Transcultural conversations in practice: translating David Mence’s plays into Italian

Tarantini, Angela Tiziana ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7142-7739 2018. Transcultural conversations in practice: translating David Mence’s plays into Italian. Woodsworth, Judith, ed. Transfiction 3. The Fictions of Translation, Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing, pp. 83-96. (10.1075/btl.139.05tar)

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Abstract

In this book chapter, I explore how the translation process fosters cross cultural dialogue in both directions. Author and translator meet in what Perteghella and Loffredo define a “privileged exploratory space” (2006: 6) where their voices “converge and reshape each other” (2006: 6). With some examples from a drama translation project of David Mence’s plays Convincing Ground (2013) and The Gully (2010) into Italian, I wish to show how translation is not “a traffic between wholes, but a process of mixing and mutual contamination” (Sturge, 2007:12) which takes place in a “third space” (Bhabha, 2004 [1994]). The reciprocal influence the author and the translator exercise on each other’s work has often been referred to as co-authorship (Zanotti, 2011, among others). In this chapter, I carry out two distinct and yet related arguments: firstly, that authorship of the text created in the third space through transcultural conversation can be granted to the translator only within the limits of responsibility as identified by Pym (2011). Secondly, that the text is indeed created in the third space, but does not belong to the third space. Rather, the third space is a place of transit, particularly when it comes to theatre translation. Because of the nature of theatre, its place and type of fruition, the “location” of the translated text is very much rooted in the target culture. This however does neither exclude mutual contamination, nor obliterate the concept of the third space, but only makes it ephemeral.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	Benjamins Publishing
ISBN:	9789027200198
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2022 11:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146049

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