Introduction

Introduction ALAN THOMAS Our Special Issue on Translations might serve as a reminder that the unique internationalism of modem drama has developed from works known first to the wider world only in translation. This issue is not intended to revisit the old textual sites of origin in Scandinavia and Russia, but it does reflect some basic features relating to those origins. The act of translation is a natural activity for those working on the margins and aware of the divides. The widest and most significant divide to be crossed, it might be argued, is that between the languages of Europe and the single language of global reach today, that is, English. We are pleased to welcome to these pages new contributors to this journal, scholars, playwrights and translators, who live and work in countries on the periphery of Europe, a number at Irish and Scottish universities and colleges. From their contributions we are made aware that the translating of plays is an act of exchange, one thing being substituted for another, and that benefits flow from such commerce. There are inevitably questions raised concerning the nature of that exchange. A prevailing assumption has been that the act of translation, to be trusted, should be neutral and should itself go unremarked. The play would deliver itself pure and clean to the new audience under the guidance of the principle of fidelity. Questions concerning translations have run for years along this issue of fidelity to an original. Yet distinguished translators, such as Ben Belitt, in Adam's Dream, have displayed queasiness about this moralized view of their work. have emphasized the necessity for imaginative translation. have challenged the idea of the "literal" translation, and have mocked the favoured attitude of self-abnegation that translators adopt towards authors.' Ben Belitt draws his book's title from a line in a Keats letter: "The Imagination may be compared to Adam's Dream - he awoke and found it truth." The line suggests the wonder of a transformation in which all living things are able to converse with each other, without let or hindrance; but Belitt's emphasis on the role of Modem Drama. 41 (1998) I 2 ALAN THOMAS the imagination argues that some work is necessary to bring about that transformation and. in fact, the book's argument as a whole, is for the most strenuOllS use of the imagination in the act of translating. . But if not neutrality, invisibility and fidelity then what? The discussion has been brought into a new perspective in Lawrence Venuti's challenging book The Translator's Invisibility.' Restraint is necessary for it would be all to easy to overstate the divide between the so-called "humanist" and the "postmodemist " position of Professor Venuti, especially in the practical outcome of texts translated. If there is an observable difference in the comments some translators allow themselves to make today concerning their work which they might not have allowed themselves yesterday, or before Venuti, it is in terms of motive. Venuti does not only challenge the favoured metaphor of transparency in the ideal translation (as, presumably, he would challenge similar metaphors involving silence or hidden hands). He rejects the assumption that translators occupy a passive status (which has led to many prefaces and introductions displaying a humble and apologetic stance). In defining translation he argues that the activity of bringing a work into a new language, or "domesticating " it, is linked to violence: "Translation is the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that will be intelligible to the target audience."3 At once one can see that this view confers a weight of power and responsibility on the translator which extends beyond the aesthetic: Venuti asserts that translators actually wield "enormous power in the construction of national identities for foreign cultures." Consequently his "postmodemistconcept of translation"4 demands the visibility of the translator and even a deliberate retention of the "foreignness" of the work. The author is to be left in relative peace, according to a sympathetic critic of this approach, and the audience is to be brought towards him or her.s If this means respect for the original, then of...