On Friday 7 February, OCCT and TORCH’s Performance Research Hub hosted three practitioners to bring their personal and professional insights into theatre translation.
We welcomed Tzen Sam (DPhil candidate, English), Dr Minna Jeffery (Rosemary Pountney Junior Research Fellow, English) and Stephen Bailey (theatremaker and TORCH RSC IF Fellow 2024-24) in a conversation moderated by Dr Helen Dallas (English). Each speaker gave insight into three main themes which emerged from the discussion:
Fidelity – or infidelity – in theatre translation
Dr Minna Jeffery asked: what is faithfulness, in theatre translation? Making choices as a translator is unavoidable, and one always loses or gains something. She discussed her translation of The Worker’s Wife by Minna Canth, in which the main character is Roma and which – while considered sympathetic and progressive at the time – features racist perspectives. Her first instinct had been to smooth over this, but she revisited this perspective and while she did cut some of the most troubling lines, she staged others in metatext to add discursivity.
Tzen Sam spoke about the impact of gender on the translation of Ibsen’s plays, and how small changes can have large impacts for the performance of a piece. For instance, Henrietta Frances Lord, the first English translator of Ibsen’s seminal play A Doll’s House, took pains to dial down the emotional register of stage directions affecting Nora’s character, consistently translating ‘fear’ words as ‘anxiety’. Conversely, William Archer, who became known as Ibsen’s most famous English translator, revised Lord’s translation a few years later and heightened these words up to ‘terror’. Subtle differences such as these impact on how actors perceive and portray the characters. Translators have always made choices, and the audience may not be aware of what those choices are.
Stephen Bailey pointed out that in British theatre we have the idea of a ‘correct literal translation’, but that all translations are subjective in this way. We talk about ‘fixing plays’ or ‘solving problems’ within a text, rarely leaving the text to speak for itself and often being afraid of leaving things unresolved. As a director he is often a translator of sorts, bridging between the play and the audience.
The lost translator
The plays of Henrik Ibsen were, as Tzen’s thesis discusses, first translated into English by women – but over time, translations by men have superseded these originals which are no longer read or performed. Yet female translators often increased the scope for agency for the female characters in Ibsen’s plays, using small details to give them more dignity within the plays. Through close textual analysis of the pioneering translations, Tzen reflects on what Luise von Flotow calls 'the phenomenon of the lost female translator' and assesses the impact of this historical forgetting on the history of Ibsen's reception in England.
Minna pointed out that while literature is currently seeing a movement to uplift translators of literary fiction, theatre ignores them in favour of playwrights who adapt a translation. The play finally performed is received by the audience as being authentic, but there is a lack of acknowledgement of the way the text has been shaped.
‘Speakability’ and reactions against it
Translation, as Minna explained, is a two-step process in the Anglophone world. A ‘literal’ translation is produced, which is then adapted by a playwright. These are often cut-down versions which are anglicised to appeal to the audience, and the ‘speakability’ of lines is prioritised. This process has shaped the translated theatre scene in the UK and it limits which plays are translated, and how, resulting in a homogenous culture. This is incompatible with feminist theatre translation. The feminist translator could work against that easy fluency, challenging patriarchy where the source text does so too – using ‘resisting’ as a tool in opposition to ‘speakability’.
Stephen discussed ‘speakability’ as part of British theatre’s trend to focus on perceived ‘naturalism’, although as verbatim plays demonstrate, ‘speakable text’ is nothing like the actual speech patterns we use in real-life conversation. With his focus on critical disabled narratives and his translation project Life Is a Dream, he is exploring ‘speakability’ in an access-nuanced way: who is a line ‘speakable’ for?
Conclusion
This was a thought-provoking discussion on translation and adaptation in theatre. The conversation about who ‘owns’ translations led to one attendee rounding off the event by asking: “Can there be ethical polyamory in translation?”
