The Translator as Performer: Theater in Translation by Jeremy Tiang
This is a great talk!
I get the idea of a playwright asking for a literal translation to base their adaptation on, but it’s disgraceful to pretend like the translator doesn’t exist. I imagine some translators aren’t interested in the art or creativity of translation and are happy to render a literal text without much recognition (or, as is also pointed out, responsibility), and to calibrate their translation to what the playwright is looking for. Even in that scenario, though, the translator deserves credit and respect. What’s wrong with these people!
‘Translation is like acting–Meryl Streep can dramatically transform her voice but she is still recognizably Meryl Streep.’ So you could say these “literal” translators are being asked to be a body double? There are probably countless comparisons to be drawn across industries.
“Lack of imagination and curiosity that has led to this state of affairs.” Yes! The theatre world seems especially restrictive and stifling.
Lawrence Senelick - Selling Chekhov Whole - On Translating the complete plays of Anton Chekhov
Is “false” so different from “fake” or “phony”? This is a game I notice translators playing (and I’m not exempt from) where one finds a clue that the author intended something slightly different than we may think, and goes “aha! the true meaning!” But often these seem insignificant.
Hingley didn’t follow Chekhov’s syntax or word order, and “relied on English cliches and catchphrases when confronted with particularly flavorsome Russian idioms”—oh no.
I love ‘I wrap it around my mustache’ for ‘make a mental note.’
Michael Frayn, A Note on the Translation
“Ivasha, Isha, Ishuta, Iva, Vanyukha, Vanyusha, Vanyura, Vanyuta, to name but a few allotropes of this same single name” Oh my!!! In a play, maybe it can be made clear that these are nicknames. I wonder if it’s possible to preserve some of the chaotic name system and somehow make up for the unfamiliarity through the acting or stage direction?
“Leonard from Vinci” haha.
The part about “The Wise Gudgeon” makes me curious how a translator could incorporate the allusion. Later Frayn mentions “expanding” a character’s reference to “reconstruct the classical saying to which it alludes.” So that’s one obvious way. I wonder about other approaches.
[About songs Chekhov originally had characters singing] “...Rayfield makes it clear that they all ironically underline and counterpoint the text, but there is no way I can see of giving this practical effect in production.” I don’t get this note. Why not translate the song? Humming sounds lame.
Strange that Freyn doesn’t explain his decision to not restore one of the lines cut by the censor.
On Faithfulness: The Difficulties Experienced by the Text/Performance Couple by Patrice Pavis
I wish Pavis would reference more concrete examples to support his points, like “We have seen in fact that many experiments do not take any certainty as a starting point, but that they invent a framework of enunciation, and a tuning and adjustment which will bring out unexpected solutions from the text, which only acting and staging can invent…” I would find it helpful if he described one of these experiments.
Theory on theory on theory. Kind of a snoozer.
“A simple and helpful measure might be to historicize and localize this debate…and not to continue to treat it as an atemporal logical problem” Yes please.
“Germany in the 1960s, with its rebellious youth discovering the ill effects of blind obedience, brutally rejected daddy’s Regietheater, and before you knew it put its great classics through the mincing machine, to a degree that would have worried even Brecht.” This is so much more interesting! The essay should have started here.
Thinking about all the debates around the Wuthering Heights adaptation while reading this.
If the readings were pared down (which would be great) I would cut this one.
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