{"id":285086,"date":"2011-05-13T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/05\/13\/intro-to-on-translating-for-the-stage\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:23:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:23:51","slug":"intro-to-on-translating-for-the-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/05\/13\/intro-to-on-translating-for-the-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to "On Translating for the Stage""},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Peede, formerly of the NEA<\/span>, put Joanne Pottlitzer in touch with me in hopes that we could help publicize her recent essay “On Translating for the Stage.” The essay—which will go up in about 10 minutes—is very interesting, and discusses one of the singular challenge of translating drama. In order to contextualize the piece though, I had her write this intro explaining Jose Triana’s significance, etc. So, enjoy this, and be sure and read her full essay as well.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Palabras comunes is the consensus of my sense of theatre, of poetical life, of fragmentation. It is about honorable people and dishonorable people, about revolutionary people and non-revolutionary people, about good and evil, about false morality. It\u2019s about the cyclical nature of history. -\u2013 Jos\u00e9 Triana, 2006<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The celebrated Cuban poet and dramatist Jos\u00e9 Triana is known best internationally for his play La noche de los asesinos<\/em> (Night of the Assassins<\/em>, 1957-1965), which was awarded the coveted Casa de las Am\u00e9ricas Literary Prize in 1965 and has been translated into twenty languages. But of his thirteen plays, Palabras comunes<\/em> (Common Words<\/em>, 1979-1986) is arguably his masterwork.<\/p>\n

When Triana left Cuba in 1980 and moved to France, among the manuscripts he took with him was an early draft of a play he had adapted from the popular novella, Las honradas<\/em> (Respectable Women<\/em>) by Miguel del Carri\u00f3n. He called it Un di\u00e1logo de mujeres<\/em> (A Dialogue among Women<\/em>). In 1986, responding to the Royal Shakespeare Company\u2019s interest in producing the play, Triana reworked it and gave it a new title, Palabras comunes<\/em> (literally, Common Words<\/em>), paying homage in part to Ram\u00f3n de Valle-Incl\u00e1n\u2019s classic play Divinas palabras<\/em> (Divine Words<\/em>) and alluding to familiar idiomatic expressions or words, such as \u201chonor\u201d and \u201crespectable,\u201d whose meanings can shift within the ethic of a society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I read Respectable Women<\/em>,\u201d Triana wrote for the April 11 reading at the Americas Society, \u201cthe idea that something was missing came over me. The seductive suggestion of the title gradually began to fade. I found myself faced with a plot and characters that would disintegrate if touched, like fragile gold leaf or unhemmed linen, but were not fragile or unhemmed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI began to imagine the possibilities of secret threads only hinted at and felt that this text could be revisited, that beyond the given image one could see signs of its characters behaving in another way, orchestrating new situations, creating and dissolving labyrinths, unveiling the mediocrity of their actions, forming inner lives as a world apart, growing, shrinking\u2014or escaping. But I felt I needed to wait a few more years. Years that would give me a deeper understanding of Cuban life in all its complexity, its contradictions, its authenticity; that way I could pay it proper tribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palabras comunes<\/em> is a large and complex play that flows with a cinematic rhythm characteristic of Triana\u2019s work. Set in Cuba between 1894 and 1914, from the prelude of the Spanish-American War to the eve of WWI<\/span>, it dramatizes a bourgeois, racist society unable to recognize its own self-righteousness and rigidity, screened through the fragmentary memory of Victoria, a member of Cuba\u2019s landed class. Victoria\u2019s struggle to destroy society\u2019s hypocrisies is set against the polarized politics of the time and an impending war that threatens a family\u2019s way of life. <\/p>\n

Translating Palabras comunes<\/em> has been a long and delicate and exhilarating process. Triana\u2019s intellect, attention to language and style, and sense of theatricality are extraordinary. But the play\u2019s length and multiple layers, its prolific use of poetic language, and the distinctive voice of each of its eighteen characters, made it prohibitive to undertake without financial support. I am deeply grateful to the NEA<\/span> Literature & Arts Education Division for awarding me a translation grant in 2009. It took several attempts.<\/p>\n

In addition to keen competition, the fact that the project was a retranslation was a disadvantage, even though the Royal Shakespeare Company\u2019s adaptation, rejected by Triana, and the version ultimately performed were never in circulation and never would be. Another was the absence of a theatre person on the panels. As a rule, literary scholars have limited knowledge of the unique task of translating a play to be performed on the stage. <\/p>\n

The April event at the Americas Society was the translation\u2019s third public reading. Two scenes appear in the current Spring 2011 issue of the Society\u2019s literary magazine, Review 82: Cuba Inside and Out.<\/em> <\/p>\n

— Joanne Pottlitzer, May 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Peede, formerly of the NEA, put Joanne Pottlitzer in touch with me in hopes that we could help publicize her recent essay “On Translating for the Stage.” The essay—which will go up in about 10 minutes—is very interesting, and discusses one of the singular challenge of translating drama. In order to contextualize the piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[40296,40256,40276,40266,40286,1646],"class_list":["post-285086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-common-words","tag-joanne-pottlitzer","tag-jose-triana","tag-nea-fellowship","tag-palabras-comunes","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320736,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285086\/revisions\/320736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}