\n<\/p>\n
Look at the credits for any Anglophone production of the musical juggernaut Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>, and you may notice something curious: while Alain Boublil is credited for the \u201coriginal French lyrics,\u201d it is the late Herbert Kretzmer who is listed as the English-language \u201clyricist.\u201d How might these lyrics have been transported from one language to another? One might assume this was through a process of translation and that Kretzmer must surely be the highest-earning theatre translator of all time. Yet in a 2013 New Yorker<\/span><\/em> interview<\/span><\/a>, he indignantly refused that title. \u201cIf I wanted a literal translation, I would go to the dictionary,\u201d he said. \u201cTranslation\u2014the very word I rebut and resent, because it minimizes the genuine creativity that I bring to the task.\u201d<\/p>\n Why is the work of the translator so easily minimized?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Indeed, translation seems to be generally looked down on in the English-speaking theatre, to the point that well-known playwrights are frequently called upon to produce new \u201cversions\u201d of plays written in languages they do not speak, drawing from \u201cliteral translations\u201d produced by, well, actual translators who very much do not get their names on show posters. One often has to delve deep into the inner pages of the playbill to uncover who actually did the work of moving the text from one language to another. In response to Michael Frayn and Gregory Motton\u2019s suggestion that plays ought to be translated by people who can read them in the original language, Simon Stephens\u2014who has defended his right to \u201cwrite Chekhov into English\u201d despite not knowing Russian\u2014disingenuously claimed their arguments were \u201cbased on the odd assumption that it is in some way possible to make a pure translation<\/span><\/a>.\u201d I do not imagine experienced translators such as Frayn and Motton think a \u201cpure\u201d translation is possible, but rather they are pointing out that no adaptor who does not speak the language they are \u201ctranslating\u201d from can provide the view of both sides, the understanding of bridging context that the translator brings to the role.<\/p>\n Has translation always been this unpopular? A look at the handful of translated plays that have won the Tony Award for Best Play reveals a regression. In 1961, the citation reads \u201cBecket<\/em> by Jean Anouilh, translated by Lucienne Hill.\u201d 1966\u2019s Marat\/ Sade<\/em> by Peter Weiss has \u201cEnglish version by Geoffrey Skelton,\u201d already losing the word \u201ctranslation.\u201d The citations for Yasmina Reza\u2019s Art<\/em> and God of Carnage<\/em> do not even mention translator Christopher Hampton (a Tony winner in his own right). Most egregiously, in 2022, translation was so absent from Ben Power and Stefano Massimi\u2019s acceptance speeches for The Lehman Trilogy<\/em> that many viewers might not even have realized that the play was originally written in Italian. Mirella Cheeseman, who did the work of translating the script into English, posted an Instagram reel of herself celebrating while watching the Tonys on TV, but no one on the podium so much as mentioned her name.<\/p>\n Why is the work of the translator so easily minimized? Could it be that people who don\u2019t do it\u2014indeed, who don\u2019t speak any other languages\u2014imagine it is merely a mechanical process: unimaginative, dry, sterile? This stereotype is not helped by the Dramatists Guild, which insists on \u201ca distinction between a literal translator and an adaptor<\/span><\/a>. A \u2018literal translator\u2019 is a person translating a play from one language into another, with the intention to render it in as close a proximation to the original text as possible\u2026It is specifically excluded as a form of dramatic authorship under the Guild\u2019s Broadway contract.\u201d The Guild does seem to be softening its position and is in the process of creating a \u201cadaptor\/translator agreement\u201d that will acknowledge the creative work of the translator in adapting a script for performance, though of course it would be preferable to simply drop the idea of \u201cliteral translators\u201d altogether and accept that all translation involves a high degree of artistic choice.<\/p>\n An even more depressing possibility is that theatres believe audiences think of translated plays as forbidding or inaccessible and therefore obfuscate the translator\u2019s name in the hope of passing the piece off as an original work. And yet, do we not have an ethical obligation to transparency? As Margherita Laera<\/span><\/a> points out, \u201cOnly those translations that remark themselves as translations can do the work of uprooting and regrounding that is necessary to resist cultural narcissism.\u201d The resistance of the US theatre to translated works comes partly from complacency, a belief that the English-speaking world contains all that is necessary to it. In the words of Sarah Cameron Sunde<\/span><\/a>, who translates the plays of Nobel laureate Jon Fosse, \u201cAs Americans, we can go anywhere and people can understand us. English is so privileged as a language around the world, so it means we don\u2019t have to work as hard to understand other people\u2026 It\u2019s the capitalist country we live in that doesn\u2019t prioritize culture; and then within that culture, there\u2019s not a prioritization of learning and listening from other cultures. It\u2019s very insular.\u201d Making translation prominent when it occurs helps destabilize this limited point of view.<\/p>\n I translate books as well as plays, which means I spend a lot of my time in the world of literary publishing, an ecosystem that is vastly more receptive to translation. For a start, I\u2019m able to make a living from translating novels, which would simply not be possible with plays. Enough books get translated from Chinese to English each year that the nonprofit organization Paper Republic<\/span><\/a> is able to publish an annual round-up of titles; the equivalent list of translated Chinese plays would, most years, be a blank page.<\/p>\n Their mandates for diversity, I quickly discover, generally stop short at the borders of the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Thanks in part to the prominence of literary translation awards such as the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award, translated literature has gained a certain amount of buzz, with a recent study<\/span><\/a> showing that in the United Kingdom, readers under thirty-five\u00a0 <\/span>account for almost half of translated fiction sales, while only buying 31 percent of overall fiction. Imagine how much more vibrant the United States theatre scene could be if it had the same buzzy receptivity to exciting, challenging work from outside the familiar English-speaking world.<\/p>\n One of the key elements in the growing appetite for translated literature has been the rise of the literary translator as a cultural figure, with debates over the appropriate means of crediting translators (on the front cover<\/span><\/a>, or merely on the title page?) and awards for translated books<\/span><\/a> being presented equally to the author and translator, with both going up on stage together at the ceremony. No Tony-style erasure here.<\/p>\n I have noticed this difference in my own interactions with the industry\u2014not just in the act of translation, but also in the place I can find for myself in the ecosystem. When I get in touch with publishers, editors are often eager to meet with me so I can tell them about the books I\u2019ve been reading from the Sinophone world. Many of the translation commissions I receive come from me directly pitching them in this way\u2014indeed, this is the only way these translations could have come about, as most of the authors I work with are unagented. By contrast, when I manage to wrangle a meeting with a literary manager or artistic director, I usually find myself talking not about the exciting Chinese or Taiwanese plays I have been looking at, but instead trying to convince them that they should program translated plays at all, because very often they have never done this and have no idea how to commission or develop a play in translation. Their mandates for diversity, I quickly discover, generally stop short at the borders of the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n Even when a translated play does get commissioned, the translator isn\u2019t necessarily allowed to be a part of the process of getting it to the stage. The Russian translator Helen Rappaport notes the perception many theatremakers have that \u201cthe translator’s role ends as soon as the text is delivered<\/span><\/a>,\u201d ignoring \u201cthe crucial role that the translator can play as the all-essential conduit between the original-language text and the actors who perform it.\u201d I experienced this myself a few years ago, when a North American theatre company commissioned me to translate a Chinese play. They flew the playwright over from China to be in the workshop, while I was not invited, despite living several thousand miles closer; when I asked how then I would be able to make changes to my translation, it turned out that they expected me to hand over my text for them to alter as they wished. When I protested, I was told that \u201chaving to get permission from you first, before we would add any new text\u2026is not an efficient, or conducive way to create theatre.\u201d I did eventually manage to explain the rights of the translator sufficiently to the director that he acknowledged that I owned the copyright to my translation and it shouldn\u2019t be changed without my consent, but that took up much time and energy that I could have spent on the translation itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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