Drama translation

Sirkku Aaltonen
University of Vaasa

Plays are a site for self-study, gaining information and deepening our knowledge of
­ourselves and the others who inhabit our world. They open up windows to societies and
cultures, helping us to make sense of complex realities. Their coming into being is always
tied to a particular socio-cultural context. Their translations have the same tie. Once a play
is translated/performed, new interpretations become inevitable.
In translation, the meanings in the source texts are expressed with the means of a new
language. In this, they already move into a different reality. New interpretations are born
with new agencies with new demographics, sex, ethnicity, age, educational background,
employment status, motivations, expectations, and experience. They are also born with the
agencies of directors, actors, other theatre practitioners, critics, journalists, and audiences.
The travels of plays across linguistic and cultural borders are not linked to inherent
properties of plays. A look at the statistics of any national theatre repertoires will confirm
this. Some cultures appear largely self-sufficient. This is the case, for example, within the
English-speaking theatre of such culturally powerful and insular spaces as Britain and
the United States where the mainstream theatres construct their repertoires mainly of
domestic plays. Some foreign drama might, occasionally, appear on their stages, but only
well-tried familiar classics tend to get chosen to represent metonymically all outlandish
drama. Even when translations into English exist, and even when some countries would
be geopolitically a familiar and feasible choice, the admission is restricted. A case in point
is Latin American drama in the US theatre. Despite the growing numbers of Latinos as
the second largest minority in the States, there is very little Latin American presence on the
US stages (Nigro 2000: 118). Some contemporary foreign plays may gain access to the
stages of usually smaller theatres with specialised audiences. This was the case with
the Finnish plays by Laura Ruohonen in Britain: Queen C (The Gate in London), Olga (at
the Traverse in ­Edinburgh and the Rough Magic in Dublin) and An Island Far From Here
(Shell ­Connections at the National Theatre, London) (Aaltonen 2005).
In other cultures, foreign drama may be desirable, but even there the distribution of
source languages is not equal. In Finland, although some half of the theatre repertoires
consists of translations, statistics show that there are only occasional translations from
areas such as the Netherlands, Austria, New Zealand, Latin America and the Middle East.
Plays from large and rich theatre cultures, such as Asia, are represented by only a handful
of plays: one Indian play, four Chinese plays, and 11 Japanese plays (Aaltonen 2002: 11–12).
The entire Arab theatre is represented by two Lebanese plays, both performed in 2009. This
106 Sirkku Aaltonen

does not mean that, for example, Egyptian plays have been considered ­unstageable, only
that they have not been perceived as attractive cultural capital.
Translation of plays may have a number of motivations. According to Perteghella
(2004: 7–8), not all translations need to generate a stage production, and the production of
reader-oriented drama translations may be an option. The admission into production may
also have a number of motivations. A play may serve as an important political comment.
An example of this is the popularity of Macbeth productions in the 1920s Soviet Union
because its anti-monarchical message fitted the discourse of October Revolution. Plays
may also be used to introduce a new dramaturgy or theatrical practice. Expressionism
arrived in Finland in the 1920s in the form of German drama, Brecht peaked in popular-
ity in 1967 and 1968, and a freer use of chronology started with Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman in 1957 (Aaltonen 2000: 70–71).
So far the study of what drama translations can reveal of the surrounding society
has been fragmented. Important insights have, however, been offered by a number of
studies. Brisset (1996) has shown how translated plays were used to enhance the status
of ­Quebecois in the struggle of the independence of Quebec between the years 1968 and
1988. A similar motivation is distinguishable in the translations of the Quebecois play-
wright, Michel Tremblay’s plays by Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman. In their translations
they replaced Tremblay’s original joual, the language of the Montreal underclass, by the
vernacular language of Lowland Scotland. According to Bowman (2000: 27), “[…] even the
naming of a vernacular represents a political act. And, of course, so does translation into
such language.”

1. The roots of drama translation

We can trace the earliest known drama translations to the Roman translations of Greek
drama. The first play written in Latin was probably a translation whose author Andronicos
(Livius Andronicos) was commissioned to write a play for the Roman Games in 240 bce.
The Romans did not, however, pursue a conscious intercultural programme with the trans-
lations which occurred much later, in the last third of the 18th century when Goethe began
to develop an international repertoire of the most important dramas in both contemporary
and historical European theatre for his own small provincial theatre in Weimar.
Ideological motivations have sometimes become very prominent in the choice of the
strategy for translation (see Translation strategies and tactics*). For the Romans, theatre
was a Greek activity, and Greek elements became emphasised and foregrounded, whereas
Goethe did not place much importance on the foreignness of the plays, and revised, for
example, Shakespeare’s plays as he saw fit. Similar reactions to translation can be detected
in other European societies as well. The first French Hamlet in 1770 by Ducis was based
on a French prose synopsis; the plot was rearranged, the list of players cut, and a playable
 Drama translation 107

text composed in alexandrines (Heylen 1993: 27–33). The first Finnish Macbeth in 1834
by Lagervall, reset the play in Finland, gave it Finnish protagonists, Russian villains, and
changed the meter to that of the Finnish national epic (Aaltonen 2000: 1).
Translations have supported the emerging national identities. In Finland, the national
awakening aimed at linking the language and identity, and the new national theatre sup-
ported this with translations. Similar function has also been served by the translations into
Quebecois and Scots as indicated above by the studies of Brisset and Bowman. Moreover,
translations have served as an important measure of the developmental stage of theatre
(Aaltonen 1996: 77).
Censorship* is, and has been, an important issue in both the selection and translation
of foreign plays. For example, when the Finnish National Theatre took their play Kultaristi
(La croix d’or) to St.Petersburg in 1885, the translation had to change Russia into Spain,
“dangerous” songs to “harmless” ones, and the title “gold ring” (Aaltonen 2000: 83–84).
A reversed strategy concerning Egyptian theatre has been commented on by the ­Egyptian
playwright Lenin El-Ramly (2008: 78). No dramaturgical changes are allowed in the trans-
lations of Western drama which would replace criticized or ridiculed Western rulers by
Arab rulers.

2. Different translations

Translations for the theatre may satisfy different needs. The entire play may be translated in
which case the translation takes the place of the source text on stage. The homogeneity and
size of the audience, the time, space and mode of the reception, as well as the anticipated
life span of the text distinguishes further three types of translations with regard to the
openness of their readings. An introductory translation is written for a large and diverse
audience of readers and theatre practitioners. It may be either published in printed form
as a book or circulated as a theatre script electronically or as a hard copy. There is no con-
crete link with a particular theatrical production, and the overall trigger to the translation
process is usually found either in the publishing industry or promotional cultural centres.
The expected life span of such is long. A second type, a gloss translation, is confined to
theatrical institutions which insist on tailor-making their own translations on the basis of a
linguistic analysis of the source text. Gloss translations are open texts, targeted at a specific
set of receivers, often playwright-translators, whose expertise is seen to lie in theatricality.
The use of gloss translations has received severe criticism, for example in Britain, for an
artificial separation of “linguistic” translation from “theatrical” ones for purely economic
reasons. The third translation type, the performance translation, is aimed at the recep-
tion in a particular theatrical context. It is intended to be received audio-visually, and its
­anticipated life span can vary from one production to many, even to an afterlife as an
­introductory translation (Aaltonen 2003/2004).
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3. Translation of drama: Textual challenges

The language of a translation can be (re)actualized in the sites of indeterminacy where there
exists a choice between the familiar and less familiar. In an introductory translation the
language variety used by the characters forms a site of indeterminacy although the choice
is made somewhat easier (or difficult) by the lack of a specific receiver group. Translators
tend, however, to use idiomatic expressions from the standard or colloquial varieties of a
particular language either for the sake of fluency or to mark the use of a particular variety.
They will also take a stance in whether to retain the original names of the characters, places
and objects, or create new ones. A gloss translation identifies indeterminacies in linguistic
expression and topical cultural markers, points them out and explains them, but does not
suggest a choice. Only the stage translation makes the final choice. It (re)actualises the play
through social or geographical varieties, culture-specific labels and linguistic idiosyncra-
cies. For example, in the translation of the Finnish play Olga into English, the introductory
translation retained the markers of Finnishness in the names of people and places, but used
American-English lexis and idiomatic expressions. The gloss translation identified Finnish
sayings, metaphors and culture specific objects and concepts, and explained them. Finally,
the stage translation for a production in Edinburgh retained many references to the Finnish
culture-specific setting, but replaced the idiom of the characters by Scots (Aaltonen 2005).
The use of translated texts on stage directs the attention of the translators to the fea-
tures of characterization and the relationships between the characters. Apart from the
language variety, the linguistic profiles of characters and their relationships may include
non-verbal alternants (utterances such as uh-hu, mm, aha), wordplay, swear – and taboo
words, and terms of address which can be important for the director and actors in their
meaning construction.
Apart from characterisation, the language variety of the original play may have served
an instrumental function which cannot be retained in the translation. When John ­Millington
Synge wrote his plays in Ireland around 1907, his aim was to prove that the Irish English of
his plays suited theatrical expression (Aaltonen 1996: 171–174). Michel Tremblay’s Quebe-
cois joual was also part of a larger campaign for an independent Quebec.
The language variety of the translations may also come to serve an instrumental func-
tion which is not present in the source text. For example in the translation of plays into
Arabic, the choice will need to be made between Modern Standard Arabic, the different
common language varieties of the receiver countries, or a hybrid of the two.
Apart from total translation of foreign plays, surtitles (see Subtitling*) may be needed
on some occasions, such as theatre festivals and guest performances. They will appear
simultaneously with the source-language text (speech) on stage as one of the elements of
the production. Also simultaneous interpreting, the preparation of a synopsis of the play,
a translator integrated into the performance as an interpreter, and other alternative forms
may replace a foreign source text in the production (Griesel 2007: 9).
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4. Chasing the meaning in drama translation

Marvin Carlson (1995) has suggested the concept of supplementation to describe the way
that subsequent readings of the text, such as the performance, relate to their source text.
Performance as the supplement both looks back, relies on what is in the written text, adds
to it, and then replaces it.
Seen this way, theatre translation and performance have a great deal in common. Both
are subsequent readings of a source text which they replace. Secondly, both the transla-
tion and the performance are seen to need the authorisation of their source texts which
always enjoy a superior status to its manifestations. Thirdly, the written source text has
been regarded as a self-contained entity whose meanings have been put there by the author,
whereas the work of a translator or a director has been turned into a hopeless quest to try
to uncover these meanings. Finally, the playwright has been seen to put in the text the
meanings which the director must find and use as a starting point. The director’s task has
been to anchor the play into the present. A similar professional role has been granted to the
translator as well: to anchor the text to the present cultural context by using the meanings
put in the source text by the playwright.
The study of translations (like the study of performances) can reveal what indetermi-
nacies different types of translations have revealed, and how these have been supplemented
at different times by different agencies and why. It does matter, who is speaking and why is
s/he speaking thus.

References

Aaltonen, Sirkku. 2007. “Space and Place in Theatrical Contact Zones.” In Teatro e TraDUçãO. Palcos
de Encontro, Maria João Brilhante & Manuela Carvalho (eds), 53–89. Porto: Campo das letras.
Aaltonen, Sirkku. 2005. “Ecce Homo – Reactualized.” In Teatro em Tradução. Special issue of C­ adernos
de Literatura Comparada 12/13: 65–97.
Aaltonen, Sirkku. [2003] 2004. “Retranslation in the Finnish Theatre.” Cadernos de Tradução 11:
141–159.
Aaltonen, Sirkku. 2002. “Mapping the other. The Case of Asian theatre in Finland.” In Translation
Studies. Hyderabad, India: Central Institute of English & Foreign Languages, 1–30.
Aaltonen, Sirkku. 2000. Time-sharing on Stage. Drama Translation in Theatre and Society. Clevedon
et al.: Multilingual Matters.
Aaltonen, Sirkku. 1996. Acculturation of the Other. Irish Milieux in Finnish Drama Translation.
­Joensuu: Joensuu University Press.
Bowman, Martin. 2000. “Scottish Horses and Montreal Trains. The Translation of Vernacular to ver-
nacular.” In Moving Target, Carole-Anne Upton (ed.), 25–33. Manchester, UK & Northampton
MA: St. Jerome Publishing.
Brisset, Annie. 1996. A Sociocritique of Translation: Theatre and Alterity in Quebec 1968–1988. Transl.
R. Gill & R. Cannon. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
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Carlson, Marvin. 1985. “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?”

Theatre Journal March: 5–11.
El-Ramly, Lenin. 2008. “The Comedy of the East, or the Art of Cunning: A Testimony.” Transl. by
Hazem Azmy. Ecumenica 1.2 (Fall): 76–88.
Griesel, Yvonne. 2007. Die Inszenierung als Translat. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Theaterübertite-
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Heylen, Romy. 1993. Translation, Poetics, and the Stage. London & New York: Routledge.
Nigro, Kirsten. 2000. “Getting the Word Out.” In Moving Target, Carole-Anne Upton (ed.), 115–125.
Manchester, UK & Northampton MA: St. Jerome Publishing.
Perteghella, Manuela. 2004. “A descriptive-Anthropological Model of Theatre translation.” In Drama
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