Translating plays

[Eric]

Plays require a different type of translation to prose, as the language used must be instantly understood, and there is no time for poring over multiple meanings, as you can do if you read "Finnegans Wake" in English, or some novel of equal complexity that is translated from another language.

For reasons of national fetishism, Shakespeare plays are rarely, if ever, translated into modern English in the UK, although I would suggest it is impossible to fully appreciate a Shakespeare play on stage unless you've done your homework first - and that includes a large number of antiquated and archaïc words and phrases.

And remember that those classic plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Molière, Racine, Goethe, Mickiewicz, Calderón, and the Ancient Greeks, when staged in the USA or UK, are all translations when staged in English, translations that are quite frequently revised, modernised, updated, and so on. And when plays of this sort are retranslated, they often use more current vocabulary. So only a weird and devoted translator would, for instance, try to imitate 17th century English when translating Molière or Calderón. And yet, as I said, we watch Shákespeare in a brand of English that is from the 16th century! It's a strange paradox.

[Eric]

Translating plays is an interesting pursuit for someone like me who has mostly in the past translated novels, short-stories and some poetry. You have to think stage, not book-page.

The latest play I've translated is called "Lit de Parade" by the Finland-Swedish author Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo, and is about a subject that affects us all: death. This play goes through the rather more physical side of death in a slightly, but not tastelessly, tongue-in-cheek manner. The translator has to maintain the author's tightrope act in this respect, and keep the dialogue - between three people who can be of either sex - light, without losing the worrying profundity of it all.

Excerpts of this play will be published in a Bangalore publication in due course. People in India are no doubt affected by death in exactly the same way as people over here in Europe.

An occasional problem I've struck when translating is where there is a Finland-Swedish expression that I am not familiar with. For the most, the Swedish spoken in Finland is identical to Sweden's Swedish. But the odd phrase can trip you up as a translator. Another problem was the title, which sounds elegant in French - lit de parade - and denotes the "bed" on which the dead body lies in state, when you're dealing with important personages. This is ironic here, as the play focuses on the fact that we all die, irrespective of class or fame.

But the principal challenge for the translator is the pacing and register. A play is either acted or read out aloud. The rhythm, the pauses, and the varying volume are important. If the author deliberately mixes archaïc or formal language with colloquial, that too has to be made clear in the English.

Translating plays is therefore a different discipline to translating a text that will be read silently and privately. Plays are public acts.

[Utopia]

I'm sure it's very difficult to translate plays. Normally, I prefer to read plays or literature in general in the original language. But that's sometimes impossible.
I think translating a play is nearly as difficult as writing one. You have to translate the content, of course, but you have to keep the style, the beauty of the words...

Eric, what was the first play you translated?

[Eric]

The original language is a bit of a tall order. There are about 3,000 languages in the world and even if plays are written in only 200 of these, it's a lot of languages to learn to the level where you can understand a play. So you would have to stick to things written originally in English, or grit your teeth and read (or watch) translations.