“General” Front & Back - the Royal Exchange Theatre

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The riddle about the difference between trolls and humans with which the Old Man of the Mountains challenges Peer Gynt has also proved a challenge for translators throughout the century. In a literal translation the riddle’s solution is: “Troll, be thyself enough”, a line which is as obscure in Norwegian as it is in English! The difficulty lies in the fact that there is no Trolls from a 1982 RSC production In the English-speaking world, our understanding of Ibsen’s works is dependent upon the skill and judgement of translators. But what happens when one of the key phrases in a play is almost impossible to translate into English? English word meaning ‘selfsufficient’ in a negative sense. ‘Self-sufficient’ now tends only to have positive implications. Translator, Michael Meyer, thought he had found a solution when first translating the play in the 1960s. “It was the only time I have ever consciously allowed myself to use an anachronism. When I translated it in 1962 there was a very common phrase in English which precisely meant selfsufficiency in a bad sense: ‘I’m all right Jack’, meaning ‘f**k everybody else’. I made him say, ‘we trolls say “be thyself Jack”’ and the audience understood exactly what it meant.” However within a few years the English phrase had lost its currency and the translation was once again unclear. During rehearsals for the current production, Michael Meyer’s translation has changed again. Rehearsals began by using the translation, “Troll, be thyself - and to hell with the rest of the world”, but Espen Skjønberg, who speaks the line, asked if he could say “Troll, be thyself - and thyself alone”. At first Michael was uncertain, but now thinks that “the way Some Translation Solutions Out there, under the shining vault of heaven, Men tell each other: ‘Man, be thyself!’ But in here, among us trolls, we say: ‘Troll, be thyself - and to hell with the rest of the world!’ Michael Meyer Out there, where the sky shines, humans say: ‘To thyself be true’. In here, trolls say: ‘Be true to your self-ish’. Kenneth McLeish Espen is going to do it, hugging himself with a sort of laugh, will make sense”. Although persuaded that this production has found an acting solution to the translation problem, Michael believes that “it is not a phrase one would want in a printed translation. I still think ‘to hell with the rest of the world’ gives the more immediate meaning.” Out there, under the radiant sky, They say ‘To thine own self be true.’ But here, in the world of the trolls, we say ‘To thine own self be - all-sufficient!’ Christopher Fr y and Johan Fillinger
Henrik Ibsen Peer & Åase from the 1962 Old Vic production Avoid anachronisms Michael believes that anachronisms are destructive and has “made it a rule never to use any word that would not have been current English at the time the play in question was written; apart from the intrinsic vulgarity of anachronisms, any attempt to update dialogue will date within a decade.” Being confined to “the 95% or 97% of words which are common to both 1899 and 1999” is not too difficult a task for the Michael Meyer outlines the key points for a good translation: Know the language An obvious point, but there is a fashion for theatre companies to commission distinguished playwrights to create versions of foreign plays, working from a literal translation. As Michael Meyer points out, there can be flaws to this approach: “There are quite a lot of people who think you can get someone bilingual to do a literal translation and then kick it around, but that’s no good. I know that because the first Ibsen I ever translated, over forty years ago in 1955, was Little Eyolf for BBC radio. I knew Swedish but I didn’t know Norwegian and I got a bilingual lady to be my intermediary. Although she was completely bilingual she couldn’t read a play. Some years later, by the time I had learned Norwegian, I had to revise the translation for publication and I had to alter almost every line because she had missed the point entirely! With a literal translation of someone like Ibsen, where there are very subtle nuances, all you get is an approximation of the text.” Be faithful to the play translator since the English language has changed very little in the course of the century. In contrast, Michael believes, in the one hundred years since Ibsen was writing, “the Norwegian language has changed as much as English has in two hundred years.” This means that in the original Norwegian, the language of the plays can sound extremely dated. Norwegian actors like Espen Skjønberg (who plays the Button Moulder) approaching Ibsen in English often feel relieved “to be acting Ibsen in a language which doesn’t feel old-fashioned!” Translation Tips The translation used in the Royal Exchange Theatre production is by Michael Meyer, the distinguished translator and biographer of Ibsen and Strindberg. For director Braham Murray, there was no doubt about which translation to use: “Michael Meyer did this translation back in 1962 for Michael Elliott, a former director of this Michael believes that it is an advantage for a translator not to be a famous playwright. “The most difficult thing, if the translator is a creative writer himself, is to keep himself out of it, to resist leaving his thumbprint. Gogol once observed that the ideal translation should be like a new window pane. One should not be aware that it exists.” Choose the dramatic medium with care company. He is the best translator of Ibsen. There wasn’t much competition really.” With Peer Gynt, written in a subtle, rhymed verse, translators must choose whether to use verse or prose. If they are using verse, what sort of verse form is most suitable? Before approaching Peer Gynt, Michael had confronted these same choices when tackling Ibsen’s Brand: “The first decision I made was that one obviously can’t translate it into rhymed verse because rhyme in English is death to any dialogue except farce. I tried prose and it just didn’t work. The difficulty was, and it is the same with Peer Gynt, that you move between the sublime and the slightly frivolous. You have got to have a medium in which you can move from one to the other without seeming incongruous. I tried it in blank verse for a page or so, and that did not work either. Then I remembered T.S. Eliot who is a poet and playwright I much admire. I remembered the medium he had used in The Family Reunion: a kind of free verse. He said he did not want the audience to realise it was listening to verse. If they are conscious that they are listening to poetry then the dialogue becomes a bit like opera - they know it is not really happening. He used a free verse, not always easily distinguishable from prose, but in which one could be high-flown without seeming incongruous. That is what I tried to do in both Brand and Peer Gynt.” Contemporary illustration of Ibsen Q uotations are taken from Michael Meyer’s memoirs, Not Prince Hamlet (1989) and from a 1999 interview with the translator.
Page 1 and 2: David Threlfall in lbsen’s Produc
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Page 5 and 6: The Director For director Braham Mu
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“General” Front & Back - the Royal Exchange Theatre

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