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Stages of the Loss, Translation as Contamination: How The Ritual Made It to the Royal National Theatre, London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2014
Abstract
This article focuses on the practice of translating Brazilian playwright Samir Yazbek's play The Ritual for the Royal National Theatre, as part of its 2012 Connections season. The article charts the course of the translation through its different stages, and through the different drafts of the play as they emerged, and examines the way in which translation itself can become a mediator for dramaturgical support, development, enquiry and critique. Through an interrogation not only of what is retained by the playwright, but also of what ultimately falls by the wayside, what is lost, I examine the peculiarly British notion of ‘workshopping’ new writing, in its linguistic mediated form of translation, and the role of the translator as cultural mediator. Ultimately, the article points towards an international economy of playwriting products where translation becomes a means of mediating cultures through particular and specific frames that remain largely unchallenged.
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References
NOTES
1 Yazbek, Samir, The Ritual, in Banks, Anthony, ed., National Theatre Connections: Plays for Young People, trans. O’Thomas, Mark (London: Methuen Drama, 2012), pp. 496–545Google Scholar.
2 ‘Foreignization’ is a term in translation practice that refers to a process of making the language read and sound less like a comfortable rendering into the target language and more like a close approximation of the source text in terms of its structure and orthography.
3 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’, in Biguenet, John and Schulte, Rainer, eds., Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 36–54Google Scholar.
4 See Bassnett, Susan, ‘Translating for the Theatre: The Case against Performability’, in TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 4, 1 (1991), pp. 99–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bassnett-McGuire, Susan, ‘Translating Spatial Poetry: An Examination of Theatre Texts in Performance’, in Holmes, James S., ed., Literature and Translation (Louvain: Acco, 1978), pp. 161–76Google Scholar.
5 See Johnston, David, ‘Securing the Performability of the Play in Translation’, in Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine and Klein, Holger M., eds., Drama Translation and Theatre Practice (New York: P. Lang, 2005), pp. 25–38Google Scholar; Baines, Roger W., Marinetti, Christina and Perteghella, Manuela, eds., Staging and Performing Translation: Text and Theatre Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)Google Scholar; Krebs, Katja, Theatre, Translation and the Formation of a Field of Cultural Production (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)Google Scholar.
6 See, for example, Appiah, Kwame Anthony, ‘Cosmopolitan Contamination’, in Held, David and Moore, Henrietta L., eds., Cultural Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty, Solidarity and Innovation (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), pp. 234–41Google Scholar.
7 This approach might seem to point towards the functionalism of skopos theory, recalling the work of translation theorist Hans Vermeer Vermeer. See Hans, J., ‘Didactic Translation’, in Baker, Mona and Malmkjær, Kristen, eds., Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 61–3Google Scholar. Skopos theory is primarily concerned with the function of a translation – what it is intended to do – rather with than any major concerns for the source or language equivalencies. Hence the client's needs (in this case the National Theatre) have the most prominence. It focuses on what the translation is set to achieve rather than how accurate or effective it is. However, the skopos of principal concern in the work of this translation was more connected to an advancement of the Brazilian playwright through a British system of theatrical production than to seeking to obliquely redefine the translation in terms of the client's vision for the work.
8 While I recognize the limitations of the discourse of ‘loss’ around translation, it is important to acknowledge the lived experience of the writers whose work is translated and their feelings of how they are reconstructed in other languages.
9 Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Benjamin, ed., Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 70–82Google Scholar.
10 Maria Eugênia de Menezes, ‘Samir Yazbek’, Estado de São Paulo, 27 November 2011, available at www.estadao.com.br/noticias/impresso,samir-yazbek,803591,0.htm, accessed 10 January 2013.
11 Buchstaller, Isabelle and D’Arcy, Alexandra, ‘Localized Globalization: A Multi-local, Multivariate Investigation of Quotative Be Like1’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13, 3 (2009), pp. 291–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Here I am referring to the expectation in the UK that new writing for the stage, particularly in relation to foreign texts, can often be conceived around notions of contemporary realism, or what Simon Stephens has called ‘dirty realism’. Simon Stephens, ‘Skydiving Blindfolded or Five Things I Learned from Sebastian Nübling’, TheatreEffenBlog (2011), available at www.theatertreffen-blog.de/tt11/artikel-zu/stueckemarkt/skydiving-blindfolded, accessed 14 January 2014.
13 In Translation and Globalization, Michael Cronin discusses the vital role of translators as mediators in the modern world where they can be thought of as ‘angels’ or perhaps ‘fallen angels’ who must ‘understand the full implications of the Message(s) of the century for the Media the world will use’. See Cronin, Michael, Translation and Globalization (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 64Google Scholar.
14 There are typically ten plays in the Connections programme each year. Youth theatres are able to express a preference for which of the ten they wish to perform.
15 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 32Google Scholar.
16 In the sense of assumptions that are made or taken for granted.
17 Krebs, Katja, ‘Theatre, Translation and the Formation of a Field of Cultural Production’, in Kelly, Stephen and Johnston, David, eds., Betwixt and Between: Place and Cultural Translation (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 69–82Google Scholar.
18 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (London: Allen Lane, 2006)Google Scholar.
19 Ibid, p. 113.