Problematic Myth-Making: Reflections on Jeremy Tiang and Patrice Pavis (Tennant)

I found the overlap between Jeremy Tiang's presentation and Patrice Pavis's essay fascinating. Many problematic myths abound about the act of translation, which, in turn, lead to misinterpretations of the translator's role and a general devaluation of their creative hand in a given project (e.g., the erasure of the literal translator and insistence on neutrality and invisibility as guiding principles in their involvement). One such myth, which is at the heart of the illusion of "fidelity," is the idea that a text is "inscribed" with its own kind of logic, that this logic is "incontestable" and "inalienable" and "immanent" in the work because the text itself is already a coherent whole. I think this myth has ties to a text's antiquity in the Western canon and longstanding celebrity reputation, as well as the constant interest in and desire to modernize and repurpose it with new translations, which is always wrapped up in public demand and safe, popularity-based, monetary decisions on the part of publishers and theaters. This phenomenon falls into the camp of "theater as text" and the notion that the text is a closed-loop source to be mined for meaning, interpretation, and direction. The author is idealized and romanticized as an all-knowing creator whose every motivation and desire can be found within the artifact. This line of thinking is what informs stagings of classics with a restitutive aim, as Didier Plassard notes. Projective stagings, on the other hand, embrace a similar philosophical approach to that of Aaron Posner in his translation of Chekhov's The Seagull as Stupid Fucking Bird, which I found to be fresh and exciting. Funny enough, it was Tiang's reference to Meryl Streep that crystallized something important for me about my own conception of translation and my own belief system / code of ethics. What matters to me is the recognizability of a given text, despite the novel inflections, "deviations," liberties taken, and/or riffs on the original. However, I acknowledge that this is a privilege that only canonical texts, which have been reproduced time and again, are able to enjoy, given that translations like Posner's rely on the legacy that precedes it, i.e., a collective cultural awareness of a given text and author. 

Of course, the binaries of theater-as-text/theater-as-material and restitutive/projective are just as fabricated as the myths they perpetuate. As Pavis writes about the art of mise-en-scène, the reality of the practice lies in "the art of compromise," which is exemplified by and embodied within the process of discovery that characterizes the development of mise-en-scène. Thus, translation of a source text is not an act of cold-cut execution but rather one of research, discovery, bargaining, and refinement that reveals both the artistic sensibilities of the author and those of the translator along the way. (As you can see, I am inclined to agree with the philosophy behind concepts like "text as material" and "projective stagings.")

                                                                                                                                    Sawyer