A psycholinguistic approach to theatre translation

Tarantini, Angela Tiziana ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7142-7739 2016. A psycholinguistic approach to theatre translation. The AALITRA Review (11) , pp. 60-77.

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Abstract

Ever since the publication of the first edition of Venuti’s "The Translator’s Invisibility", the dichotomy between the foreignizing and the domesticating approaches to translation has been an object of debate in translation studies. In this article I do not wish to discuss the political implications of this opposition, which have already been widely discussed (Robinson, Bassnett and Trivedi, Tymoczko, among others). Rather, I wish to demonstrate that when translating for the theatre, a higher degree of domestication might be necessary because of the medium involved. I show that the translator not only has to take into account the spoken nature of the dialogue, but also the aural nature of its reception. The aural nature of the reception of a theatre text also implies its impermanence and irreversibility. These features do not allow for re-examination of the linguistic input provided. Drawing from studies in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, I show how certain foreignizing strategies successfully applied to the translation of the written page might prove problematic when applied to stage translation. For that purpose, I use a single case study, an ongoing drama translation project: the translation of Convincing Ground (Mence) into Italian. My purpose is to demonstrate that a foreignizing strategy may not only hinder the audience’s lexical decision response, or prevent it altogether within the given time of utterance, but may also result in failure to convey the characterization of the people depicted in the fictional world, as well as the relationship they have with one another, shaped and negotiated through language.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2022 11:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146041

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