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Article published In:
Translation in the Theatre
Edited by Cristina Marinetti
[Target 25:3] 2013
► pp. 365–384

Professing translation

The acts-in-between

 | Queen’s University, Belfast
Drawing on scholarship in translation ethics (Berman 1992; Cronin 2003) and performance studies (Conquergood 2002; Jackson 2004), this article approaches translation in the theatre from the double perspective of theory and practice. Professing translation as a model for the resolution of entrenched binaries (scholar/artist; theoretician/practitioner), the author sees the practice of translating for performance not just as a method of discovery or a hermeneutic tool but also as a mode of reflection that brings together both “readerly” and “writerly” approaches to text (Barthes 1974). By drawing on the experience of writing translations of García Lorca for the Belgrade Theatre, Calderón for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Lope de Vega for the Watermill Theatre and the Washington Shakespeare Theatre, the article attempts to characterise such translation as an act of physical imagination, of a holistic understanding of both language and performance, into which textuality is incorporated and by which it is superseded.
Keywords: translation, performance, practice, hermeneutics, writing, reading
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Theatre, translation and writing forward
  • 2.The theory/practice binary: Another ossified polarity?
  • 3.Translation as performance: Contingent and relational
  • 4.Professing translation: Writing forward
  • 5.Resistance and spectator response
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 11 October 2013
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.3.04joh
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Vidal Claramonte, M. Carmen África
2020. Fluid borders: From Carmen to The Car Man. Bourne’s ballet in the light of post-translation. In Opera in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 153], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Marcoux, Danièle
2019. Vidal Claramonte, Carmen África (2017) : « Dile que le he escrito un blues », Del texto como partitura a la partitura como traducción en la literatura latinoamericana. Madrid : Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 186 p.. Meta: Journal des traducteurs 64:2 ► pp. 562 ff. DOI logo
Wells, Naomi
2018. Translanguaging and Collaborative Creative Practices: Communication and Performance in an Intercultural Theatre Group. In Translanguaging as Everyday Practice [Multilingual Education, 28], ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo

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