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

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Professing translation

The acts-in-between

 | Queen’s University, Belfast
Published online: 11 October 2013
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.25.3.04joh
Drawing on scholarship in translation ethics (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 logo with link to Google Scholar; Cronin, Michael. 2003. Translation and Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and performance studies (Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. “Performance Studies. Interventions and Radical Research.” TDR/The Drama Review 46 (2): 145–156.   Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Jackson, Shannon. 2004. Professing Performance. Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), 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, Roland. 1974. S/Z. An Essay. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). 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of a holistic understanding of both language and performance, into which textuality is incorporated and by which it is superseded.
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
References (38)
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