Between Theory and Practice in Theatrical Translation

By Iris Klosi MA , Faculty of Foreign Languages, Department of English University of Tirana, Albania

Abstract

In the world of theatre, stage directors and translators tend to neglect the rigid frames of theory and they prefer to follow their instinct or experience to practice their skills and to demonstrate their talent and success. Theory is the other part of their work which very frequently interferes with their way of producing or practicing. It is the other half of their dualism whether to be faithful to the source text or betray it somehow. Theory is something they want to keep at arm’s length but at the same time embrace. It is a matter of prevalence not negligence. Practice comes with rehearsals. Stage requirements are set by directors and actors. Having in mind the importance of qualitative performances which meet audience’s tastes and needs, theatre professionals pose their attitudes to the way plays should be translated for the stage. There are undoubtedly some other views and arguments by translation theorists suggesting that practice depends a lot on theory.

KEY WORDS: stage translation, theory, practice, performance, plays.

INTRODUCTION

Theory and practice are two interdependent entities. They coexist in the world of theatre. It may sound weird and absurd to think about the one without the other. Scholars on translation discipline have always tended to provide rules and laws that should guide translators of every area. In the case of stage translation there is, in fact, an ongoing debate between theorists and practitioners about the process of stage translation. Theory and practice face each other very frequently and in the daily practice of theatre work not enough room is left for theory. It is dubious whether the actors and the directors follow strict guidelines on preserving theory in the rehearsal room. It is difficult to know if theory is negated when it comes to the prevalence of meeting the audience’s expectations and providing success and income to theatre companies.

Recently drama translation has been referred to by different names such as theatrical translation or stage translation, associating the idea of translating with the stage of theatre. Even though translation theorist Susan Bassnett was against ‘performability’ of the plays, because ‘the concept of “performability” has been used as a pretext so that the status of translation is considered inferior to that of theatrical writing’ (Bassnett, 1990; 1998) many stage translators do not think that way. Performability is the key element in theatrical translation.

In the collaborative world of theatre, where a play is proved through practice in the rehearsal room, theory sounds misplaced. There are a lot of assumptions whether theory might best be forgotten about entirely or left to academics to use when analyzing the translation. The stage translator might employ practical steps to prepare the translated play text for performance. But, as Johnston suggested about the multi-layered process of making a translated play work for the stage (Johnston 1997:7), it is difficult to identify the role translation theory has to play.

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO STAGE TRANSLATION

Most of the theoretical work on theatre semiotics focuses on the relationship between text and performance. Theatre semioticians see play texts as linked to their performance. Ann Ubersfeld (1978:153), for example, describes the play text as a text that cannot be separated from the ‘synchronic signs’ of its realization. From this perspective, it is important to consider the linguistic element of the play text as one of the semiotic systems that make up the theatrical event. The existence of the linguistic element relies on its relationship with the other systems. Ann Ubersfeld (1978:154) is very convenient when she talks about the interdependence of written text and performance. This interdependence may be seen as ‘the starting point for the historical prioritization of the verbal over the other sign systems that constitute the theatrical event.’

Patrice Pavis (1992:138) emphasizes the existence of two separate entities with two different semiotic systems, the mise en signe and the mise en scène. They are not interdependent but simultaneous without prioritizing one element over the other. Even though he is against the idea of finding a play text in performance, he does not see text and performance as non-related systems that can exist on their own.

Another position is provided by Tadeusz Kowzan (1985:1-2). He states that written texts can function outside the theatrical system and the theatrical system can function without written texts.

Apart from theatre semiotic approaches the relationship between text and performance has also been at the centre of the theoretical debate on theatre translation. Susan Bassnett (1978; 1980b; 1981; 1985) starts her arguments by identifying the complex nature of the play text as the main element to be considered when trying to get oriented in the ‘labyrinth’ of theatre translation. In the beginning of her work on the problems of translation for the theatre Bassnett (1980a:124) introduced the concept of ‘gestural understructure’ as a component of an ‘ideal performance, which the translator was to recognize in the source text, decode and recode in the target text.’

Later in her work on theatre translation Bassnett (1990; 1998) gradually abandons the structural idea of ‘gestural subtext’. This change coincides with the ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies where she is influenced by post-structuralism and reader response theories. She argues that ‘it is impossible for a translator to deduce any gestural understructure from the source text, on the grounds that there cannot be one single ‘grammar of performance’ embedded in a text when there are as many potential translations of the text as there are different readings.’ Moreover, Bassnett continues with the idea that: ‘What is left for the translator to do is to engage specifically with the signs of the text: to wrestle with the linguistic units, the speech rhythms, the pauses and silences, the shifts of tone or of register, the problems of intonation patterns: in short, the linguistic and paralinguistic aspects of the written text that are decodable and reencodable.’ (Bassnett 1998:107) Bassnett comments that the written text is not fundamental to performance but that it is only one element of an eventual performance. What she is suggesting here is that the task of integrating the written text with the other sign systems that constitute the theatrical event is not the translator’s but the director’s and the playwright’s.

Sirkku Aaltonen (2000) in her latest book on the translation of theatre text also mentions the plurality of readings in translation. Aaltonen believes that texts do not have fixed readings and that every reading of a text generates a new text as inspired by André Lefevere (1992:159). Aaltonen sees theatre texts as apartments, spaces to be occupied and manipulated for periods of time by different tenants. This is particularly true of the theatre world where, for every performance of a text, several different readings of the same text are required:

Playwrights, translators, stage directors, dress and set designers, sound and light technicians as well as actors all contribute to the creation of theatre texts when they move into them and make them their own. (Aaltonen 2000:32)

Aaltonen’s makes use of Lefevere’s (1992:14-15) concepts of ‘rewriting’ and ‘patronage’ to the theatre system. The theatrical event is created by rewriting the play text, by suiting it to the director’s or/and actors’ requirements. That is why the notion of rewriting sounds artificial since it is read and rewritten by human individuals and this process is associated by its own constraints. One of the pitfalls is that play texts when rewritten are manipulated. The notion of ‘patronage’ as introduced by Lefevere, has to do with the way the texts are carefully chosen to be produced. This choice is done in relation to the dominant ideology, the economic profits and the status of a certain social or intellectual group.

Professionals, academics, translators and editors deal with the aesthetic component of the foreign texts. When translators or rewriters tend to adapt the foreign texts to the conventions of the target system, the manipulation of the original is more visible in stage translation than elsewhere. These strategies are described as ‘acculturation’ and ‘neutralization’ by Aaltonen. (2000). She argues that ‘if the play text is seen as one of the elements that constitute the theatrical event, it is impossible to avoid a certain degree of acculturation in translation.’

Different translation theorists have a different approach to the idea of manipulating the original play texts for the theatrical event. Romy Heylen (1993:23), for example, sees the acculturation of the play text in terms of degree. She considers the ‘scale of acculturation’ as a descending one. It goes from the so-called ‘foreignised’ texts, where no attempt is made to acculturate the source text, through various stages of ‘negotiation’, up to a complete acculturation, where problematic elements of the source text are normalized and domesticated to suit audience expectation and the constraints of the receiving theatre system.

Apart from ‘acculturation’ strategy, another strategy that has been used by theatre translators for a long time is ‘performability’– often paired with ‘speakability’ and ‘playability’. It has been highly criticized by translation theorists as vague and critically ineffective. Developed by theatre semioticians, who saw the centrality of performance in drama translation, the idea of ‘performability’ is traditionally related to rhythm of speech, easy graspability and simplicity of pronunciation. Bassnett (1990; 1998) draws attention to the tendency of theatre translators to hide behind ‘performability’ – or the equally nebulous ‘requirements of the stage’ – whenever they feel the need to justify radical changes of the source text.

What do theatre translators think? Do they agree with the idea of ‘patronage’ and ‘rewriting’ to manipulate the texts? If we consider the experience of some theatre translators we start thinking about the relation between theory and practice. Kate Eaton comments on her experience at translating the Cuban Virgilio Pinera’s absurdist theatre for the British stage. She is an experienced actor and she also likes to translate and do research work on stage translation. The very fact that she knows theatre systems and she can easily recognize theatrical signs within the text makes her believe a lot in her skills as a professional:

As a translator of, and researcher into, Pinera’s theatre, my aims are twofold: to render his rhythmic and playful Cuban Spanish into an equally rhythmic and playful English that will be at home in the mouth of an Anglophone actor, whilst at the same time discovering more about how his theatre works on stage. I am not a naysayer or negator of translation theory, but I am a practical opponent of it during the initial stages of target text development. I want to create translations that can be listened to and repeated, I want to position myself as translator at the root of the storytelling.(Eaton, 2008:57)

Eaton (2008) continues by arguing that she wants both to be a “self-forgetful listener” and to recreate that state of self-forgetful listening in the audience, as she seeks to refashion the web in which the play is cradled. What she wishes to produce are templates from which further translations of Pinera’s plays can be made and further studies of his theatre embarked upon.

In a 1994 interview conducted with the American playwright Edward Albee and the director Danny Mann, by Jeane Luere, it is obvious that playwrights are against the idea of betraying the source text. As Albee maintains: ‘Theatre is not merely the furnishing of pleasure or fun. It’s engagement of thought, of self, of mind.’ (Luere, 1994). But in the world of theatre it is very difficult to remain faithful to the source text. It is the whole theatrical event that should be strongly linked with all the elements of ‘patronage’ mentioned above. Mann as a director is totally against Albee’s idea that theatre cannot be considered fun. He argues that: ‘…it has to have emotion. The play has to have emotion. And the director has to add it, handle it, he has to help actors to deliver emotion. The director determines and defines what emotions should be included in the play. When you direct, you want the audience’s participation-which has to do with emotion, not just with cerebration, not just thought or idea!’ (Luere, 1994) This attitude has to do with the way in which the play texts should be performed. Mann’s ideas are true to a certain extent when we consider the time - frame of a performance that should last at least one hour and a half in front of the audience’s eyes. Nobody can read a play at that speed. That is why in the performance some bits and pieces are omitted and some dialogue is trimmed or adapted to deliver emotion and to secure success. Even though it is not fair to make some changes to the original text the audience would never have applauded so heartedly the ending of Pygmalion when it was first produced on April 11 1914 with Mrs. Patrick Campbell playing Eliza and Beerbohm Tree playing the part of Higgins. (Bloom, 1988: 12) Tree changed the ending by throwing flowers to Eliza suggesting this way the beginning of a love affair between Higgins and Eliza which was not at all a Shavian ending. Everybody knows quite well that Higgins and Eliza in the play have a different relation of a professor-student type. But the audience liked this romantic ending even though it violated the author’s rights.

Each play that is translated is part of an ongoing collaborative process. The initial work might involve close textual analysis such as uniting or a more physical exploration of the characters and themes of each play. Later, stage translators collaborate with directors and actors to decide on elements such as mask work and puppetry, music and dance that might be included in each play. This is the stage where translators are considered coauthors because they convey the meaning of the source text to the target audience but with a ‘distorting mirror image’ in translation. (Eaton, 2008: 57). Each play has its own demands and the translator, actors and director employ different methodologies to make them acceptable and admirable by the public. Collaboration between translators, actors, directors and even playwrights is ideal, because together they can analyze the component parts of the play text, and examine each and every one of them before assembling them and producing the theatrical event, the real performance. ‘This process is invaluable for achieving a deeper understanding of the complexities of each play and leads to a translation that is richly layered and nuanced.’ (Eaton, 2008: 58)

In the process of stage translation, performance is the most important part. To some extent, all stagings of plays, whether or not they are translations, involve adaptation to new circumstances. Bohem argues that: ‘All translations are adapted to an audience during performance. The more attuned the translator is to a given production, the more finely focused the translation will be to begin with. This gives a chance for rehearsals to start from a more advanced position, which allows time for more rehearsing and less revising.’(Bohem, 2001).

Eaton shares with us her experience when working with actors during rehearsals trying to realize whether the translation has been done properly: ‘As I have the good fortune to be working over time with the same nucleus of actors and directors, the idea is that we can build up between us a familiarity with Pinera’s work through engaging with and exploring his texts in this intensely practical way. We can thereby detect patterns of speech and rhythms and repetitions that may not at first be apparent to the casual observer.’(Eaton, 2008: 57)

Susan Bassnett distinguishes five types of drama translation strategies:

1. Treating the theatre text as a literary work.

2. Using the SL cultural context as a frame text.

3. Translating ‘performability’.

4. Creating SL verse drama in alternative forms.

5. Cooperative translation. (Bassnett 1985:90)

Cooperative translation is the most accomplished one. If we consider the comments of Cristina Marinetti (2005) on her study on the translation and production of an Italian comedy Il servitore di due padroni, by Carlo Goldoni, the most successful translation was the cooperative one. She further comments that: ‘Hall and Pandolfi’s translation…resounds with acculturation. Having worked towards the production of a script for a specific performance, the problem of characterization of Truffaldino becomes central to their translation. From his language springs most of the comedy and on his mishaps and fooleries hinges the entire plot’. (Marinetti, 2005: 39). Humor is very difficult to translate and especially difficult in the case of those types of humor that are intended for performance. The play that Marinetti mentions plays a lot with sound and from the three translations of the same play she has considered, she classifies the one that has taken into account not only textual, but also contextual and theatrical elements. ‘The translation of jokes has often been compared with the translation of poetry for the density of the language and the layers of meaning that tend to get lost in translation.’ (Chiaro, 1992: 88). The success of this cooperative translation has resulted as the one that makes the target English audience laugh with an Italian comedy. As Marinetti observes: ‘…the translator had to reinvent the comic element in accordance with the English tradition of theatrical humor which is much more verbal and punning than gestural’. (Marinetti, 2005: 40). In the Italian tradition of performing humor is accompanied with gesture.