In Jeremy Tiang’s lecture, I liked how they explored translation as writing, or as a creative response to a source text. The purpose of translation should not be to override or dominate, but rather using one’s own artistic sensibilities to harmonize with the original author. Translators and their labor should not be invisible, because then we wouldn’t be making a claim for the profession. Rather, both artists and writers should have space in the work, and a translator’s unique perspectives and subjectivity should be embraced.
Tiang also talked about how the theatre is not just concerned with what is said, but how it is said. Each line affects other people on stage and in the audience, and a translator must consider what this affects with every choice they make when bringing them into English. It opens up a new world of choices that require new sensibilities.
I also loved Michael Frayn’s comparison about how translating from someone else’s literal translation is like performing brain surgery while wearing thick gloves. I thought that this beautifully described the physical labor and process of translation, the sensitivity needed to be successful, and the proper preparation or tools to achieve that success. Frayn talked about how he both writes plays and knows Russian, which made him more qualified than other translators of Chekov to understand choices that were made regarding characters and how each line has to be what a character would have said in that moment if they were a native English speaker, and must be immediately comprehensible on stage, as there are no footnotes in the theater.
In Lawrence Senelick’s lecture about translating Chekhov, he explored the difference or importance of translating a writer’s entire body of work to better understand the nuances of their lives and writing. He also argued that many translators of Chekhov ignore the linguistic aspect of his work, because they believe his writing is universal. One cannot ignore origin and its nuances, and when you translate from another literal translation, it is like playing the piano with mittens on (a play on Frayn’s comparison).
The process of translation that Senelick described also reminded me of Bly’s first step of setting down a literal version. The first version is “flat, deliberately unspeakable English," and then another version is made for the stage. It was interesting to hear both Senelick and Tiang explore translation and theatre in their lectures—how different things have to be considered in translation when a work is made for the stage. You might consider tone in a different way, the balances between characters, repetitions for stage effect, and stage economy.
Lastly, I liked how Patrice Pavis’ article explored the relationship of text to performance and hierarchies that exist within these structures. What are the distinctions between theatre as text and theatre as material? We can grasp the logic of the director, based on the choices they made for a performance; directing a play requires choosing a direction, an interpretation, an orientation, and thus reduces the range of possibilities. I don’t think that the most important thing in theatre is to identify the status of the text within the performance. It is a new medium, and will therefore yield different results. I don’t think this is infidelity. Of course, original intent/meaning should be considered, and a director should seek to transfer this meaning onto their stage, but as a mediator, changing over a text into another medium, things are always lost and/or gained.
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