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of a holistic understanding of both language and performance, into which textuality is incorporated and by which it is superseded.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
Published online: 11 October 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.3.04joh
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Vidal Claramonte, M. Carmen África
2020.  In Opera in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 153], ► pp. 95 ff. Crossref logo
Wells, Naomi
2018.  In Translanguaging as Everyday Practice [Multilingual Education, 28], ► pp. 195 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 november 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

References

References

Agamben, Giorgio
1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Barber, Karin
2003 “Text and Performance in Africa.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 6 (3): 324–333.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland
1974 S/Z. An Essay. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter
1994 The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, ed. by Gershom Scholem, and Theodor Adorno. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.[ p. 383 ]Google Scholar
Berman, Antoine
1992 “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign.” Translated by Lawrence Venuti. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 284–297. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
2000 The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany. Translated by S. Heyvaert. Albany: University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Budick, Sanford, and Wolfgang Iser
(eds) 1996 The Translatability of Cultures. Configuratons of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
1991 The Painter of his Dishonour. Translated by A.K.G. Paterson. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.Google Scholar
1995 The Painter of Dishonour. Translated by David Johnston, and Laurence Boswell. Bath: Absolute Classics.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de
1988 The Writing of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Conquergood, Dwight
2002 “Performance Studies. Interventions and Radical Research.” TDR/The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–156.  CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crimp, Martin
2009 “Playwright to Playwright: Mart in Crimp meets Molière.” The Guardian 14 December.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael
2003 Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fawcett, Antoinette, Karla L. Guadarrama García, and Rebecca Hyde Parker
(eds) 2010 Translation: Theory and Practice in Dialogue. London and New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Giles, and Mark Turner
2002 The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Frayn, Michael
2008 Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre 1970–2008. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
García Lorca, Federico
1999 The House of Bernarda Alba. Translated by John Edmunds. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics.Google Scholar
1999 Unpublished script of The House of Bernarda Alba. Translated by Frank McGuinness. Lyric Theatre, Belfast.Google Scholar
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich
1997 In 1926. Living at the Edge of Time. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hare, David
1991 Writing Left-Handed. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Jackson, Shannon
2004 Professing Performance. Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, David
2010 “Metaphor and Metonymy: The Translator-Practitioner's Visibility.” In Staging and Performing Translation: Text and Theatre Practice, ed. by Roger Baines, Cristina Marinetti, and Manuela Perteghella, 11–30. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kearney, Richard
2003 Strangers, Gods and Monsters. Interpreting Otherness. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kelly, Stephen
2012 “An Absence of Ghosts: Cultural and Theatrical Translation in the British Reception of The Mysteries-Yiimimangaliso.” Quaderns: revista de traducció 19: 69–75.Google Scholar
Murdoch, Iris
1978 The Sea, The Sea. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Needham, Alex
2012 “Theatres Taking Fewer Risks as Funding Dries Up, Warn Playwrights.” The Guardian 19 February.Google Scholar
Pavis, Patrice
1992 Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.  CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul
2006 On Translation. Translated by Eileen Brennan. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Robinson, Douglas
2001 Who Translates: Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason. Albany: State University of New York Press.[ p. 384 ]Google Scholar
States, Bert O.
1975 Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Steiner, George
1975 After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taves, Ann
2011 “Brain-Mind.” In “Key Words in Material Religion.” Material Religion; The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 7 (1): 26–33.  CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tornqvist, Egil
1991 Transposing Drama. Studies in Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Vega, Lope
1992 Two Plays. The Great Pretenders and The Gentleman from Olmedo. Translated by David Johnston. Bath: Absolute Classics.Google Scholar
2004 Unpublished script of The Gentleman from Omedo. Translated by David Johnston. Newbury: Watermill Theatre.Google Scholar
Waisman, Sergio
2005 Borges and Translation. The Irreverence of the Periphery. New Jersey: Associated University Presses.Google Scholar
Zatlin, Phyllis
2005 Theatre Translation and Film Adaptation: A Practitioner's View. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Zito, Angela
2011 “Body.” In “Key Words in Material Religion.” Material Religion; The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 7 (1): 15–25.Google Scholar