motivated to find audiences – and sell tickets – for their productions. The translators of the plays shown in these theatres are the subjects of my enquiry, because their names signal to the audience that an act of translation has taken place. That sign may, nevertheless, be indecipherable – in spite of the named agent – due to terminology, the collaborative nature of theatre production and the general context in which the play is presented. During the course of this book, I analyse the complexities behind these issues and ask, what do they reveal about the relationship between theatre and translation? What can we learn about the processes and perceptions of translation by studying the translator on stage?

Theatrical visibility, celebrity and terminology

Theatre is a constant projection of image, not only of what is seen on stage but also in metatheatrical exposition, for example, the photographs of performers in programmes or what Michael Caines summarizes as ‘the metaphorical costume that is called celebrity’ (Caines 2010). Actors have their place in the theatrical constellation but so too do their co-practitioners, especially writers and directors. It is common practice in mainstream London theatres to commission a well-known name from this cohort to be attached to the translation of a play. Frequently a writer, playwright or director with a track record in commercially and critically successful productions, this person’s predominant contribution is theatrical expertise. Knowledge of the language of the original text is advantageous, but its absence may not preclude appointment. If this writer does not command the source language, and the production budget is sufficiently accommodating, a theatre’s literary department will commission a new literal translation in preference to using an extant theatrical or academic translation. This is because the literal translator, in providing substantial notes on linguistic, cultural and theatrical features in the text, to some extent, as Manuela Perteghella notes, performs the function of dramaturg (2004b: 119). There are issues of status and recognition attached to the holders of these different occupations: their celebrity and visibility. Literal is a label regularly applied by theatres to denote the type of translation I describe, but distinctions are rarely made between writers who command a play’s source language and those who do not. I therefore employ the terms direct translation to describe those created without an intermediary linguist and indirect to denote those which have been prepared using a literal translation.

In choosing to describe the two-step translation process as indirect, I am borrowing a contested translation term which circulates in theoretical terminology alongside an extensive list of terms such as ‘compilative’, ‘pivot’ and ‘relay’ with overlapping definitions and inconsistent usage. As Alexandra Assis Rosa, Hanna Pięta and Rita Bueno Maia point out, ‘this metalinguistic instability hinders efficient communication’, which contributes to the ‘rather weak visibility’ of these types of mediated translations (2017: 118). These researchers propose an ‘open definition’ of indirect translation, suggesting ‘translation of a translation’, but they recognize that ‘such a degree of flexibility may raise the problem as to where exactly indirect translation ends and, for example, retranslation begins’ (2017: 120–22). Is the two-step process a ‘translation of a translation’? It is certainly an interpretation of a translation, and the end product – the performed playtext – is an interlingual representation of its ultimate source. It is the variety of intervening text(s) and processes that complicate the categorization of theatre translation practices for researchers and practitioners alike. Theatrical vocabulary contains a range of terms to describe the translation process, none of which are used with any consistency or precision. The terms version and adaptation, and their variations, are most commonly relied upon by theatres to describe an English-language refraction of an original text from another language, whichever translation process is operated, and these terms are supplemented by an increasingly imaginative vocabulary, such as ‘free adaptation’, ‘revised by’, ‘based on’, ‘English text by’, ‘a modern take on’ or ‘a remix of’, all of which I interpret as an attempt to highlight the creativity of the translation process. Not all translations shun the name, as this book reveals. There is, however, no consensus on the definition or application of these terms.

Academically, there is a body of research around adaptation theory, although this tends to encompass a broader area of intersemiotic movement – for example, from book to cinema or television – without necessarily involving an interlingual codeshift. A continuing debate explores where and whether translation might be located within a definition of adaptation. Linda Hutcheon identifies a ‘reception continuum’ of fidelity to the prior work that situates literary translation at one end and spin-offs, sequels and prequels at the other. She finds this model too limiting, however, preferring to theorize the paradoxical nature of adaptation that she characterizes as ‘repetition without replication, bringing together the comfort of ritual and recognition with the delight of surprise and novelty’ (2013: 170–73). J. Douglas Clayton and Yana Meerzon also prefer to steer away from precisely locating dramatic adaptation ‘somewhere between the actual translation of the play from one language into another ... and the creation of a new work inspired by the original’, opting for the term ‘mutation’ (2013: 8). Katja Krebs, however, argues for a ‘focus on similarities between both translational and adaptational processes and products, to investigate each other’s methodologies and assumptions’ (2012: 50), while Márta Minier finds that points of connection in the discourse of translation and adaptation studies already exist that ‘problematise the kindred features of the two modes of creative and critical rearticulation of texts’ (2014: 31).

Margherita Laera, focusing on adaptation in theatre, sketches ‘a taxonomy of adaptation as intertextual practice’. For Laera, translation is one among many elements of the appropriative nature of adaptation; it may be encompassed within categories such as intercultural adaptation (which she also terms translocation) and intertemporal adaptation (actualization), but the ‘different mediums, genres, cultures, and historical periods that are involved in the act of stage transposition’ thwart attempts to delineate the various modalities of adaptation (2014: 5–8). Perteghella has given consideration to the definition of adaptation in its relation to theatre translation, but concludes that a comprehensive definition is an ‘impossibility’, offering her own solution whereby adaptation ‘critically supplements the source with subjective and cultural interpretations’ (2008: 63). These approaches do not solve the difficulty that arises in any attempt to draw a line between translation and adaptation, and when other terminologies are thrown into the mix – notably the label of ‘version’ – complications multiply.

Lorna Hardwick identifies a major trend in the treatment of ancient classical texts in the second half of the twentieth century as the ‘creative blurring of the distinction between different kinds of translations, versions and adaptations and more distinct relatives’ (2000: 12), later reaching the conclusion that ‘it is not always helpful to try to distinguish too rigidly between theoretical models for analysing “translations” and “versions”. The processes of arriving at an acting script and then realising this in performance show how porous the boundaries are’ (2010: 195). Mark O’Thomas similarly prefers to move away from distinguishing degrees of translation, seeking instead to examine the practice of translation/adaptation and, crucially, performance through an analogy with jazz and its improvisations and quotations. He tak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The Role of the Translator on the London Stage
• 2 London Theatre: Contexts of Performance
• 3 Eight Productions and Their Translation Teams
• 4 Agents of Translation
• 5 Conclusion: Translation Theory in the Theatre
• Appendix 1: Sample Play Data
• Appendix 2: Archives
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page