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AbstractIt is argued and demonstrated in this paper that thedistinctive characteristic of the drama text as anincomplete entity is fundamental and central to this genreand ought to be sufficiently highlighted by dramatranslation scholars and placed at the centre of the debatein the same stead as performability and speakability. It isfurther argued and suggested that drama translators anddrama translation scholars could increasingly focus theirattention (thereby ceasing to concentrate exclusively onthe performability and speakability dimensions of theplay) on the reading strategies of the other personsinvolved in the drama communication chain in order todetermine to what extent the translator can draw fromthem to more effectively formulate his own reading andtransfer strategies.From the perspective of poststructuralist or deconstructionistapproaches to translation, any creative work of art, particularlyliterature, can be considered to be of an open nature, often subject tomultiple or diverse interpretations by the target audience. From thisperspective, it can be said that to some extent, such open texts areincomplete as the target audience plays a major role in enriching andcompleting them (Umberto Eco 1985). However, of all the literarygenres, the drama text is an incomplete text par excellence, whoseincomplete nature has a significant incidence on its translation.Bassnett (1991:100) has argued that if the notion of the gestictext is maintained and considered as fundamental to theatre texts, thenTranslation Today Vol. 6 No. 1 & 2 2009 © CIIL 2009PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor