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10 Journal of Italian Translation
Stefano Boselli
11
Translation for the theatre has shown a tendency to privilege
the target culture at least since the Romans (Anderman 25). 1 As a
consequence, from the spectator’s point of view, it is hard to tell what
part translators play on the stage, squeezed as they are between the
original script and the final product in performance. 2 How can the
translator’s presence be highlighted while still aiming for a meaningful
and effective production? How can the translator, for once,
truly take center stage?
These questions are even more relevant for the English-speaking
world, where “transparent translation” appears as a tyrannical norm.
Lawrence Venuti explained how “[u]nder the regime of fluent translating,
the translator works to make his or her work ‘invisible,’ producing
the illusory effect of transparency that simultaneously masks
its status as an illusion: the translated text seems ‘natural,’ i.e., not
translated” (5). But, in addition to this state of affairs, a translator for
the stage is often asked to provide a mere literal version for a famous
playwright, who will later rework it into a “performable” adaptation
without necessarily knowing the original language (Zatlin 21).
Thus, the translator’s condition may amount to invisibility squared.
As a way of foregrounding the translator’s role, this article
proposes an open model for a “theatre of translations” that employs
more than one version of a play in a single language other than the
original. Just as the Viewpoints method for training actors isolates
certain aspects of performance, such as tempo or gesture, in order
to make them clearer and more manageable for analysis, 3 the focus
here will be translation alone. Actual performance remains the ultimate
goal, although most likely in an experimental and subsidized
venue rather than a commercial one. The point is not to replace the
more profitable strategy of “producing texts that flow” for potential
directors (Zatlin 2), but to offer an occasional, viable alternative to
transparency that privileges the specific interpretive lenses of the
translators.
The model is “open” because it can be applied to various plays
and in different manners, but with a few likely restrictions. Firstly,
it is more suitable for a short piece or a section of a play than for a
full-length work, especially in consideration of the amount of preparatory
analysis involved. Then, it requires at least two, but preferably
more, translations of the same play, which means that the original
will have been written some time ago and have achieved a certain
renown. Finally, to avoid the impression of pure stylistic exercise,
there should be some reason connecting the potential multiplication
of translations with the theme of the play. Luigi Pirandello’s The Man
with the Flower in His Mouth (L’uomo dal fiore in bocca) meets all these
conditions and seems particularly apt for the purpose.
To begin, we will focus on translations as texts within the framework
of descriptive translation studies, whose primary purpose is
“to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they
manifest themselves in the world of our experience” (Holmes 71).
Even more illuminating, says Friedmar Apel, would be the comparison
of different translations of the same excerpt of the original text,
which could offer to the reader evidence of the gamut of possible
translation choices (Literarische 37). We will therefore introduce the
original play and analyze five of its existing translations in English,
alone and compared.
Next, we will leave the purely textual level and veer towards
theatre studies, suggesting potential uses of the data thus gathered
as dramatic devices to foreground translation during performance.
But first, let us briefly turn our attention to the state of translation
of Pirandello’s plays into English.
Between exoticism and Anglicization: an English Pirandello?
Pirandello expressed his pessimistic views on artistic transformations
in his famous essay “Illustratori, attori e traduttori” (“Illustrators,
actors, and translators” 1908). For him, intermediaries
were just an unfortunate necessity that hampered the perfection of
the work of art, carefully crystallized by the original author. Since
translation was unable to recreate the tight bond between form and
content, he concluded that it resembled a kind of impossible sorcery:
“as if a corpse could be revived by breathing into it another soul”
(Bassnett and Lorch 31).
William Murray, one of Pirandello’s latest translators, argued
that “[n]o other playwright has suffered as much in translation as
he has, and even in his own lifetime he was well aware of it” (xiii).
In Gunilla Anderman’s words, Pirandello “knew that his work had
been distorted in translation, to the extent that lengthy speeches had
been added and, perhaps even worse, that his mastery of Italian,
raised in its simplicity to the level of poetry, had not been captured
in translation into English” (249-50). This sense of betrayal was also
based on the traditional notion of “beautiful but unfaithful or faithful
but ugly” and the Italian dyad traduttore-traditore, in which “the