Traduire le théâtre vers des genres non-verbaux du spectacle vivant : Nestroy comme mimodrame et ballet-pantomime

Abstract

Verbal language is a central sign system in the Western theatrical tradition. How does a translation manage to remove this sign system while translating a dramatic text into non-verbal genres of the performing arts? As both translation and adaptation specialists agree nowadays on the interest of exploring intersemiotic transformations as a common object of their two disciplines, the present contribution attempts to answer this question and at the same time to probe interest in the use of translatological tools for the analysis of the kind of objects traditionally considered 'free adaptations'. It is based on farce, with songs Der Talisman (The Talisman) by Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, an author and actor of 19th-century Viennese popular theatre, and on two translations in different non-verbal genres: the mimodrama Les Trois perruques by Marcel Marceau (1953; Paris, Petit Théâtre des Champs Elysées) and the ballet-pantomime Titus Feuerfuchs by Erika Hanka (1941; Hamburg, Opernhaus).