International Translator's Day has been celebrated since 1991 on September 30 by decision of the Council of the International Federation of Translators (FIT). This date honors the memory of the patron saint of translators, St. Jerome the Blessed, who died on September 30, 420. St. Jerome translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin between 383 and 406. The Bible he translated became known as the Vulgate. The holiday is celebrated all over the world with book presentations, round tables, competitions, recitals.
TRANSLATE DRAMATURGY IS EXTREMELY EXCITING! OGNIAN STAMBOLIEV, PEN-BG
I have been translating for more than four decades. I worked as a playwright at the Ruse Opera, where I had to translate opera librettos or edit already translated texts. Then I came across poems by the great Romanian poets Nikita Stanescu, Ana Blandiana and Marin Sorescu. I fell in love with great Romanian poetry!
And not long after, with great Romanian drama: Ion Luca Caragiale, Mihail Sebastian, Camil Petrescu, Marin Sorescu, Dumitru Radu Popescu, Teodor Mazilu, Matei Visniec and, of course, their brilliant compatriot Eugene Ionesco.
From him, I translated and published a large volume with ten plays and ten essays on theater – one of my most exciting experiences as a writer so far. I also translated three volumes of plays by the “New Ionesco”, the remarkable Matej Vishnjek. His theater travels around the world from Broadway through Avignon, Berlin and Sofia to Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo. Yes, indeed, translating drama is undoubtedly something very exciting. I prefer it to translating prose.
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But there is one “but”! The translation of drama is not a translation for print, for a book, but for the Theater, for the stage. So here we must take into account two facts: in the Theater, the translation passes through the body and voice of the actor and the hearing of the spectator in the hall. So, this is not an ordinary translation of one linguistic text /of the original/ into another /of the translation/. Because on the stage, diverse speech situations and cultures, which are generally distant in space and time, collide and come into contact. Thus, a translation, after it is “put on stage”, may sound different to some extent. And this is completely normal. But if it is modified too much, then the author suffers, and of course the viewer is harmed. The question is in the measure. And this is the most difficult moment in this type of creativity.
In my work, I can say that I do not follow any specific and strict rules. I cannot give exact recipes. I simply translate in such a way that, in my opinion, the text is suitable for the stage, I pronounce the lines out loud to feel them and achieve the desired rhythm, so that the director does not later say that it was “completely unstageable” and sit down to “fix” it. I know that directors in our country love to cut and trim the texts, and that is why in most cases they make mistakes. I simply follow the author, I don't add to it, correct, adapt, as many directors do today. So that sometimes the author is unrecognizable! Yes, this often happens! Especially lately.
So, a young director, a fairly well-known postmodernist or rather pseudo-avant-garde (D.Sh.), took five of my translations of Ionesco, without my permission, and created an incredible pastiche of them on the Ruse stage with the pretentious and ridiculous title "Construction of the Liberated Imagination".
Yes, she cruelly tortured the theater troupe, spent a lot of money, and in the end the result was a big nothing, a set of cheesy sketches that didn't even last three performances in half-empty halls with a bewildered audience. So I think that texts should be translated accurately and, of course, artistically, creatively, with inspiration, and be staged according to the author's idea and aesthetics.
Recently, at the Youth Theater in Sofia, there was another similar joke, by another, equally praised "director" - (T. M.), with Shakespeare's "Macbeth". Just a mockery! So a young critic described him as "yesterday's undercooked hamburger" and wished him to make "Omelette and Gorpcitsa". Here I will open a parenthesis: the great Italian playwright Aldo Nicolai decided to make fun of this type of directors by writing his own comedic paraphrase of Shakespeare with the eloquent title "Hamlet in Spicy Sauce"...
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I was also fortunate to work with several living authors with whom I have contact — Dumitru Radu Popescu, Ion Baiesu, Marin Sorescu. They had full confidence in me and were convinced that the translations of their texts were really good. From the work of the great, world-renowned and very original playwright and exceptional poet Marin Sorescu (1936-1996), I chose five of his strongest plays: “Dracula or the Third Stake“, “The Fisherman Jonah“, “The Clerk“, “Nerves“ and “Lono or the Thirst of the Salt Mountain“, and together with 133 of his wonderful poems, I made a volume that was well received by critics and readers. The plays, with the exception of the last one, which was wonderfully done by the Radio Theater with the remarkable Asen Angelov and Mariana Dimitrova (may their memory live on!), have not yet been staged. Hopefully, one day this will happen.
Unfortunately, our directors feel, due to lack of knowledge, some inexplicable disregard for Romanian drama, and it is world-renowned!, and do not often stage these authors, at the expense of second-rate American, French and even Serbian, Turkish, Greek and Macedonian playwrights. And Marin Sorescu has been played with great success in Paris, London, Broadway, Moscow, Berlin, Naples, Geneva, the Theater of Nations... I would say the same about the other world name, the “new Ionesco“ Matej Vishnjek (born 1956). It is played from Chile to Tokyo, Ankara and even in Islamic, non-theatrical Iran! Last summer alone, he had 5 premieres in Avignon and two festivals named after him in Tokyo and Moscow…
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Some claim that our language is poor and ungrateful for translation.
I do not share this opinion. Yes, it cannot be said that our language is as multi-layered and rich as English, French, or Russian. We were under a barbaric Asian slavery that crippled us in every way. This was a five-century-long, hitherto unknown genocide in world history! Even our language, as well as our literature, have suffered, have not been able to develop normally, smoothly.
Our language is still full of ugly Turkish words, as well as Turkishisms, which inexplicably why now, in the 21st century, still sound even on the national airwaves: “komshiya“, “akyl“, “ketap“, “ishtah“, “kahar“, “maytap“, “rushvet“… Another issue is that we, Bulgarians, even the intelligentsia, do not fully use the entire lexical wealth of the ancient and beautiful Bulgarian language, that we limit ourselves to a small number of words when communicating, not to mention the poor and terrible language of many of the media. They consciously and purposefully simplify the Bulgarian, especially the young, and this is a state policy that serves foreign interests. Mainly Washington, Moscow and Ankara.
I am convinced that every language and every literature and culture is a separate, unique world.
The language of Mihai Eminescu, this brilliant poet, defined by world criticism as: “the last great romantic in European lyrics“ (we, unfortunately, due to slavery, have not given birth to such), is for me no less beautiful and interesting than French, Italian, Russian, English. It is prestigious to translate great, world authors, even smaller literatures, such as Emil Michel Cioran, Mircea Eliade, Marin Sorescu, Nikita Stanescu, Matei Visniec.
We, as a small nation, unlike other small nations, suffer from provincial complexes. And just because Romania is our neighbor, we tend to underestimate it and overestimate more distant countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland or Spain. Yes, but Romania has much stronger poetry and drama than many of the Western countries we admire.
What kind of poetry is being created today in the Netherlands or Belgium? None! Even Italian and Spanish poetry are no longer as strong and interesting as they used to be. While Romanian poetry is very deep and strong and is recognized worldwide. So is Romanian theater and drama.
I would say the same about Bulgarian literature. We have world-class poets, as well as good fiction writers, playwrights, such as Stanislav Stratiev or Hristo Boychev, who are also world-class. The plays of the latter have been triumphantly marching around the world for years.
Until 1989, the Union of Translators was particularly active and useful in our country, and I can say that until then we had serious control functions. Now this is impossible. The bad thing is that theaters do not always have playwrights and repertoire bureaus, that Bulgarian theater is entirely in the hands of the directors, that they completely determine the repertoire, that they even translate, adapt, rewrite...
That is why now in our country there is neither a good and balanced repertoire, nor control over translations and the language of the stage, nor a good theater. And the artists are completely “slaves of the directors“, they are completely dependent on them… But the main fault lies with the directors of the theaters – they give unlimited power to the directors and invite them to the theater “to come with their plays“, and not the opposite and normal – to come because of a certain play that the theater has chosen and that is where most of the failures come from…
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Translation is an art and above all “kinship by choice“, if I may use the title of Goethe's famous novel.
This is hard intellectual and creative work, poorly paid, undervalued, sometimes in the shadows (many theaters do not even write the names of the translators in the programs and posters, which is unforgivable!), but work that brings me joy personally.
I translate mainly from a foreign language into my native language, and I do reverse translations very rarely. So far, I have translated several strong texts from Bulgarian to Romanian by Kalin Iliev and the remarkable Hristo Boychev. They were successfully staged in Bucharest at the “Bulandra“ theater and at the festival in Sibiu (Hermanstadt), Romanian Transylvania. But I am convinced that a professional translator should translate only into his native language. And choose his authors. In the translation of dramaturgy for me there are three: Ionesco, Marin Sorescu and Matei Vishniec.
For me, translation can be a pain when I can't find the most accurate word, but in principle it is a joy. Another, more beautiful and more meaningful life, especially now, in this ruined country, where culture is “tightly in the corner“, and the so-called “delegated budgets“ are simply the killers of Bulgarian theater.
Because it is absurd to want a theater or opera to support itself from Gogol, Ibsen and Pirandello, from Verdi, Puccini or Prokofiev. This does not exist anywhere in the world. This is great stupidity! Even now, in this depression in Europe, let's not talk about Austria with the 229 million euros for the Vienna Opera, more than for the Austrian army, or about Germany with its over 800 million for theaters and operas, but about our neighbors Romania and Russia, where they are not cutting and killing so ruthlessly, but are building, despite the crisis. Even in Anatolia, theaters, operas, philharmonics, festivals are opening! Yes, in Asian Turkey there is also a large state program for the promotion of literature and theater abroad, and in our country?
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Many words of praise have been said and written about the art of translation. As early as the 16th century, the great French poet Joachim Du Belle theorized about this complex, thankless and poorly paid art.
But translation also has its detractors. The Italians have a saying: “Il traduttore e sempre un traditore“ (The translator is always a traitor), while the French say that translation is like a woman: “if she is beautiful, she is false, if she is true, she is not beautiful…“
Yes, translation is difficult work. Here I will quote another interesting phrase with which we may not agree, but there is a certain amount of truth in it. The German romantic Friedrich Schlegel wrote in one of his articles literally the following: “Artistic translation is a mortal combat. In it, either the one who translates or the one who is translated suffers defeat!“
Indeed, many words of praise have been written about us, the translators. Recently, I had the good fortune to translate and compile an anthology entitled “Tears and Saints“ with texts by the great Romanian-French thinker and philosopher, one of the last humanists of our time, the Romanian from Paris, Emile Michel Cioran.
I was flattered to read and translate the following: “The translators I met in my life almost always surpassed the writers. They were more educated, more cultured, much better and more worthy than most of them…“