Article published in:
Translaboration: Exploring Collaboration in Translation and Translation in CollaborationEdited by Alexa Alfer and Cornelia Zwischenberger
[Target 32:2] 2020
► pp. 358–379
Translaboration in the rehearsal room
Translanguaging as collaborative responsibility in bilingual devised theatre
Kerstin Pfeiffer | Heriot-Watt University
Michael Richardson | Heriot-Watt University
Svenja Wurm | Heriot-Watt University
This article explores the role of translaboration in an area where collaborative translation and co-creative
processes intertwine: a bilingual devised theatre rehearsal room. Scholarship has tended to focus on translated plays as cultural
products and on the difficulty associated with making bilingual theatrical products accessible to unilingual audiences. Here,
however, our focus is on translation within the creative process. We use two bilingual projects as examples. Each project brought
together participants from two cultural backgrounds: in one case, German and Czech young people; in the other, deaf and hearing
people from the UK. Possessing varying bilingual competencies, these participants employed their shared communicative repertoire
to ensure the collaborative creation of new, bilingual theatrical material. Their diverse communication strategies can be regarded
as translanguaging: a fluid, non-hierarchical practice that challenges the notion of uni-directional translation from a source
text. We argue that in this setting, translanguaging is the practice that enables translaboration. This practice is compromised by
the imposition of top-down structures that inhibit the organic development of democratic and potentially transformative
environments in which problematic power relationships can be reworked. Such transformativity relies on collaboration in both
devising and translation, co-creation and translaboration, and the two are mutually interdependent.
Keywords: translaboration, collaboration, devised theatre, bilingual theatre, translanguaging
Published online: 21 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20061.pfe
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20061.pfe
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