Appunti esame Lingua inglese, prof. Carosso, dispensa consigliata Versions, perversions, animadversions: dilemmas of theatrical translation (Henderson)

Analysis of Language and Prosody in Shakespeare and Ayckbourn

Shakespeare repeats a given pattern, an evidence of his artistic immaturity). Henderson offers an analysis of the possible segmentation of a passage from Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular, to demonstrate that different languages have different prosodic features, she then translates the same passage into Italian. The result is that in Italian there're less monosyllables but more polysyllables. These differences have an effect on the prosodic nature of the 2 texts; nevertheless, the number of stresses in the Italian translation has been maintained almost exactly as in the English version.

Fissore's approach is even more problematic when applied to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who use both verse and prose to a variety of ends. If Shakespeare's prose is treated as if it were verse, the alternation of the two media disappears.

Another important thing is the characteristic lexis and phraseology of some characters. Ex. in the sentence I'm willing to tell you:

I’m wanting to tell you; I’m waiting to tell you (LizaDoolittle’s father in the play Pygmalion by Pinter), structural parallelism is reinforced by repetitionand alliteration, and the prosodic regularity. Something of the same effect should be attempted intranslation. The 3 verbs used (willing, wanting, waiting) when translated literary no longeralliterate. The translator should choose between a word-for-word rendering, losing the rhetoricalcharacteristics of the original, or a translation which recreates the alliterations, but employs verbs ofdifferent semantic import. Something must be lost. A possible solution is: Sono pronto a dirvelo; mipresto al dirvelo; mi preme il dirvelo. Eliza Doolittle makes a transition from gutter Cockney toStandard English that is clear in the original, but it is a problem for the Italian translator.The problem of prosody is more apparent in the translation of Shakespeare’s blank versedialogue, as in Hamlet, where the effect

created in the line Must give us pause. There’s the respectcan be only approximately reproduced. The pentameter line indicates its length to the actor. Thiscannot be done in languages that don’t share the accent-based rhythm of English.

In modern prose drama, pauses are generally marked in stage directions, but they are alsoindicated by the use of punctuation. The use of a comma, a dash, a full stop imposes a differentreading on the actors. Pinter has also used a string of noun or verb phrases, assonance and repetition devices that should be respected in the translation.

Samuel Beckett is a dramatist who was his own translator. He translated En attendantGodot into English, a translation which corresponds to the original. His mother tongue was English,and the use of English permitted him a certain freedom of expression not fully present in the Frenchversion. In his translation he privileged naturalness over accuracy. Lucky’s long monologueassumes a prosodic effect

Based on 4 stress units (in the English translation), substituted in the French version with a marked rhythm. In his translation of Gérard de Nerval’s Sylvie, Eco tried to maintain the rhetorical devices of the original (hendecasyllables, Alexandrines, etc), even at the cost of forgoing a literal translation.

In Shakespeare, distinction of characters and tones are indicated in part by the use of blank verse, rhymed verse and prose. Any attempt to reproduce the prose/verse variation is doomed to diminution of the original effect, not only because of the difference between English prosody and the metre of other languages, but also because of the nature of the iambic pentameter, which is close to the natural speech rhythms of English. The iambic derives from the Germanic roots of the English language, which have given English its monosyllabic vocabulary. In A Midsummer’s night dream 3 distinct modes of speech are employed: the blank verse for the Athenian and fairy.

courts;tetrameters for Puck; uncultivated prose for the mechanicals. One of the Italian translators, Giulia Celenta, translated blank verse into hendecasyllables, rhymes are rendered as rhymes, prose is rendered as prose. She has preserved the rhythmic and rhyming form of the original without deviating far from its sense. But, in another passage, she tried to produce an 'old' Italian, but the result is a translation less accessible than the original.

Respect for the text does not mean that actors must act uniformly. Ex. Brook's film of King Lear opens in complete silence, a silence broken by a slammed door and by a pause lasting 10 seconds; the protagonist's face remains expressionless throughout the scene in which Lear divides his kingdom. The same scene is played in a tv production with the use of music, a more elaborate set of colours, intonation, gesture and facial expressions. The presence onstage of a silent character makes its own impact, and the almost complete

Absence of stage directions in drama makes it difficult for the reader to be aware of such a presence. Fissore also suggests that actors and directors have to respect the rhythmic intentions of the playwright. But what would be the value of the acting profession? The absurdity of this affirmation can be found in plays were actors alternate the leading roles (ex. Othello and Iago).

In recent years, a new practice has been adopted by some companies for English-language productions of classic plays written in other languages: a writer, not necessarily familiar with the language of the play, makes a version of a play, close to a translation, but with a certain freedom that a translator wouldn't use. A writer who is not fluent in the original language of the text may take liberties denied to a translator. Tom Stoppard wrote a version of Pirandello's Enrico IV; these 2 authors have in common the preoccupation for the paradoxical nature of truth, and they both explore the sense of

‘play’ in their work. But Stoppard goes too far, imposing his own creative personality:- he makes extensive cuts in his version in the background information Pirandello supplies through dialogue on the historical figure of Henry IV. The omission of historical facts relevant to the protagonist’s behaviour weakens the drama;- he omits lines or parts of speech without any reason and makes additions;- he sacrifices the characters’ logorrhoea, another instance of impoverishment;- he translates Pirandello’s phraseology with vulgar words and expressions. (ex: I’m fucked for Oh, Dio mio!; Stop taking the piss for Finitela, vi dico!; Bloody hell for Perdio). It may be said that in the case of the servants, informal register is appropriately used; but that Matilda or Henry should adopt a similar tone represents a deviation from the original and it doesn’t allow to distinguish between the speech patterns of the lower and the upper class.

An example of reworking

One example of a classic text which remains close to the original is the version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Ponti and Deandrea. In the text printed for the Teatro Stabile di Torino, the subheading is "Raccontato da Marco Ponti e Pietro Deandrea". They said that their translation didn't want to be a modernized Romeo and Juliet, nor a translation in its strictly sense, but a text designed for the performance that could be understood by the audiences of our time, in which the original sense is restored. The artificial structure of this rewriting (the Prologue begins and ends with a single word ['Verona', 'Ora']; the text is arranged in ever-diminishing paragraphs, made of 4, 3, 2, 1 line) recalls the artificiality of Shakespeare's use of the sonnet form. Like Shakespeare, they introduce vulgar elements typical of the 20th century, such as "Dio che palle sta qua" for "I come" (repeated by Juliet to the Nurse in the

balcony scene). Vacis, who directed the play, collaborated closely with the translators; his decision to dress the actors in a neutral style permitted Ponti and Deandrea to use highly colloquial contemporary Italian. In some cases, they maintained Shakespeare's figures of speech; their first loyalty was to the director, and the director's first loyalty was to his audience.

The quality called 'actability' can be achieved by writers who are themselves actors, like Shakespeare and Pinter. Playwrights with acting experience have an ear for performable dialogue, because they've been trained and because they have an intuitive grasp of what is effective and not effective. A character in a play is transmitted in what is said and how it is expressed.

Few dramatists indulge in detailed stage directions. For example, Osborne's Look back in anger owed much of its success to the shock effect of seeing a shabby bedsitter on the stage. Sometimes there're narrative.

details that have little relevance to the theatre (ex: if a cherry red skirt is not available, the use of a scarlet skirt is of minor importance). But there’re cases in which details of the stage set, acoustic and visual effects, are essential to the development of the plot. A production may be staged in successive weeks/months in different theatres, where the varying dimensions of the stages, the availability/lack of space impose modifications of the disposition of objects and people, their position, their entrance and exit.

Some adverbials often precede or follow a line and indicate the tone of voice or the mood of the speaker. Sara Ruhl, author of The Clean House, is a non-interventionist author, who provides a minimum of stage directions; this permits the actors to experiment with many differing interpretations of specific scenes. One of the characters may be played as a self-centred woman who is convinced that everybody loves her, or as a calculating man-eater.

The director and the

set make their own contribution to the communicative act of performance; in one of the Hamlet's representations, Hamlet was dressed as a hippy student. On the other hand, Mel Gibson performed a less heroic Hamlet.

Characters may be differentiated (socially, educationally, etc) by the kind of language they use. For ex., in Coward's Hay Fever, the personalities of Tyrrell and Coryton are conveyed by certain verbal mannerisms, respected in the Italian translation made by Perona. Perona's approach to theatre translation is pragmatic: having made a draft version, he then performs it, reading it aloud to establish the degree to which it is acceptable, actable (Henderson uses the term 'actable' with reference to the spoken word, without considering the semiotics of the stage - gesture. Movement, costume - which are elements of 'performability').

Two problems that a translator may find when translating this play are: the social assumptions that

can't be taken for granted and the humour. The first issue is not problematic, because we're accustomed to books or films set in the past that adapt our expectations readily. The humor is an important issue.