‘Poche parole ma significanti’: quando la traduzione va in scena – con due case studies

This doctoral dissertation focuses on the dramatic text, whose long neglected theatrical nature is more volatile and harder to analyze if compared to the literary text. The difficulty lies in reproducing a language whose final outcome is not completely in the hands of the translator, as it happens with narrative. The dramatic text, once translated, will pass to the actors, who will embrace it and use it in the performance; in order to be performable, there are some key elements which cannot be overlooked. First, the dramatic text is not meant to be independent and complete, but finds its utmost realization on stage, fused with all the other theatrical elements – acting included- converging into the performance. The incompleteness of the dramatic text has to be preserved in the passage to a new language, to allow the same chemistry of the original (or to make it better) and to allow the actors to infuse their art in it. The dramatic translation must also consider the so called ‘playable speakability’, that is, writing in a way which sounds natural to the ear and to the acting; this implies a deep knowledge of the practical dimension, that of rehearsals. To clarify these theoretical points, two authors and three plays have been taken into consideration. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, and Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Shakespeare allowed to verify how radically different is the approach of translators who treat Shakespeare’s texts as ‘literature’ and those who treat them as theatrical text; moreover, the weight of the author’s name revealed itself to be a powerful dominant as well: the translators, intimidated by the importance of the text in the Canon, usually feared to strand from the source-text to find more suitable solutions in the target language. Frayn’s Noises Off offered an insight on how the translation slowly turns into a play, with all modifications that seemed necessary, showing also that the best results in theatrical translation come when the theatrical perspective is allowed to take hold.