You don’t need to read/summarize
section I (Semiotics of
Theater and Drama)
|
by Dr. Ekaterini Nikolarea
This study focuses on the interface of two theoretical
frameworks—the Semiotics of Theater and Theater Translation—as well as on the
theoretical polarization between the notions of performability and readability
in Theater Translation since the mid-1980s.
The first part of the article discusses the different
approaches to the study of theater put forward by Zich, Mukařovský,
Bogatyrëv and Honzl (semioticians of the Prague School), Kowzan and Ubersfeld.
It also demonstrates how all theater semioticians' agreement that the dramatic
text (written text) is radically conditioned by its performability
(mise en scène) has had a great impact upon translation studies and has
led some theoreticians of translation studies to reexamine their position
towards translating theater texts.
The second part of the paper presents how Susan
Bassnett and Patrice Pavis, a translation theoretician and a theater
semiotician, respectively, have polarized the theory of theater translation
into the notions of performability (or playability) and readability
since the mid-1980s.
In conclusion, the article endeavors to explicate the
current theoretical polarization between performability and readability
and suggests that this polarization is merely a reductionist illusion.
1. Zich and Mukařovský
The earliest works that discuss theater in semiotic
terms can be traced to Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. During that period,
literary critics like Otamar Zich, Jan Mukařovský, Jiří Veltruský,
Jindřich Honzl and Peter Bogatyrëv attempted to analyze the components of
theater in terms of structures and sign systems. It was as early as 1931 when
Zich's Aesthetics of the Art of Drama and Mukařovský's "An
Attempted Structural Analysis for the Phenomena of the Actor" were
published, destined to change the analysis of theater and drama (Elam 1980, 5-6
and 233). These two pioneering works laid the foundations for the rich corpus
of theatrical and dramatic theory produced by the semioticians of the Prague
School in the 1930s.
On the one hand, in his Aesthetics of the Art of
Drama, Zich claimed that theater consists of heterogeneous but
interdependent systems, none of which has special prominence. He was the first
among theater semioticians to deny the written text any automatic dominance
over other systems; instead, he saw it as just one of the systems that
participates in the making up of the theater as a total dramatic presentation.
Zich's emphasis on the interrelationship between heterogeneous and
interdependent systems in the theater, as well as his refusal to give special
prominence to any of the components involved in theatrical performance, had a
considerable impact on later semioticians, and these views are still haunting
different theories of theater semiotics today.
On the other hand, applying to art the Saussurian
definition of the sign, Mukařovský took the stance that a work of art
resides in the collective consciousness of the public, and identified it as the
semiotic unit whose signifier is the work itself and the signified
the "aesthetic object" (1976, 3-9). For Mukařovský, this
application represents the first step towards a semiotics of performance, in
which the performance text becomes a macro-sign whose meaning is constituted by
its total effect. This approach is important for the semiotics of theater and
drama for two different but closely related reasons. First, it emphasizes the
subordination of all constituents to a unified whole and the importance of the
audience as the maker of meanings of this whole (macro-sign). Second, it views
the performance not as a single sign, but as a network of semiotic units
belonging to different but cooperative systems.
2. Bogatyrëv and Honzl
The most significant contributions to theater—or
"stage semiotisation," as it was called much later—were made by two
other semioticians of the Prague School of Semiotics, Peter Bogatyrëv and
Jindřich Honzl. In his "Semiotics in the Folk Theater,"
Bogatyrëv was the first who tried to delineate the elementary components of
theatrical semiosis by discussing the mobility, flexibility and dynamism
of theatrical signs (1976b, 33-49; and 1971, 517-30). When he refers to the
transformability of theatrical signs, Bogatyrëv means primarily the way in
which the signs can shift, both in their own right and in the way in which they
are perceived. To illustrate this polysemy of theatrical signs he gives two of
his most famous examples: an ermine cape and a starving man eating a
loaf of bread. In the first case, an ermine cape is a sign of
royalty in the theater, even if it is actually made of rabbit fur. In the case
of a starving man eating a loaf of bread on stage, however, the loaf of
bread does not have any sign value in its own right but exists only as an
object to be utilized by an actor; that is, the sign here is not the loaf but
the act of eating it. Consequently, maintains Bogatyrëv, signs in the theater
assume a set of values and functions in their own right and become infinitely changeable
and complex. By advancing the thesis that the stage bestows upon all bodies and
objects a signifying power that they may lack in their normal social function,
Bogatyrëv was the first semiotician to consider the signifying function of all
performance elements. Another semiotician who took the same position was
Jiří Veltruský, who stated, "all that is on the stage is a sign"
(1964, 84).
Two years after Bogatyrëv's article, Jindřich
Honzl, too, contributed to a better understanding of the perception and the
changeability of theatrical signs. In his article "Dynamics of Sign in the
Theater," Honzl conceives the structure of the theatrical performance as a
dynamic hierarchy of elements that cannot be determined a priori, and
emphasizes that the changeability of this structure corresponds to the
transformability of theatrical signs (1976a, 74-93). Moreover, Honzl finds that
the audience's ability to read signs adds an extra dimension of complexity; he
notes that there are times when "one of the components submerges below the
surface of the spectator's conscious attention" because the audience's
attention to dialogue or dramatic action may either push the visual components
into the background or nullify acoustical perception (1976a, 90).
3. Tadeusz Kowzan
After those stimulating studies on theater by the
Prague School semioticians in the 1930s, little work on the problems of
theatrical semiosis was produced for almost three decades. It was in the late
1960s that the Polish semiotician Tadeusz Kowzan took up the heritage of the
Prague School of Semiotics and revitalized theatrical and dramatic studies. In
his article, "Le signe au théâtre: introduction à la sémiologie de l'art
du spectacle" (1968a, 59-90), as well as his book Littérature et
spectacle (1975), Kowzan reasserts the basic Prague School principles—the
semiotisation of the object, and the transformability and connotative range of
the stage sign—and endeavors to establish a typology of theatrical signs and
sign systems.
In an effort to codify and describe theatrical signs
and sign systems, Kowzan draws the first distinction between natural and
artificial signs. Natural signs, he claims, include phenomena
that spring forth and exist without the participation of human will, those that
are manifested involuntarily (for example, a flash of lighting is a sign of a
storm, fever is a sign of disease, etc.). Artificial signs depend on the
intervention of human volition to signal or communicate something to someone
(1968a, 68; or 1968b, 59). This opposition is by no means absolute and serves
Kowzan in the formulation of an additional principle: the
"artificialization" of apparently natural signs on stage.
"Le spectacle transforme les signes naturels en
signes artificiel (l'éclair), il a donc le pouvoir d'«artificialiser» les
signs. Même s'ils ne sont dans la vie que réflexes, ils deviennent au théâtre
des signes volontaires. Même si, dans la vie, n'ont pas de fonction
communicative, ils l'obtiennent nécessairement sur la scène." (1968a, 68)
"The spectacle transforms natural signs into
artificial ones (a flash of lighting), so it can "artificialize"
signs. Even if they are only reflexes in life, they become voluntary signs in
the theater. Even if they have no communicative function in life, they necessarily
acquire it on stage." (1968b, 60)
When Kowzan asserts that phenomena assume a signifying
function on stage to the extent that their relation to what they signify is
perceived as being deliberately intended, he is actually rephrasing and
refining the law of "stage semiotisation" first developed by
Bogatyrëv, Veltruský and Honzl.
In addition to attempting to define the idea and
specificity of signs, Kowzan also proposes a model for determining the
constituent parts of theater by establishing thirteen sign systems as the basic
components of theater. These sign systems establish two main categories of
signs, the auditive and visual, which are located either inside
or outside the actor, and exist in time and place. With further analysis, it
can be seen that these signs fall into five categories (1968a, 83; 1968b, 73;
and 1975, 172):
The implications of this systematic analysis and
codification of the sign system are of great importance for the language in
which a theater text is written, for it indicates that language as such is only
one sign in the network of auditive and visual signs that unfold
in time and space. Furthermore, Kowzan's analysis shows that any written
theater text contains within it a set of extralinguistic systems (i.e.,
pitch, intonation, accent, etc.) as well as an undertext (or gestural
text), which are determined by the movements an actor makes while speaking that
text.
4. Anne Ubersfeld
Anne Ubersfeld is another semiotician who is of the
opinion that the linguistic system is only one of a set of interrelated systems
that comprise the spectacle. In her Lire le théâtre (1978b), Ubersfeld
calls our attention to two important points: first, that any notion of theater
must see written text and performance as indissolubly linked; and second, that
the written text is incomplete ("troué") in itself. Starting
with the premise that theater consists of the dialectical relationship between
(written) text and performance, she argues that it is
impossible to separate the two, and points out how an artificial distinction
between the two has led to the preeminence of the written text.1 In
her opinion, the root of the problem is the perception of performance as a
"translation." This position, based primarily on the concept of semantic
equivalence between the written text and its performance, reinforces the
belief that the context of the expression will remain identical when
transferred from the linguistic sign system to a system of performance signs
(Ubersfeld 1978b, 15-16). Such an attitude is very dangerous, argues Ubersfeld,
because it leads to the assumption that there is a single right way of reading,
and hence performing, the text. Eventually, any deviation by the director can
be subjected to a value judgment that will assess hisor her
"translation" as more or less deviant from the correct norm—in this
case, the written text. Finally, according to Ubersfeld, a notion of theater
that separates the written text from the performance will unavoidably lead to
criticism of anyone who appears to offend the purity of the written text.
When she discusses the incompleteness of the written
text (a text troué), however, Ubersfeld cannot help but emphasize close
textual work. Citing as an example the opening scene of Le Misanthrope
by Molière, she points out that readers know nothing about the contextual
situation from the text alone and may ask themselves questions such as: Are the
two characters already there, on stage? When or how do they arrive? Do they
run, or not? Which one follows the other and how? (Ubersfeld 1978b, 24). To
answer these questions, maintains Ubersfeld, the readers must scrutinize the
text very closely as well as consider the time in which the performance takes
place. The importance of Ubersfeld's analysis lies in making a distinction
between the written text (T), the performance (P) and a text that is mediated
between the two but is a necessary component of the final product (T1). Hence,
she sets out the equation T + T1 = P, where T1 is the text that provides the
answers to the questions posed by the gaps in T. Finally, Ubersfeld poses the
question of the boundaries of the written text and the possible existence of an
inner text to be read between the lines.
Though the semioticians of the Prague School, as well
as Kowzan and Ubersfeld, offer different approaches to the study of theater,
they all agree that the dramatic text (the written text or literature proper)
is only an optional system among other interrelated systems that comprise the
spectacle, and see it as radically conditioned by its performability.
This attitude towards the dramatic text in theater semiotics has not only
opened new perspectives in drama studies and theatrical practice but has also
had a great impact on the field of translation studies. The challenging notion
of playability or performability, especially, has led some
theoreticians of translation studies to reexamine their position towards
translating theater texts.
1. Bassnett in the early 1980s2
In the 1980s, Susan Bassnett, following current
tendencies in the semiotics of theater and drama, argued that theater has been
one of the most neglected areas in translation studies, mainly because it has
become common practice to translate dramatic texts in the same way as prose
texts (1991b, 120-132).
Assuming that a theater text should be read differently,
Bassnett asserts that a dramatic text is a fully rounded unit only when it is
performed, since it is only in the performance that its full potential is
realized. But if a theater text must be read differently, wonders Bassnett,
then does the theater translator translate the playtext as a purely literary
text or does he or she try to translate it with respect to its function within
the complex system of the spectacle? (1991b, 120) Trying to answer this
fundamental question, Bassnett asserts that it is impossible to separate text
from performance because theater is constituted by the dialectical relation
between these two components. Following Ubersfeld's argument against the
supremacy of the literary text and the perception of performance as merely a "translation,"
Bassnett, too, maintains that when a literary text acquires a higher status
than its performance counterpart, there results the misconception that there is
a single right way of reading, and hence performing, the text (1981, 38). If
this were so, then the translator would be bound to a rigid preconceived model
of translation and should be judged according to how "faithful" to or
deviant from the written text his or her translation is (1991b, 121).
Having discovered the Prague School Semioticians' and
Kowzan's discussions of the extralinguistic and paralinguistic dimensions of
the theater text, Bassnett was one of the first scholars in translation studies
to point out that the theater translator must meet two criteria more than the
translator of prose or poetry. The first criterion is that of playability
or performability,3 and the second is that of the function of
the text (translation) itself. The second criterion is a derivative of the
first, since the function of a theater text presupposes the written text as a
constituent of performance. Examining the extent to which the notion of performability
can be applied to theater translation, Bassnett describes the importance of
this concept in its implications for theater translation. On the one hand, performability
implies a distinction between the idea of the written text and the physical
aspect of the performance, and, on the other hand, it presupposes that the
theater text contains within its structure some features that make it
performable: a coded gestural patterning. Then Bassnett postulates that if performability
is seen as a prerequisite for the theater translator, then the translator must
determine which structures are performable and translate them into the target
language (TL)—even though major linguistic and stylistic changes may occur.
This is, of course, something different from what the translator of other types
of text does.
Nevertheless, the theater translator encounters
another side of performability: its continual change. According to
Bassnett, since performance is determined by the various developments in acting
style, playing space, the role of the audience, the altered concepts of theater
and the national context, the translator has to consider time and place as
variables in the changing concept of performance. In other words, continues
Bassnett, the theater translator must consider the performance aspect of the
written text (its gestural patterning) as well as its relationship to its
contemporary audience. Yet the presence of the audience itself indicates that
the function of theater transcends the strictly linguistic level and reveals
the public dimension of the challenges a theater translator faces when attempting
to achieve an effect: "the translator must take into account the function
of the text as an element for and of performance" (Bassnett 1991b, 132;
emphasis added).
2. Bassnett in the mid-1980s
These were Bassnett's attitudes in the early 1980s
towards translating theater texts, but in 1985 her position changed
drastically. In her article "Ways through the Labyrinth: Strategies and
Methods for Translating Theatre Texts," she calls performability a
"very vexed term" and dismisses it as "the implicit, undefined
and undefinable quality of a theatre text that so many translators latch on to
as a justification for their various linguistic strategies" (Bassnett
1985a, 90 and 101-102, respectively). Moreover, she disregards her own previous
position acknowledging the translator's need to consider the undertextual
rhythms and gestural language that are discernable within the written text
(1978, 161-76; 1981, 37-48; and 1991b, 120-32).
In this article, Bassnett admits that her early theory
of the theater translator considering an existing undertext within the written
text, decoded by the actor and encoded into gestural form, is "a loose and
woolly concept" (1985a, 98). The solution she now favors is to enquire
into the deictic units of the text and analyze how deixis
operates in both source-language (SL) and target-language (TL) texts (see also
Elam 1980, 138-48; and Aston and Savona 1991, 152-55 and 116-17). In Bassnett's
opinion, an investigation of the function of the deictic units in the SL text
will help translation scholars discern which units are preserved in the TL
text, what their presence or absence may signify and what happens to the
dynamics of the scene when these units are altered during the transfer from the
SL into the TL (Bassnett 1985a, 98). She further emphasizes that it is not the
presence of the deictic units per se, but their function in the text
which is of great importance (Bassnett 1985a, 101).
The most surprising aspect of this article might be
Bassnett's concluding remarks:
"It seems to me that the time has come to set
aside "performability" as a criterion for translating too, and to
focus more closely on the linguistic structures of the text itself. For, after
all, it is only within the written that the performable can be encoded and
there are infinite performance decodings possible in any playtext. The written
text, troué though it may be, is the raw material on which the
translator has to work and it is with the written text, rather that with a
hypothetical performance, that the translator must begin." (1985a, 102).
For a translation theoretician, who in the early 1980s
cautioned against the danger lurking in asserting the preeminence of the
written text in the spectacle, to write an article a few years later asserting
the supremacy of the literary text is a drastic as well as dramatic change of
position.
3. Bassnett and Pavis in the
1990s
So much for the attitude towards theater texts in the
1980s. In the 1990s it seemed that the theories of theater translation were
polarized between two extremes: that of performability (mise en scène)
and that of readability (written text). At the one extreme,
Patrice Pavis, in his article "Problems of Translation for the Stage:
Intercultural and Post-Modern Theatre," claimed that translation for the
stage goes beyond the interlingual translation of the dramatic text; he
advocated that "a real translation takes place on the level of the mise
en scène as a whole" (1989, 41; author's emphasis). At the other
extreme, Susan Bassnett, in her articles, "Translating for the
Theatre—Textual Complexities" and "Translating for the Theatre: The
Case Against Performability," argued against any idea of performability
and discredited any notion of performance-oriented translation; instead, she
emphasized the written theatrical text (1990, 71-83; and 1991a, 99-111,
respectively).
3.1. Pavis's views on theater
translation
Patrice Pavis starts his article "Problems of
Translation for the Stage: Intercultural and Post-Modern Theatre" with
four problems peculiar to translation for the stage: (1) the intersection of
situations of enunciation; (2) the series of concretizations of a theater text;
(3) the conditions of theater translation reception; and (4) the mise en
scène of a translation (1989, 25-44). Dealing with the first problem, he
maintains that there are two situations of enunciation: that which belongs
exclusively to either the source or target culture (SC or TC),
and that which is a mixture of the two (SC and TC). Pavis tends to believe that
the translator and his or her translation are both situated at the intersection
of sets of enunciation of differing degrees, a situation that is a mixture of
both source and target cultures (SCs and TCs). For him, the translated text
always consists partly of source text and partly of target text and target
culture because any transfer involves the multiple dimensions of the source
text (ST) adapted to the TL and TC; as well, it is the written ST that the
translator usually uses as a point of departure.
Nevertheless, continues Pavis, the translator knows
that the translation cannot preserve the original situation because it is
intended for a future situation of enunciation, a situation the
translator may not be familiar with at all. It is only when the translated text
is staged for the target audience and culture that the text is surrounded by a
situation of enunciation belonging exclusively to the TC. Thus, the
translation, to varying degrees, occurs at the intersection of the situations
of enunciation. Furthermore, Pavis holds that the theater translation is a
hermeneutic act, since its main purpose is to pull the ST towards the TL and
TC, separating it from its source and origin (1989, 25-27).
Pavis, discussing the series of concretizations—the
second problem peculiar to translation for the stage—tries to reconstruct the
transformations of the dramatic text in the course of successive
concretizations as follows:
|
To= |
the original text, which is "the author's
interpretation of reality" (Levý 1969, 35, as quoted in Pavis 1989, 27
and 43). |
|
T= |
the text of the written translation. |
|
T1= |
T, which depends upon the initial and virtual
situation of enunciation of To and on the future audience, who will receive T3
and T4. In this instance, the translator is both a reader and dramaturge
making choices from among the potential and possible indications in the
text-to-be-translated. |
|
T2= |
The dramaturgical analysis as a phase of the translation
process, e.g., a coherent reading of the plot and the spatio-temporal
indications found in the text and the stage directions, either by linguistic
translation or by representing them through extralinguistic elements. The
most important aspect of this step of the translation process "is the
process of concretization (fictionalization and ideologization) that the
dramaturge effects on the text" (1989, 28). |
|
T3= |
Testing the text on the stage; that is,
concretization of T1 and T2 by stage enunciation. This stage of mise en
scène—confrontation of virtual (To) or actual (T1) situations of
enunciation—proposes a performance text with all possible relationships
between textual and theatrical signs (1989, 29). |
|
T4= |
The stage concretization of T3 or the recipient
concretization/the recipient enunciation during which the ST finally
reaches the spectator in the TC (1989, 29; author's emphasis). |
Directly related to T4, or
the recipient concretization, are the conditions of the reception of the
theater translation, which pose the third of the four problems particular to
translation for the stage. Pavis asserts that any reception of a theater
translation is conditioned solely by the hermeneutic competence of the future
audience, as well as the future audience's competence in the rhythmic,
psychological or aural spheres. The former stresses the importance of a
target-oriented translation that can be understood by the (target) theater
audience—thus fulfilling their expectations—and that also makes clear most of
the translator's choices. The latter emphasizes the importance not of the
"speakability" of the text but rather of the "adequacy of speech
and gesture," which Pavis calls "the language-body"
(1989, 30; author's emphasis).
Nevertheless, in examining the conditions of the
reception of the theater translation, Pavis brings up the issue of mise en
scène in such a way that the stage performance takes precedence over the
linguistic text. In the most controversial section of the same article
"Translation and its mise en scène," Pavis develops the idea
of "taking over the situation of enunciation" (1989, 30;
author's emphasis).4 He says that an entire deictic system is the
link between the translation already inserted in a concrete mise en scène
(T3) and the theatrical situation of enunciation (T4). Once T3 and T4 are
linked, then the dramatic text is comprehensible only in the context of its
enunciation. But this context is realized by the use of deictics that are fully
realized only in the mise en scène. To clarify the functioning of this
theatrical economy, Pavis gives the following example:
"[O]ne might for example translate: "I want
you to put the hat on the table" by "Put it there" accompanied
by a look or gesture, thus reducing the sentence to its deictic elements."
(1989, 31)
Hence, for Pavis, it is the economy of the dramatic
text and its translation for the stage that allows the actor to supplement the
text by extralingual (i.e., intonation, pitch, etc.) and paralingual (i.e.,
gestures, mime, kinesics, etc.) means, which ensures the exchange between word
and body, or what he calls the language-body.
At this point, it would be interesting to compare the
way Bassnett and Pavis use the deictic system (deixis). As noted
earlier, in her "Ways through the Labyrinth: Strategies and Methods for
Translating Theatre Texts," Bassnett calls for an inquiry into the deictic
units in the text and an analysis of their functions in both SL and TL texts as
the best method for comparing the ST and the target text (TT) (1985a, 85-102).
Nevertheless, she perceives the deictic units more as linguistic structures of
the text itself than as gestural patterning. Conversely, Pavis views the entire
deictic system primarily as an encoded gestural patterning in the written text,
a position that was held by Susan Bassnett herself in the early stages of her
career as a theoretician of theater translation. (For Bassnett's earlier
position, see Bassnett 1978, 161-76; 1981, 37-48; and 1991b, 120-32.)
In "Problems of Translation for the Stage:
Intercultural and Post-Modern Theatre," after presenting his hypothesis of
the series of concretizations (To, T, T1, T2, T3 and T4), Pavis tries to show
how it is related to an exchange between the spoken text and the speaking body,
as well as to the hermeneutic act of intercultural exchange. Most interesting
is the section, "Intercultural Translation," in which Pavis gives a
semiotic definition of culture (1989, 37-39), presents two contemporary
opposing approaches to the translation of culture and, finally, introduces his
own view. Presenting the two conflicting approaches, he states that the first
one is to try too hard to maintain the SC in the translation in order to
accentuate the difference between the SC and the TC. The result of this effort
is the creation of an incomprehensible and unreadable text, which is
unacceptable to the TC. On the other hand, says Pavis, the second approach is
to try to smooth out differences to the point where one cannot comprehend the
origin of the translated text. Dissatisfied with these approaches, he offers
his own solution: a middle road consisting "of producing a translation
that would be a "conductor" between the two cultures and which would
cope with proximity as well as distance" (1989, 38).
Finally, although he recognizes the diversity of
ethnic and national origins, Pavis argues for a gestural universality
and a universality of culture. To reinforce his point of view, he uses
as an example the Mahabharata and explains how Carrière and Brook—the
translator and the stage director, respectively—treated the mythic aspect of
this Sanskrit text. He says that Carrière and Brook were able to translate the
myth only by the theatrical discourse during which the actor's body is shown in
action and speech or, in Brook's words, "the language of the stage"
(1989, 40). In this case, Pavis assures us that gesture is not limited to a
social function (a social gestus) but rather "a universal encounter
among actors of different cultures" (1989, 40). In this phenomenon of
intergestural and intercultural translation, Pavis sees culture intervening at
every level of social life, "in all the nooks and crannies of the
text" (1989, 42), and arrives at the following mythic conception of culture
and translation:
"Culture thus becomes this vague notion whose identity, determination, and
precise place within infra- and superstructure we no longer know. Translation
is this undiscoverable mythic text attempting to take account of the source
text—all the while with the awareness that such a text exists only with
reference to a source-text-to-be-translated. Added to this disturbing
circularity is the fact that theater translation is never where one
expects it to be: not in words, but in gesture, not in the letter, but in the
spirit of a culture, ineffable but omnipresent." (1989, 42; emphasis
added)
3.2. Bassnett's recent
theories regarding theater translation
Bassnett holds the opposite thesis as far as theater
translation and culture are concerned. In her articles "Translating for
the Theatre—Textual Complexities" (1990) and "Translating for the
Theatre: The Case Against Performability" (1991a), Bassnett refutes the
encoded spatial or gestural dimension of the language of a theater text, and
claims that any such notion is problematic for the interlingual translator
because it makes his task "superhuman" (1991a, 100). Her main
argument against the notion of the gestic text is that the theater translator
is expected to translate a SL text, which is incomplete and which a priori
once contained a concealed gestic text, into a TL text, which should also
contain a concealed gestural undertext. To emphasize her position, she states
that if this concept is taken seriously, then the assumption is that during the
translation process it is the translator's responsibility to decode the gestic
text while he sits at a desk and imagines the performance dimension; and, in
Bassnet's opinion, this situation does not make any sense at all! (1991a, 100).5
It is in Bassnett's "The Case Against
Performability," however, that the theoretical polarization between
Bassnett's and Pavis's positions can be seen more clearly. In this article,
Bassnett discusses Pavis's "Problems of Translation for the Stage:
Intercultural and Post-Modern Theater" and his view that real translation
takes place on the level of the mise en scène as a whole. Although she
agrees with his statement that translation theory has followed the general trend
of theater semiotics to reorient its objectives, Bassnett charges Pavis on the
grounds that he favors mise en scène (performability) to the
written text in his hierarchical system, and that he considers the written
theater text an incomplete entity. Moreover, she concludes that "[Pavis's]
interlingual translator is still left with the task of transforming unrealized
text A into unrealized text B and the assumption here is that the task at hand
is somehow of a lower status than that of a person who effects the
transposition of written text into performance" (1991a, 101).
Then Bassnett raises three arguments to refute any
notion of performability. Her first argument is that performability
has been used by English translators, directors and impresarios as justification
for their various linguistic strategies—first, to excuse the practice of
handing over a supposedly literal translation to a monolingual playwright;
second, to justify substantial variations in the TL text, including cuts and
additions (see also Bassnett 1990, 77); third, to describe the
"supposedly" existing gestural text within the written; and, last but
not least, to describe what may be called a translator's ad hoc decision
of what constitutes a speakable text for performers.
Her second argument against performability
comes from a different angle: its association with the "old-fashioned
notion of universality" (1991a, 107). As an advocate of what is loosely
referred to as "theater anthropology,'6 Bassnett disagrees in
principle with the assumption lurking in the notion of universality or, put
differently, the perception of the multilayered structure of the play as the
constant (invariable/universal) elements that cross cultural boundaries.
Instead, she holds that the starting point of any investigation must be the inconstant
(the variables, or the particulars). According to that school of thought,
Bassnett states that "the written text ceases to appear as the
quintessential yet incomplete component of theater, and may be perceived rather
as an entity in its own right that has a particular function at a given point
in the development of culturally individualistic theatres" (1991a, 110).
To validate her argument, Bassnett summarizes Susan Melrose's two arguments
against the notion of universality in the theater text. Melrose's first
argument against the idea of a universal gestus is that gestus
can only be culture-bound. Then she attacks what she calls "the
neo-Platonic cringe" of certain theater people who yearn after
"oneness" and its hypothetical access to "truth" and
"sincerity" or "deep meaning" or "inscribed
undertext." In this way, Melrose discredits the assumption that the
playtext contains a series of signs that may transcend cultural boundaries. Agreeing
wholeheartedly with Melrose's arguments, Bassnett concludes that performability
is "a term without credibility" or "seen as nothing more than a
liberal humanist illusion" (1990, 77 and 1991a, 110, respectively).
In her third and last argument against performability,
Bassnett holds that the very core of this notion derives from the naturalist
theater and the effort of the interlingual translator to escape the domineering
presence of both the playwright and the performance text. In her opinion, it
was the naturalist drama that imposed the idea of the scripted text, or the
performance text, which both actors and directors have to study carefully and
reproduce with some fidelity. It was also in the naturalist theater that the
role of the playwright increased tremendously, and as a direct result, the idea
of fidelity was established and imposed on theater texts and all participants
in a performance. According to Bassnett, the implications of the increasing
power of the playwright were significant for the interlingual translator, too;
if the performers were bound in a servant-master relationship to the written
text, "so also should translators be" (1991a, 105). Finally, she
concludes that the notion of performability was invented by translators
in order to escape from that servile relationship and to exercise greater
liberties with the written text than naturalist conventions allowed. In the
last but most condensed paragraph of her article, "The Case Against
Performability," Bassnett, having refuted the ideas of both undertext and performability,
goes a step further by inviting scholars to limit their investigations to two
main avenues of study only: a historiography of theater translation and a
further investigation into the linguistic structure of existing theater texts
(1991a, 111).
Towards an explanation
To explain the current theoretical polarization
between performability (mise en scène) and readability (written
text), it should be considered that Patrice Pavis and Susan Bassnett belong
to two different "schools" whose focus of investigation differs
significantly. On the one hand, having started as a theater semiotician,
Patrice Pavis has only recently started dealing with issues related to theater
translation. He has directed all his efforts towards, and has focused on, an understanding
of the process of translating, staging and receiving a theater text. He
also believes in the universals of gestures (a gestural universality)
as well as in a universalization of culture or, as he puts it, in the
"universalisation of a notion of culture ... which suggests a return to
the religious and to the mystical, and to ritual and ceremony in the
theatre" (1989, 42).
On the other hand, and unlike Pavis, Bassnett started
within the field of translation studies and soon became a proponent of the
"Manipulation School." The main focus of this school is on the
description of any translational phenomena that have occurred in the final
product (the actual translation), and, consequently, on the ideological
shifts in the TC. Recently, Bassnett has also adopted the position of theater
anthropology, which supports the idea that each culture is unique, and for this
reason there are different performance conventions in different cultures.
Whereas Pavis believes that cultural differences can be overcome by the
transcendental presence of universals, Bassnett holds that cultural
differences are accentuated by the presence of particulars. Instead of
the universality of gestures and cultures, she firmly believes in the
particularity of each culture and, therefore, in the particularity of gestures
within cultures.
A blurring of borderlines
Nonetheless, the theoretical polarization of performability
and readability is not very convincing when examining the extent to
which postulates such as performability and readability can be
applied and compared to the historical functioning of actual translations and
theatrical performances. In her dissertation (1994a) and in one of her
published articles (1994b), Ekaterini Nikolarea has demonstrated that when a
theatrical play like Sophocles" Oedipus the King,7 is
examined as a translated, published and produced playtext, it defies any
theoretical polarization of performability and readability; and
she proves that this polarization is a reductionist illusion. Examination shows
that, in practice, there are no precise divisions between a
performance-oriented translation and a reader-oriented translation, but rather
there exists a blurring of borderlines.8 It also indicates
that the blurring of the theoretical notions of performability and readability
has two main causes. First, intercultural communication always depends on
varied and complex processes, which influence not only the production of a
theater translation but also its distribution and reception by a multifaceted
target public. In order to determine what is involved in these processes and to
propose a sound working hypothesis for theater translation (Nikolarea
1999, 183-202), Nikolarea took an interdisciplinary approach that went beyond a
strict "investigation into the linguistic structuring of extant theater
texts" or a limited "historiography of theatre translation"
(Bassnett 1991a, 111); she also included extratextual, paratextual and
peritextual evidence (Nikolarea 1994a, 82-217).
The second reason for the blurring of the borders
between the theoretical constructs of performability and readability
points to the fact that these two extreme positions, no matter how different
they are, seem to share, in principle, the weakness of all prescriptive
approaches in translation studies. This common characteristic (or fallacy, as
it may be called), becomes clear whenever postulates such as performability and
readability are either applied or compared to actual translations and
theatrical performances and their historical functioning.
Notes
1 It is
quite significant that two years later Patrice Pavis described the same
situation but with different wording. In Problémes de sémiologie théâtrale
(1976), he comments that theatre semiotics has risen in reaction against "textual
imperialism," and declares the text restored to its proper place, that is,
as one system among others within the whole of the performance.
2 I am
deeply grateful to Professor Susan Bassnett, who gave me all the references to
her published articles on theatre semiotics and translation studies, thus
enabling me to complete the sections referring to her theories.
3 One of the
first scholars and stage directors to mention the term playability was
Robert W. Corrigan, (1961, 95-106).
4 At the
beginning of her article "Translating for the Theatre: The Case Against
Performability," Bassnett attacks Pavis's assertion that the real
translation takes place in the mise en scène (1991a, 99-111). For a discussion
of her thesis, see section II.3.b. of this paper.
5 No matter
how incredible Bassnett finds this situation, there is enough evidence that
translators do exactly that: sit at a desk and imagine specific actors
performing their translation/version in a very specific theatre. One example of
this situation is W. B. Yeats, who, while working on his version of Sophocles'
King Oedipus, took into consideration the actors and the physical reality
of the Abbey Theatre. (See Nikolarea 1994a, 122-34, especially 128-30 and
133-34. Moreover, refer to Nikolarea 1994b, 24-43; see particularly 32-36.)
6 The term
"theatre anthropology" is interchangeable with either of the terms
"intercultural performance" or "theatrical
interculturalism" (see Fischer-Lichte, et al., eds. 1990, 5-6, 11-19 and
277-87).
7 In order
to examine whether the theoretical polarization between performability
and readability is of any value, Nikolarea took as a test case
Sophocles' Oedipus the King, because it is one of the most discussed,
translated and performed classical Greek tragedies in the English-speaking
world.
8 Loren
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