Drama Translation and Theatre Practice

This collection of essays is dedicated to the theory and practice of drama translation. The focus is on foreign-language plays translated into English and staged in Anglo-American theatres. In this connection, concepts like acculturation and cultural transfer, Werktreue, adaptation, transformation and rewrites are discussed. Bringing together academia, the stage, and the 'backstage', Drama Translation and Theatre Practice involves a wealth of European cultures (Austrian, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Scottish, etc.) and spans more than five centuries. Where the essays concentrating on Molière, Racine, Marivaux, Sheridan, Da Ponte, Ibsen, Brecht, Jelinek and others meet is in questions of theory and questions concerning the target language. How are committed plays emerging in a particular socio-political context put on stage for audiences lacking such experience? How do translations produced for readers differ from stageable versions? How are libretti made singable? How does humour translate from one culture to another culture? Addressing such a variety of issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives, this book makes a weighty contribution to current debates about the role and function, performance and performability of plays in translation.

List of contents

Contents: Manuela Perteghella: A Descriptive-Anthropological Model of Theatre Translation - David Johnston: Securing the Performability of the Play in Translation - J.-A. George: In Praise of Inauthenticity: 'Translating' Medieval and Tudor Plays - Sharon D. King: Les Enfants Sans Abri: Early Modern Theatre in a Postmodern World - Parvin Loloi/Glyn Pursglove: Translating Persian Drama: Problems (and Solutions?) - Abhijeet Paul: The Critique of Stagist History: Badal Sarkar's Michil (The Procession, 1974) - Janet Garton: Translating Ibsen: From Page to Page - to Stage? - Heinz Kosok: Cracks in the Jug: Recent Translations/Adaptations of Continental Plays by Irish Dramatists - Sirkku Aaltonen: Olga's Eightsome Reel in Edinburgh: A Case Study of Finnish Drama in English Translation - Cynthia Marsh: 'Whose Text Is It Anyway?' On Translating and Directing Gorky's Egor Bulychev - Cheryl Alexander Malcolm/David Malcolm: (Re)locating the Jew in Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Citizen Pekosiewicz: His Sad and Instructive History - Jiri Rambousek: Notes on Translation of Václav Havel's Plays - Petru Iamandi: Avoiding Topicality in Drama Translation: A Translator's Compromise - Elena Croitoru: Translating Culture-Specific Elements in I.L. Caragiale's Plays - Peter France: The Poet's 'Phèdre': Recent Translations by Ted Hughes and Edwin Morgan - Noël Peacock: Tony Harrison: Classical Vandal and/or Paradigmatic Translator - Maria Nadia Karsky: «Je vous prie de me laisser rire»: Translating Laughter in Molière - Haydn Mason: The Island of Slaves: Marivaux Translated - Adrienne Mason: The Time-Machine: Temporal Disjunctions in Translation and Performance of Marivaux's La Dispute - Rhonwen McCormack: La Dispute: The Modern Director's Viewpoint - Sabine Coelsch-Foisner: Così fan tutte - «They All Do It»: English Translation of Lorenzo Da Ponte's Libretto - Margaret Rose: Breaking Down Cultural Barriers: Contemporary Italian Drama Onstage in the UK - Manuela Foiera: Italian Futurism on Stage: Synthetic Theatre in Translation - Stefania Taviano: Translating Political Theatre: The Case of Dario Fo and Franca Rame - Cedric Barfoot: Sheridan's Pizarro: «A Play for Today», Then and Now - Helga Hushan: The Extraordinary Case of Kotzebue's English Spaniards in Peru: Competing Versions or Perversions - Gunilla Anderman: Vienna on the Stoppard Stage - Katja Krebs: A Case Study of a Translational Community: Arthur Schnitzler's Anatol and Der Grüne Kakadu in English Translation and Production - Laura Bradley: «A Struggle of Two Styles»: Brecht's Mother at the New York Theatre Union, 1935 - Katherine J. Williams: 'Original Meaning' in Two English Translations of Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder - Beatrix Hesse: The Lives of Galileo - Brecht, Laughton, Brenton - Christopher Smith: John Mortimer's The Captain of Köpenick - Anthony Vivis: «How Well Does Fühmann's Angel Fall into English»? - Thoughts on The Fallen Angel (Der Sturz des Engels) by Franz Fühmann - Wolfgang Görtschacher: Recreation rather than Reproduction - Anthony Vivi's Translation of Elfriede Jelinek's Clara S. - Sara Soncini: S. - Sara Soncini: «A Job for the Go-between»: Dramatising Translation in Brian Friel and David Edgar - Milada Franková: Temporal Translation: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love.

About the author

The Editors: Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, born in Upper Austria (1960), teaches English Literature and Cultural Theory and runs an Interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Salzburg. Her publications include a study on William Morris and an award-winning study on Mid-Twentieth-Century British Women¿s Poetry. Her main fields of research are cultural/critical theory, poetry, Victorian culture and literature, fantastic body transformations, literature and the arts.
Holger Klein, born in Dresden (1938), taught English and Comparative Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (1970 to 1990) before moving to a chair in English at Poitiers, then at Salzburg. His main fields of research are Shakespeare, the early novel, war literature, modern drama and fiction, and literary translation.

Product details

• Assisted by: Sabine Coelsch-Foisner (Editor), Holger Klein (Editor), Holger M. Klein (Editor)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2016
• EAN: 9783631507551
• ISBN: 978-3-631-50755-1
• No. of pages: 520
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 28 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 690 g
• Series: Salzburg Studies in English Literature and Culture SEL & C; Salzburg Studies in English Literature and Culture SEL & C
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet