What are the theoretical, practical and cultural challenges faced when translating a play directly for the stage? And how can a translation do justice to the performative qualities of a dramatic text? These are key questions explored by the volume Staging and Performing Translation, which unites academics and practitioners alike. The volume's eight-page introduction offers little insight beyond a two-page summary of previous research and a synopsis of the individual entries. Thankfully, Carole-Anne Upton's chapter engages with the work of theatre semioticians and expands on this knowledge by conceptualizing translation as another factor in the relationship between written and performed text. Particular credit is due to David Johnston for his sophisticated and theoretically ambitious essay in which he establishes translation as both a linguistic and a cultural challenge whose results aim at ‘explaining the other to the self while, at the same time, protecting the other from assimilation by the self’ (pp. 12–13). Should the translator bring the world of the playwright closer to her own cultural context or should she translate the play in such a way that it takes the audience on a journey to the playwright's time and space? For Johnston, this question of hybridity can only ultimately be resolved on stage, in the concrete theatrical situation, an idea that runs like a thread throughout the volume.
The clever devices, methods and strategies developed by translators and theatre practitioners not only to translate a text from a foreign language, but also to make it intelligible to a contemporary, locally specific audience make for compelling reading. Examples included in the volume cover a wide range, from the intricacies of transcribing Beijing opera to retain the genre's intricate rhythm, rules and pronunciation techniques (Megan Evans), a close collaboration between translators and a jazz musician and poet to convey Bernard-Marie Koltès's complex rhythmic structure even in English (Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso) to the local adaptation of an Italian one-man show that literally takes place in a car driving around Edinburgh (Margaret Rose and Cristina Marinetti). In the process, the many roles of the translator become clear. More than transposing a text from a source language into a target language, the translator is an active collaborator in the creative process and plays a significant role in the success (or failure) of the production of a foreign work.
Highlights include Clare Finburgh's passionate attack on the harsh realities of marketing and publishing. Finburgh argues that translation must not accommodate actors and audiences to re-create easily recognizable and digestible forms and styles. Two contributions that convincingly outline the cross-cultural and intercultural conflicts that translation potentially involves are Yotam Benshalom's self-reflexive account of translating a Palestinian play from Arabic into Hebrew and Louise Ladouceur and Nicole Nolette's intelligent essay on bilingual performance in Canada.
Apart from the latter two essays, the remainder of the volume is devoted to translations into English. Moreover, upon closer inspection of the list of contributors reveals that sixteen out of twenty contributors are based in the UK. This is perfectly legitimate, especially when the first sentence of the introduction states that we are dealing with ‘research in the English-speaking world’ (p. 1). The problem is that the editors claim to aspire to an ‘international, critical and scholarly’ (p. 1) discussion and engage with ‘the nature and function of translation in an increasingly global and multicultural theatre market’ (p. 7). Some readers might justifiably disagree and perceive the volume as regional and monocultural.
