JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation

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Lisha Xu, David Johnston — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Feminism and androgyny: Gender politics in contemporary classical Chinese opera

Lisha Xu — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores gender politics in China through the intersection of feminism and androgyny in contemporary classical Chinese opera, focusing on how gender fluidity and feminist representation on the contemporary xiqu stage create the conditions of connection with new audiences today. The discussion focuses on two examples, firstly, feminism in Amy Ng’s translation of Rescuing one’s sister in the wind and dust (2021) and, secondly, the androgynous body in the all-female Yue Opera productions New Dragon Gate Inn (2023) and Coriolanus and Du Liniang (2016). It investigates how translation and performance as representational forms interrogate entrenched gender norms, and engage with themes of marked relevance today, such as domestic violence and the commodification of women’s bodies. In particular, gendered representation in xiqu not only provides an aesthetic revival of the past, but also subtly contests the perceived binary of traditional gender constructions by establishing portals of relatedness between past and present, both of which are unfixed and destabilised by the way in which these performance traffic in simultaneity. By exploiting connections across different temporal layers, these forms can enable feminism and a queer sensibility to permeate contemporary performances of classical Chinese art, enriching the current discourse available for promoting gender politics within this particular socio-cultural framework in (but not limited to) China.

Rewriting the intersex body: On the opera adaptation of Herculine Barbin’s Memoirs

Gonzalo Iturregui-Gallardo — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Herculine Barbin’s memoirs, published by Foucault in 1978, are considered the first testimony of an intersex person. Barbin’s story has been adapted several times, including in a 19th-century German short story and in a 1985 French film. In addition, the translation of the memoirs has been analysed from queer perspectives (Rose, 2021) due to the protagonist’s gender undecidability. This undecidability surfaces not only in translation but also in the memoir’s audiovisual rewritings, including most recently, the opera Alexina B. (García-Tomás, 2023) which premiered in Barcelona. This paper analyses the rewriting process in this multimodal (textual/audiovisual) and intralinguistic (French) translation/adaptation. Alexina B. was created after a research process not only on the historical character, but also on the (historical) intersex experience. This article’s analytical framework is based on queer and feminist approaches applied to Translation Studies, and on the notions of rewriting and translation as adaptation, practices through which the ethos is reworked (Spoturno, 2022). This framework serves to analyse the different adaptations (story, film and opera) and to argue that the opera presents a more queer-conscious narrative and a character who, despite being a victim of the social constraints of her time, was also master of her non-normative sexuality and desire.

Constitution is not identity: On equivalence relations in translation of performance and translation for performance

Sarah Maitland — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the race to secure the sub-rights to Amanda Gorman’s ground-breaking performance at the 2021 United States presidential inauguration, a high-profile case emerged in which the translator appointed by Dutch publisher Meulenhoff returned the commission, following criticism of the appointment. Building on the detailed critical interrogations of structural and racial inequity that were published in response to the ensuring controversy, this article delineates additional perspectives, by asking what is instructional in the debate on the who of translating Gorman’s performance, when it comes to other instances of translation of performance, and how we may learn from it in other contexts of translation for performance. Using performance as a concretising lens, or “system of meaning” (Pavis, 1992) that takes on significance only in the coming together of the relationships united in production and reception (p. 25), and through the application of theories of mathematical equivalence relations, this article questions what the controversy tells us about what translation of performance ‘is’ and ‘should’ be, and suggests what lessons might be learned with regard to the notion of equivalence in translation.

Trans/forming the Greek theatrescape: Translation for performance as representation

Vasiliki Misiou — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the translation and staging of Paloma Pedrero’s La llamada de Lauren… in Greece (2017–2019). The play was staged at a time marked by conflicting forces: on the one hand, Greece was taking significant steps forward for transgender people, recognising basic rights and freedoms, and on the other, discriminatory practices and gender-based violence were still a very present reality. In this context, Fenia Apostolou, a director who made headlines with her story as a trans person, and Maria Hatziemmanouil, a well-known translator of Spanish theatre, decided that it was the right time to stage Pedrero’s play. Based on the agenda pursued by the agents themselves, as reflected in the paratextual materials studied, the present paper discusses the role of translation for performance in going against prevailing normative practices and constraints, ultimately effecting change. The study shows that Hatziemmanouil sees translation as a performative, transcultural, and political practice. Thanks to her translation and Apostolou’s staging, systemically underrepresented groups have become more visible, and the discussion regarding gender, sex(uality) and identity in Greece has been enhanced, proving that translation and/for performance can contribute to the trans/formation of perceptions and major changes in societies.

Translating Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks: Just another ‘Rep & Rev’?

Kathinka Salzmann — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores some of the main challenges one has to deal with when translating a play whose language — African American Vernacular English — is linked to a specific context and culture, as is the case with Topdog/Underdog (1999), by the African American dramatist Suzan-Lori Parks. In particular, I shall seek to establish how a notion such as the ‘politically correct’ is questioned by the translatorial process, thus emphasising the translator’s ethical responsibility, while also showing how Parks grounds her writing in the idea of ‘repetition and revision’ characteristic of the Jazz aesthetic.

Polyphony and politics: Representing and translating culture, race and gender in Puccini’s Turandot

Benang Xuan — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the context of a more radical and critical climate of opera performance and audience response, this article investigates the representation and performance of Chinese-related images, characters and themes in various productions of Puccini’s Turandot, mainly those by Franco Zeffirelli, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Chen Xinyi and Robert Wilson, with particular reference to their English and/or Chinese surtitles. It argues that, while the impression of contrived harmony in Puccini’s mythologising of ancient China through yellowface performance is inevitably undermined by its contemporary cultural-political ramifications, the creative indeterminacy of the translational discourse can help to recover in this exquisite work the diversity and relevance that we deem necessary in our present time. Meanwhile, although cultural, racial and gender differences should be properly understood and duly respected in operatic contexts, it is imperative that representational and translational choices not be decided or evaluated by those considerations alone, that they not polarise into two warring ideological positions, i.e., Occidental versus Oriental, white versus non-white, male versus female.

Non-verbal agents of theatrical retranslation: Women’s identity and the Spanish classics

Jorge Braga Riera — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Despite the burgeoning interest in literary retranslation, there is still a need to investigate how linguistic, contextual, and personal factors influence the translation of a previously translated (and performed) play into a given target language and culture. This article aims to illuminate the extralinguistic agents (personal, social, performative, paratextual) that specifically intervene in the English retranslation and reception of the Spanish classical play La vida es sueño (Calderón de la Barca, 1636). The focus will be on women’s identity in the source text and how it is transmuted in the target plays, particularly emphasising the empowerment and identity granted to female characters. This is most noticeable in the case of Rosaura, who valiantly seeks revenge on Astolfo to restore her honour. To illustrate this, three performance-oriented retranslations staged in the UK and US between 1983 and 2010 will be scrutinised: John Barton and Adrian Mitchell’s Life’s a dream (1983) José Rivera’s Sueño (1998) and Helen Edmundson’s Life is a dream (2009). Together they demonstrate the relevance of non-verbal agency in the process of retranslating women’s identity. Conclusions will highlight the potential of (Spanish) theatre classics as catalysts for gendered retranslations on the Anglophone stage.

An alien among aliens: Translating multicultural identities in Singapore’s contemporary theatre

Bei Hu — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the conﬂated roles of translator and playwright embodied by Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002), a doyen figure acclaimed as the embodiment of Singapore’s contemporary theatre. As a Singaporean arts activist born in China, Kuo reformulated the state identity of Singapore through his self-translated play Descendants of the eunuch admiral (1995a), which examines his perceptions regarding the perils of a homogenised national theatrical realm and the tensions emerging from modernisation — an intriguing standpoint for an ethnically Chinese art activist. This lyrical episodic play unfurls the representation of the self-discovery of Zheng He, the Chinese admiral and court eunuch during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Stratified into prose and verse, it weaves tales and metaphors that highlight the dissolution of cultural identities, and the societal challenges faced due to emasculation. This study focuses on Kuo’s translator intervention in the bilingual versions of the play, one staged in English in June 1995 and the other in Mandarin Chinese in August 1995. It reveals Kuo’s proposition of multiculturalism as a counternarrative to the official discourse of multiracialism propagated by the authorities, uncovering how playwrights represent as translation agents within multilingual narratives.

Staging identity: When poets read themselves and their translations

Larisa Cercel — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article deals with a new subject of translatological research: the translator’s own reading, namely the public reading or performance of a translation by the translator themselves. This genre (Cercel 2020) is intimately related to the question of identity, given that the translator presents his or her own translation to the audience. That translation bears the inevitable mark of his or her individuality and moreover involves the affirmation of his or her identity as the author of the translated text. The translation-performance nexus in the translator’s act of reading will be explored in the essay in terms of the parameters of (a), the voice, (b), the public persona and (c), the effect of the performance. Dealing with the phenomenon of ‘voice’ offers direct access to the identity of a translator because “the uniqueness of the person is represented by the voice. The voice is the expression of the person, and more importantly, it is the essence of the person” (Pajević, 2002, p. 240). The term “public persona” goes back to Carl Gustav Jung (1974) and refers to the outwardly displayed attitude of a person that serves as a vehicle for his or her adaptation — or conversely non-adaptation — to social conventions and expectations, and which is closely related to his or her self-image and identity. The “effect” (Fischer-Lichte, 2003) provides information about the audience’s perception of and reaction to the given performance and the translator’s identity statement contained therein. These parameters will be examined on the basis of a historical corpus, namely that of Paul Celan’s readings of his poems and translations.

Translation as growth: Xiangsheng’s growing trajectory in China and abroad

Ye Tian, Guanpeng Wang — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To survive in different environments, performances adapt and grow to the measure of the different conditions of reception offered by these contexts. This article reviews the development in China and abroad of xiangsheng, or ‘crosstalk’, a Chinese comic double-act that relies on quickfire exchanges and narrative skills on stage. It brings together a blend of scripted material and improvisation whose address to the audience is immediate. Through the ecological metaphors of growth and using the lens of semiotic translation, we characterise translation as growth and explore the complexities in xiangsheng’s developing trajectories over time. We review xiangsheng’s development in China by examining current archives and research and examine its growth in diasporic performers by combining interviews with semiotic and textual analysis. Our exploration reveals that translation enables the intermingling of political tension, performers’ self-awareness, audiences’ social and cultural background, and the broader historical background of the form itself as it grows and evolves in different times and locations.

The implications of new censorship theory: Conformity and resistance of subtitle translators in China

Lu Yan — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Censorship penetrates the decisions made about multilingual communication in an age defined by technification, digitisation and ‘Internetisation’. Rather than perceiving censorship solely as a repressive action externally exerted on subjects, this article explores its productive nature in the hands of new censorship theory in both official and non-official contexts. At its outset, the article presents the Chinese government’s legal control over the media landscape, casting a shadow over the subtitling industry’s present policies. It then examines three self-censorship practices of subtitle translators, based on in-depth interviews and questionnaires conducted with professional and non-professional subtitle translators in state media, media localisation companies and fan-subtitling teams. Subtitle translators, under the impact of explicit and implicit regulations imposed by state actors and structural mechanisms of control, either conform to or circumvent and challenge these regulations. Productive censorship can shape the knowledge and opinions, foster extensive discussions, inspire innovative translation strategies, create fresh lexicons, and enhance the marketability of audiovisual products to a wider audience.

Editorial

Sarah Maitland — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Misiou, Vasiliki and Kostopoulou, Loukia (Eds.) (2024). New Paths in Theatre Translation and Surtitling

Kelly Kar Yue Chan — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Morini, Massimiliano (2022). Theatre Translation: Theory and Practice

Helen S E Parker — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Jorge Braga Riera (2024). Theatre is different: la traducción de la experiencia dramática

Verónica Pacheco Costa — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Johnson, Penélope (2024). Writing a translation commentary

Donna Wilson — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Massey, Gary, Elsa Huertas-Barros and David Katan (Eds.) (2023). Human Translator in the 2020s

Ran Yi — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000