How to Get Started Translating a Play

While the persistence and curiosity of a researcher is necessary for this step, serendipity also plays a part in this process. Translator and novelist Anton Hur once told me that there is a book out there waiting for you to translate it. We can apply this to plays as well: somewhere out there, a play is waiting for you to translate it. Part of the fun in translation can be searching for the play (which is also searching for you).

This search also dovetails into those initial choices we make as translators. “Who we choose to translate is political,” writes Antena Aire in the Ultratranslation Manifesto. “How we choose to translate is political.” And when you finally find the play you want to translate, what comes next?

Securing Language Translation Rights

From a practical standpoint, you should check whether the English language rights to the play are available. While written primarily for literary translation, Susan Bernofsky’s how-to guide on Translationista is an excellent resource for understanding what translation rights are and how to obtain them. As Bernofsky mentions in her guide, “You need no one’s permission to translate anything you like—translating is always legal—it’s only publishing your translation that requires permission.”

In other words, you can go ahead and translate a play, but if you want the play to be accessible to other people, you need to have the rights to seek publication of the translation.

I have noticed, however, that it is easier to obtain rights to plays as compared to poetry and prose. Unpublished plays are available, and the playwright holds the rights to these works. When obtaining rights, I begin by creating a short, written agreement between the playwright and myself that grants me the English language rights for translating the play, as well as plans to split any compensation from the translated play. With the work of deceased playwrights, it is still important to track down anyone who might have ownership over the play (such as publishing houses, family estates, etc.) and see if language rights are available. If they are, you request them; if they are granted, great! Make sure you have appropriate documentation in the form of written agreements, and start translating. If rights are not available, you may unfortunately have to move on and find another play.

Translating the Text

What skills and perspectives might you need to start translating?

In his lecture “Translating Spiritual Texts: From the Literal to the Expansive,” Kareem James Abu Zeid proposes that in an ideal world, a translator could bring together three qualities:

• Linguistic expertise in the source language (i.e., the language of the original text from which you are translating)
• Literary training and/or literary sensitivity in the target language
• Direct, lived experience (or at least an intuition) of the insights the text at hand is pointing toward or trying to evoke (e.g., nuanced understanding of the source culture or experience)

While Zeid applies these characteristics to translators of spiritual texts (primarily poetry), I find them apt for translating dramatic texts as well—texts meant to be breathed and heard, shaped in physical space and time, and affected by silence and gesture.

When I expanded my idea of translation from solitary to collective and brought my father into the experience, our combined skills helped us find a way to translate plays.

My initial obstacle with translation was with the first quality: linguistic expertise and the idea of fluency. I assumed that translators were bilingual or multilingual and that a person had to easily speak a language in order to read it, understand it, and write that meaning back in one’s target language. Coming from multilingual parents who immigrated to the States from oppressive political regimes, I carried a great deal of language angst. My playwriting often reflected my struggles with language: not only would characters speak or strain to understand multiple tongues, but props like cassette tapes and traditional food would become imbued with the power to interpret or overcome language. I would ask my father and friends to help me translate from English into Romanian. I didn’t think I was equipped to go the other way. Only once I took a short introductory course with Elisa Wouk Almino through the (now defunct) Catapult writing program did I realize that translation isn’t simply a skill—it’s a perspective. In Kitchen Table Translation, Madhu H. Kaza unpacks the idea and politics of fluency:

When it is even acknowledged, much of literary translation in the US, especially of prose, is appraised in terms of fluency, which often coincides with ideas of accessibility and seamlessness. A fluent translation avoids literalism and awkwardness (translatese); the wrinkles that would remind us that it is translation are ironed out. There is an emphasis on the translator’s mastery of language and an artfully inconspicuous technique.

In just a few hours with Elisa, I realized that translation is more than a one-to-one relationship or a swapping of words and sentences. The process can involve dictionaries. It can involve thesauruses. Translation can involve calling your friends and family, texting your mentors, googling for terms, watching cinema. In my case with Romanian plays, it meant sitting at the dining room table with my dad, reading the source text to each other and typing away as we discussed Romania outside of Western stereotypes of the country as backwards or violent. I enrolled in Romanian classes to improve my skills, which I would then apply during my translation practice. When I expanded my idea of translation from solitary to collective and brought my father into the experience, our combined skills helped us find a way to translate plays. I encourage translation-curious practitioners to find ways to fill in gaps, especially by finding co-translators or improving your own language skills.