Drama translation strategies

This paper, which deals with drama translations in Spain (English-Spanish) from 1950, presents the results of a four-stage analysis carried out on a large corpus of translated plays.

Starting from the assumption that theatre is part of the field of drama (which includes cinema and television, among other spectacles), and taking into account drama’ś inherent specificity (written to be performed), as well as its peculiar structure (dialogue versus prose) this study on translated drama posits, as a starting point, an inherently dramatic unit (réplica) which is instrumental in describing and comparing drama texts, be they translated or not.

Starting from an outline of the four-stage process adopted, this paper elaborates fundamentally on extreme cases of translation strategies (addition, deletion and adequacy), found to have been applied in each of the three extreme cases studied, relating them with a previously uncovered twofold characterization (into reading and acting editions) of the translations under scrutiny.