Thoughts 2/7

Jeremy Tiang wrote in the translator's note to A Fable for Now that playwright Wei Yu-Chia was extremely receptive to his ideas for the translation and encouraged changes and reordering of the text not only in translation but in directors' adaptations of her work. The play, he writes, "has morphed with translation and with production" (69). I'm willing to bet, though I'm sure there are exceptions, that playwrights are more receptive than novelists to the changes a translator must make to the source text. They are used to having their work translated from page to stage, and understand that one play text in the hands of different directors, actors, designers, and so on, can lead to an infinite number of differently staged, differently interpreted productions. Plays are different from novels in that they aren’t meant to stay on the page; they are meant to be reborn onstage again and again. This also connects back to what Esther Allen said on Friday about the source text not being a "stable ideal." This is certainly true when it comes to drama. 

Furthermore, playwrights are attuned to the speakability of their text, and especially sensitive to the audience reception of their writing and the way in which their lines land. In her preface, Wei mentions the fear of presenting a play to an indifferent audience, saying that if they "were to sit there in complete silence, my soul would freeze over too" (7). Theatre is meant to provoke a reaction from its audience, and the playwright (and the rest of the cast and crew) receives feedback from the audience in real time simply by watching and listening for reactions. In my experience, theatre artists are particularly concerned with what “works” for the audience, and the entire production is created with the audience in mind. In this vein, I see a similarity between the translator’s task and the theatre maker’s task; both aim to “please” their audiences (if not please, they at least aim to convey information in a way that elicits a response from the reader/viewer). Therefore, I think collaborations between playwrights and translators can be especially fruitful, and that many playwrights make great translators, and vice versa. Tiang is a playwright himself, and I'm also thinking of Martin Crimp, a playwright whose translations of French theatre are especially lively and "performable."

Maggie