Drama Translation: Principles and Strategies Drama Translation ...

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62 Drama Translation: Principles and Strategiesfor an African readership/audience there is a clear indication of thefact that the translated drama is not uprooted and placed in anentirely new cultural context but rather in a more or less “same”cultural context. In effect, the primary target consumers of thetranslations are most often African. It can thus be posited that ratherthan being target-text oriented, translated African drama, and indeedAfrican literature in general, is essentially source-text oriented.Other proponents of the target text/target culture and receptionorientedapproach in drama translation include Brisset (1990),Déprats (1990), Bassnett (1991), Lefevere (1992) and Laliberté(1995).The decision either to “uproot” the play from its originalcultural context or to leave it “untouched” definitely clearly tells onthe compatibility and integration of the play in the receiving culture.Consequently, it can be asserted without fear of contradiction thatthe compatibility and integration of translated plays in the receivingculture are at the heart of considerations with regard to the dramatranslation principles and strategies outlined.Drama translation practitioners as well as scholars have allalong been preoccupied with the fate of the translated drama text inthe receiving culture, in other words, by its compatibility andintegration in the receiving culture. This is clearly evident in thevarious manipulations to which the translated text is subjected astestified by the abundant terminology characterizing suchmanipulation: ‘adaptation’ ‘acculturation’, ‘rewriting’, ‘version’‘transplanting’, ‘naturalizing’, ‘neutralizing’, ‘recreation’,‘transposition’, ‘re-appropriation’, ‘assimilation’, ‘domestication’etc.Scholars (cf. Aaltonen 2000:53-54) think that considerationsof the compatibility and integration of translated drama in thereceiving culture play a crucial role in the choice of the text to betranslated and the translation strategies used. Concerning the choice
Suh Joseph Che 63of texts, they state that foreign plays are selected on the basis ofsome discursive structures which either needs to be already in linewith those in the target society or can be made compatible withthem. For instance, foreign plays which represent either empiricist oremotional reality familiar to the target culture are admitted into itstheatrical system more easily than those that are not compatible withits way of looking at the world. Both the choice of texts and theadjustments are carried out in the interests of the integration of theforeign play into the aesthetics of the receiving theatre as well as thesocial discourse of the target society.With regard to the translation strategies used, Bassnett(1998:93) cites Romy Heylen who has suggested that in dramatranslation there is a sliding scale of acculturation that runs from oneextreme, where no attempt is made to acculturate the source text thatmay result in the text being perceived as exotic or bizarre, through amiddle stage of negotiation and compromise, and finally to theopposite pole of complete acculturation. Brisset (1990:5) howeverviews the situation differently and asserts that drama texts, perhapsmore than any other genre are adjusted to their reception and theadjustment is always socially and culturally conditioned. Accordingto her, “drama as an art form is social and based on communalexperience. It addresses a group of people in a particular place at aparticular time. It grows directly out of a society, its collectiveimagination and symbolic representations, and its system of ideasand values.” Also taking a contrary stand to Heylen, Aaltonen(1993:27) on her part considers that in translation, foreign drama istransplanted into a new environment and the receiving theatricalsystem sets the terms on which this is done. She argues that thetranslated play must communicate and be intelligible at some level,even if it should deviate from the existing norms and conventions.For her therefore, “neutralization or naturalization makes theforeign more manageable and homely; it makes it possible for theaudience to comprehend what is happening on the stage; it removesthe threat”. Several years later, she reasserts that “acculturation is
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