Words, Images and Performances in Translation 1441172610, 9781441172617

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
General Editor’s Comment
List of Figures and Table
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Transforming Image and Text, Performing Translation
Chapter 1 Translating an Artwork: Words and Images in Brett Whiteley’s Remembering Lao-Tse
Chapter 2 Biographical Resonances in the Translation Work of Florbela Espanca
Chapter 3 Mediating the Clash of Cultures through Translingual Narrative
Chapter 4 Theatre Translation for Performance: Conflict of Interests, Conflict of Cultures
Chapter 5 The Gull: Intercultural Noh as Webwork
Chapter 6 The Journalist, the Translator, the Player and His Agent: Games of (Mis)Representation and (Mis)Translation in British Media Reports about Non-Anglophone Football Players
Chapter 7 Drawing Blood: Translation, Mediation and Conflict in Joe Sacco’s Comics Journalism
Chapter 8 Silenced Images: The Case of Viva Zapatero!
Chapter 9 How Do ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ Translate? Gender Images across Italian, British and American Print Ads
Chapter 10 Translating Place: The Piano from Screen to Tourist Brochure
Chapter 11 Bad-Talk: Media Piracy and ‘Guerrilla’ Translation
Index

Citation preview

Words, Images and Performances in Translation

Continuum Studies in Translation Series Editor: Jeremy Munday, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds Published in association with the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), Continuum Studies in Translation aims to present a series of books focused around central issues in translation and interpreting. Using case studies drawn from a wide range of different countries and languages, each book presents a comprehensive examination of current areas of research within translation studies written by academics at the forefront of the field. The thought-provoking books in this series are aimed at advanced students and researchers of translation studies. Cognitive Explorations of Translation: Eyes, Keys, Taps Edited by Sharon O’Brien Translation as Intervention Edited by Jeremy Munday Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates Edited by John Kearns Translation: Theory and Practice in Dialogue Edited by Rebecca Hyde Parker, Karla L. Guadarrama García and Antoinette Fawcett Translation Studies in Africa: Central Issues in Interpreting and Literary and Media Translation Edited by Judith Inggs and Libby Meintjes

Words, Images and Performances in Translation

Edited by

Rita Wilson Brigid Maher Series: Continuum Studies in Translation

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London New York SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Rita Wilson and Brigid Maher and contributors 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. EISBN: 978-1- 4411-7261-7

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in India

Contents

General Editor’s Comment List of Figures and Table Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Transforming Image and Text, Performing Translation Rita Wilson and Brigid Maher Chapter 1: Translating an Artwork: Words and Images in Brett Whiteley’s Remembering Lao-Tse Margherita Zanoletti

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Chapter 2: Biographical Resonances in the Translation Work of Florbela Espanca Chris Gerry

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Chapter 3: Mediating the Clash of Cultures through Translingual Narrative Rita Wilson

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Chapter 4: Theatre Translation for Performance: Conflict of Interests, Conflict of Cultures Geraldine Brodie

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Chapter 5: The Gull: Intercultural Noh as Webwork Beverley Curran Chapter 6: The Journalist, the Translator, the Player and His Agent: Games of (Mis)Representation and (Mis)Translation in British Media Reports about Non-Anglophone Football Players Roger Baines Chapter 7: Drawing Blood: Translation, Mediation and Conflict in Joe Sacco’s Comics Journalism Brigid Maher

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Contents

Chapter 8: Silenced Images: The Case of Viva Zapatero! Federico M. Federici Chapter 9: How Do ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ Translate? Gender Images across Italian, British and American Print Ads Ira Torresi Chapter 10: Translating Place: The Piano from Screen to Tourist Brochure Alfio Leotta

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Chapter 11: Bad-Talk: Media Piracy and ‘Guerrilla’ Translation Tessa Dwyer

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Index

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General Editor’s Comment

The International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) provides a global forum for scholars and researchers concerned with translation and other forms of intercultural communication. The Association facilitates the exchange of knowledge and resources among scholars in different parts of the world, stimulates interaction between researchers from diverse traditions and encourages scholars across the globe to explore issues of mutual concern and intellectual interest. Among the Association’s activities are the organization of conferences and workshops, the creation of web-based resources, and the publication of newsletters and scholarly books and journals. The Translation Series published by Continuum in conjunction with IATIS is a key publication for the Association. It addresses the scholarly community at large, as well as the Association’s members. Each volume presents a thematically coherent collection of essays, under the co- ordination of a prominent guest editor. The series thus seeks to be a prime instrument for the promotion and dissemination of innovative research, sound scholarship and critical thought in all areas that fall within the Association’s purview. Jeremy Munday University of Leeds, UK

List of Figures and Table

Full-colour versions of these figures can be viewed online at www.continuumbooks.com/resources/9781441172310. Figure 1.1 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2

Figure 8.3

Figure 9.1 Figure 10.1 Figure 11.1 Figure 11.2

Table 2.1

Brett Whiteley, Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second), pencil, pen and ink on paper, 66 x 56 cm Joe Sacco, Palestine , p. 241 Joe Sacco, Palestine , p. 242 Shot from chapter 3, 21’ 05” of Viva Zapatero! Shot from chapter 1, 5’ 54” of Viva Zapatero! showing a clip from Michele Santoro’s current affairs talk show Sciuscià Shot from chapter 1, 5’ 55” of Viva Zapatero! showing a clip from Michele Santoro’s current affairs talk show Sciuscià Advertisement for Fast Size, Men’s Edge , July 2006, p. 109 ‘100% Pure New Zealand’, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney for Tourism New Zealand, 2001 A pirated DVD box set of The Wire , HBO, 2002–2008 Cover packaging of a pirated DVD of Iron Man (dir. Favreau, 2008) from Vietnam Four novels translated by Florbela Espanca: authors, biographical notes, bibliographical references and synopses

14 127 128 141

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149 169 185 195 199

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those colleagues who during the peer review process provided valuable feedback on the contributions to this collection. We are also grateful to Monica Rogers for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. We wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce the images included in this book: Wendy Whiteley (Figure 1.1); Fantagraphics Books, Seattle (Figures 7.1 and 7.2); Stefano Massenzi and Lucky Red, Rome (Figures 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3); Fast Size, California (Figure 9.1); M&C Saatchi, Sydney (Figure 10.1).

Notes on Contributors

Roger Baines is currently Head of the School of Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia (UK), where he teaches and researches Translation Studies and French language. He has published on a performance-based translation of rhythm in Koltès’s Dans la solitude des champs de coton , on the translation and adaptation of Adel Hakim’s 1990 play Exécuteur 14, on personal insults and gender, and ritual insults, in contemporary French, and on the work of Pierre Mac Orlan. He co- edited Staging and Performing Translation: Text and Theatre Practice (Palgrave Macmillan). He is co-host and co-founder of the STRAP (Stage Translation Research Adaptation Practice) discussion list. Geraldine Brodie is a doctoral student, jointly supervised at University College London and Queen Mary, University of London. She is researching the role of the translator in translating for performance on the London stage and has presented papers at international conferences (Cardiff and Melbourne) and several postgraduate conferences, including Manchester, Cambridge and her home universities. She has an MA in Comparative Literature from UCL and read English at the University of Oxford, specializing in Old French and Old and Middle English. She also studied Spanish at the Instituto Cervantes. Having taught her own course in Theatre Studies for the Workers’ Educational Association in London, she went on to convene the Translation Studies core course for the MA in Translation Theory and Practice at UCL. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. Beverley Curran teaches linguistic, cultural and media translation in the Department of Intercultural Studies at Aichi Shukutoku University in Nagoya, Japan. She is the author of Theatre Translation Theory and Performance in Contemporary Japan: Native Voices, Foreign Bodies (St. Jerome, 2008) and articles which have appeared in several collections and journals such as the Canadian Literature and Theatre Journal . She also collaborated on the Japanese translation of Nicole Brossard’s Journal in Time. She is the

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editor of the Journal of Irish Studies and a founding member of the TSKansai Research Group. Her current research projects include an examination of the circulation of translation on the Pacific Rim, and translation theories in 1930s Japan and their relationship to English literatures and English-language translations. Tessa Dwyer is a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, researching issues surrounding film and translation. She co-authored an article on the relationship between censorship and translation in communist Romania for The Velvet Light Trap (2009) and has written on the multilingual environment of the polyglot film for Linguistica Antverpiensia New Series (2005). Other articles have appeared in journals, including The South Atlantic Quarterly and Polygraph , and in the anthology A Deleuzian Century? (Duke University Press, 1995). In 2008, she co- edited a special issue of the online journal Refractory on split screens, and her ‘B- Grade Subtitles’ will appear in the forthcoming B for Bad Cinema anthology (Wayne State University Press). Federico M. Federici graduated in English and French literature at ‘La Sapienza’ University, Rome, where he developed an interest in Translation Studies. At the University of Leeds, UK, he was awarded a doctorate of research into the influence of creative translation on Italo Calvino’s style. A Senior Lecturer in Italian, he is the Director of the MA in Translation Studies at Durham University, UK. Together with chapters and articles, Federici is the author of Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau (Rodopi, 2009), editor of Translating Regionalized Voices in Audiovisuals (Aracne, 2009), and co- editor with Nigel Armstrong Translating Voices, Translating Regions (Aracne, 2006). His current research projects focus on the ideology of translation, the reception of Italian texts and audiovisuals in translation, and the training of culturally aware translators. Working as a freelance translator since 2001, in his spare time, he enjoys translating from French and English, as well as translating 17th- century Italian manuscripts into English. Chris Gerry is Professor of Economic Theory and Policy and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at the Universidade de Trás- osMontes e Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal, where his research has focused on local and regional economic development processes, and the impact of globalization on local economies and communities. Though he has published translations of social science texts from French, Spanish and Portuguese throughout his career, it is only recently that he has widened

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his interests to literary translation. His English translation of Florbela Espanca’s short stories will be published in 2011 by Seagull/Faoileán (Bristol University/National University of Ireland). Currently he is completing his research on the mutual influences between Florbela Espanca’s translation work and her prose fiction. Alfio Leotta currently teaches Film Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He has also taught at both the University of Auckland and Massey University (Albany). He graduated in Communication Studies at ‘La Sapienza’ University, Rome in 2003 and completed a European Master in Heritage Studies at the University of Nice in 2005. His primary research interests focus on the relation between film and landscape, the history of New Zealand cinema, and New Italian Cinema. He recently completed his PhD thesis on film-induced tourism in New Zealand. Brigid Maher teaches Italian language, culture, and translation at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Her main research interests are literary and multimodal translation, and in particular the translation of humour, irony, satire and the grotesque. She completed her doctorate at Monash University, and that research forms the basis of her book Recreation and Style: Translating Humorous Literature in Italian and English (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011). Brigid is also a translator. Her translations of Sardinian novelist Milena Agus’s works The House in via Manno (Mal di pietre), The Countesses of Castello (La contessa di ricotta), and Daddy’s Wings (Ali di babbo) are published by Scribe (Melbourne). Ira Torresi is a freelance professional interpreter and translator and a junior lecturer at the SSLMIT of the University of Bologna, where – among other things – she holds a workshop on gender and advertising. Her publications on advertising translation, some of which incorporate a gender perspective, include the book Translating Promotional and Advertising Material (St. Jerome, 2010), the articles ‘Women, water and cleaning agents’ (The Translator, 10, (2), 2004), ‘Translating the visual’ (in Across Boundaries, 2007), ‘Translating dreams across cultures’ (in Betwixt and Between , 2007), ‘Advertising: a case for intersemiotic translation’ (Meta , 53, (1), 2008), and the entry ‘Advertising’ in the 2008 Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. On gender, she has written ‘Consigli per l’identità: uno sguardo alla pubblicità in una prospettiva di genere’ (Le prospettive di genere , 2005) and ‘The gender issue in interpreting studies’ (mediAzioni , 1, 2005). She also works on visual semiotics, Joycean translation, and child language brokering.

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Rita Wilson is Associate Professor and Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University (Melbourne). Her research interests are both interdisciplinary and intercultural, combining literary and translation theories with studies of contemporary Italian literature and culture, and investigating questions of transnational identity as well as the relationship between writing, translation and autobiography. She is the author of Speculative Identities: Contemporary Italian Women’s Narrative (Leeds, 2000) and co- editor of Spaces and Crossings. Essays on Literature and Culture from Africa and Beyond (Frankfurt, 2001); Across Genres, Generations, and Borders: Italian Women Writing Lives (Newark, 2004); Representing Italian Diasporas in Australia: New Perspectives. Special Issue of Italian Studies in Southern Africa , 18 (1), 2005; and Power to the Profession (Melbourne, 2006). Margherita Zanoletti has recently completed a PhD in Translation Studies at the University of Sydney, with a thesis on the Australian artist Brett Whiteley (1939–1992). Her dissertation focuses on the link between words and images in Whiteley’s work from a translation studies perspective, and parts of her research have been published in various scholarly journals and volumes, including the books Imagined Australia , edited by Renata SummoO’Connell (2009), and Self in Translation , published by Cambridge Scholars (2009). Margherita’s research interests include comparative literature and art, translation theory and practice, and word and image. Her monograph, co-authored with Francesca di Blasio, on the Australian writer Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) is forthcoming in 2011 with The University of Trento Press.

Introduction: Transforming Image and Text, Performing Translation Rita Wilson Monash University, and

Brigid Maher La Trobe University

The cultural experiences of globalization have contributed to increased critical interest in intercultural notions of language and in new forms of textuality. N. Katherine Hayles argues that in ‘the dynamic media ecology of the twenty-first century’ the challenge is to consider the text as a complex relationship between its physical and signifying structures (2003, p. 263). In their various ways, postmodern literary theories, interdisciplinary scholarship and the advent the internet have all challenged the dominion of the original, and simultaneously brought into sharp relief issues of translation. The reason is partly necessity: the asymmetries of globalization and the current inequalities in the production of knowledge and information are directly mirrored in translation, and this becomes visible when the directionality of global information flows starts to be questioned. The increased attention to translation also reflects changed ideologies and philosophies, albeit inflected by economic concerns. As Yves Gambier and Henrik Gottlieb note, the ‘electronic media with their polysemiotic codes somehow disturb the established world of translation and the discipline of Translation Studies’ (2001, p. xii), forcing us to reformulate and to redefine concepts of ‘text’ and ‘meaning’. The diverse contributions to this collection of essays on words, images and performances in translation overlap and interweave in their exploration of topics related to interlingual and intersemiotic translation, globalization and the international marketplace, and intercultural communication and exchange. The majority are based on presentations at the 2009 IATIS Conference held at Monash University in Melbourne. Although the authors’ approaches and methodologies vary, all engage with broader research paradigms that move beyond narrowly defined textual analysis. They consider translation methods and strategies, different polysystems and their constraints in terms of meaning and construction, worldviews,

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and so on, but do so in the context of intercultural communication, and recognizing the socio-cultural value of translation not only as an interlinguistic process but also as an intersemiotic activity across cultures and languages. The focus of the collection is on translation as a form of mediation facilitating the global exchange of cultural production. The selected essays explore how translation can be positioned within the space of multi- semiotic, multimodal texts. Drawing on what Theo Hermans says in ‘Cross- cultural translation studies as thick translation’, we contend that focusing on intersemiotic transfer as a new area of investigation has the potential to ‘counter the flatness and reductiveness of the prevailing jargon of translation studies [. . .] and foster instead a more diversified and imaginative vocabulary’ (Hermans, 2003, p. 386). The organizing principle of the volume is the hypothesis that intersemiotic translation, found in multimodal texts, is a space of constant representational negotiation. Contributions examine a range of modes and text types, including literature, comics, cinema, journalism, print advertising, visual art and theatre performance. In the opening essay, Margherita Zanoletti analyses the relationship between words and images in Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second), a self-portrait by Australian artist Brett Whiteley that features both a drawing and a poetic inscription. Her three-fold analysis of Remembering Lao-Tse focuses on interart (the relationship between this self-portrait and Whiteley’s writings), intermodality (the interplay between words and images central to his self- depiction) and intertextuality (the relationship between this artwork and its literary and pictorial sources). Using an innovative approach, namely the interlingual translation process, Zanoletti arrives at a critical interpretation of the art work. Her experimental procedure opens a window on the interdisciplinary encounter between the creative processes inherent in the visual arts and translation theory and practice. The link between translation and creativity is examined in a different way by Chris Gerry. His essay investigates the extent to which the strategy and procedures adopted by the Portuguese poet Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) in her translation of four French popular romantic novels may have been influenced by key aspects of her tumultuous life and unconventional views. The use of this biographical ‘prism’ through which to assess Espanca’s translation work seems appropriate first of all because the themes covered in the type of popular romantic novels she translated correspond in many respects with key aspects of her own life and secondly,

Introduction

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because the often moralizing tone adopted in many such novels touched on issues on which Espanca is known to have held diametrically opposed or at least equivocal views. The way literature is shaped by translation and exchange between cultures and literary systems is also explored in Rita Wilson’s contribution, which sees transnational narrative as conspicuously conscious of the ambivalent capacities of translation. Such writing challenges the authority of both ‘original’ and ‘secondary’ literary traditions; guarantees and, at the same time, undermines ‘authenticity’; doubles, defers or displaces authorship. Through a reading of Amara Lakhous’ 2006 novel, Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio), Wilson argues that translation works inside the narrative to negotiate between different languages and cultures, between author and reader, and even between the conflicting layers of affiliation and identity that the author brings to the text. Translingual works (such as Lakhous’s novel) suggest a view of translation that is indispensable to an understanding of the concrete processes of cultural translation that shape relationships, identities and interactions globally. Geraldine Brodie examines the effect of extra-textual theatrical phenomena on cultural transference in the translation of plays for performance. Through the study of two Spanish plays performed in English translation on the London stage in 2005 – Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and Juan Mayorga’s Way to Heaven – she reviews such factors as theatrical site, financial and marketing imperatives, the relationship with the original author, the role of the literal translator, and copyright obligations to analyse the influences on the translator in the portrayal of another culture to an English- speaking audience, thus demonstrating the conflicting interests which govern the production of translations for performance. The notion of theatre translation and performance as activities involving multiple agents and modes is further considered by Beverley Curran in her exploration of the Noh play The Gull by Daphne Marlatt, which tells a story of the Japanese diaspora, specifically located in the history of Canadian citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry living on the west coast of Canada. The dense intertextual nature of Japanese Noh performance links cultural memory with the specificities of the present through the emotional resonance of the body in relation to story, movement and music. Multiple translations weave The Gull into a web of words, images and performances, using a traditional Japanese theatre form and Japanese and Canadian tongues and bodies.

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Another rich locus of interacting semiotic systems is to be found in the globalized media circuit. The essay by Roger Baines alerts us to the covert performances that are part and parcel of transnational journalism, through a discussion of British media reports about non-Anglophone football players. As Baines shows, the football industry has become a highly marketable commodity with a mobile migrant workforce and near-global media coverage. The consequent heightened contact between different linguistic communities in the English Premiership has created a heterogeneous area of activity where linguistic and cultural barriers provide evidence of significant differentiation. Analysis of the interlingual and intercultural mediation of press conferences and interviews by footballers and managers suggests that football agents of non-Anglophone players seek to exploit the hybrid identity and economic power of their clients to their advantage, and that the numerous modes of fast dissemination of information enhance that process. A different perspective on international journalism is provided by Brigid Maher’s analysis of Joe Sacco’s work, which uses certain unique characteristics of the comic book medium to explore aspects of translation and international conflict. She focuses on Sacco’s representation of the role of translation and cultural difference in news gathering and reporting. Throughout his comics on the conflicts in Palestine and Bosnia, the involvement and intervention of translators, interpreters and fi xers is made visible through linguistic, visual and narrative features of the text, as the author depicts the way intercultural mediation can build relationships and enhance understanding, while also posing a range of ethical challenges. The multimodal nature of comics permits the exploration of questions of translation, global conflict and the dissemination of news in ways that are rare in traditional journalism. The politics of international exchange and the imbalance of power in situations of conflict re- surface in Federico M. Federici’s essay on Sabina Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero! (2005). The author discusses translational issues with regard to this film documentary and its aspirations to international circulation in translation. Combining a range of written and oral texts in several languages, the film, produced and released in Italy, narrates Guzzanti’s expulsion from the national broadcaster RAI. Federici underscores the translational limitations of the choice of a single code – subtitles – to render the multimodal message, and further highlights issues of censorship and genre arising from the director’s choices and the translation dichotomies. While Federici shows how Guzzanti contests received stereotypes and power structures, Ira Torresi illustrates the way advertising continues to

Introduction

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rely on cultural stereotypes, contributing to the propagation and continuation of such stereotypes. She examines two seemingly stereotypical traits of masculinity as represented in advertisements contained in three comparable corpora of Italian, British and US men’s and women’s magazines. The normativization of grooming aimed at appearing younger and fitter, and the recurrent allusion to women’s critical gaze vis- à-vis male sexual performance are discussed from a gender perspective and with a view to the implications for the translation of multimodal advertising texts. Advertising and the grammar of the visual are also at the core of Alfio Leotta’s chapter on the intersemiotic translation of the New Zealand film The Piano from screen to tourist brochure. Images of a wild, pure and natural New Zealand have been exploited by the national tourism board to create a successful travel brand destination by capitalizing on the possibilities of non- conventional publicity tools, particularly film-induced tourism. The essay investigates why The Piano has engendered such a strong impact on tourism and how tourism authorities have ‘translated’ the story’s appeal from film to tourist language. The final essay in the collection explores the way translation practices are changing in response to technological developments, international power imbalance, and the ever- expanding global market. Tessa Dwyer urges scholars to turn their attention to the notoriously ‘bad’ translation found in pirated audiovisual media. She examines the different dynamics of fan and non-fan pirate translation side by side, and argues that ‘guerrilla’ translation practices raise a host of issues relating to the changing technologies and broader socio-political context of audiovisual translation in the era of globalization. While fansubbing provides a useful demonstration of the cooperative possibilities of new media, the shoddy subtitles and voice- overs of more traditional media bootlegging start to bring a muchneeded non-Western perspective into focus. By drawing attention to the significant parallels between linguistic and media translation, especially the theoretical stakes both fields have in relating higher-level meaning to the constituent units of the text, the essays gathered in this volume effectively illustrate that the ‘incessant process of “translation”, or “transcoding” – transduction – between a range of semiotic modes represents [. . .] a better, more adequate understanding of representation and communication’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 39). The areas of intersection and overlap between different varieties of translation are rarely explored in the literature; this volume seeks to fill that gap by offering a (necessarily limited) selection of perspectives on some of the less commonly studied instances of translation.

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References Gambier, Y., and Gottlieb, H. (2001), ‘Multimedia, multilingua: multiple challenges’, in Y. Gambier and H. Gottlieb (eds), (Multi)media Translation. Concepts, Practices and Research . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. viii–xx. Hayles N. K. (2003),‘Translating media: Why we should rethink textuality’. The Yale Journal of Criticism , 16, (2), 263–90. Hermans, T. (2003), ‘Cross- cultural translation studies as thick translation’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 66, (3), 380–9. Kress, G., and Van Leeuwen, T. (2006), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design . London: Routledge.

Chapter 1

Translating an Artwork: Words and Images in Brett Whiteley’s Remembering Lao-Tse Margherita Zanoletti University of Sydney

For Australian artist Brett Whiteley (1939–1992), words were an important means of expression. This is evident when considering not only the substantial number of writings that he left, but also the fact that all of his artworks feature words. Born to a wealthy family and educated at two of the most exclusive schools in New South Wales, Whiteley started drawing very early in life. His first significant painting is considered to be The Soup Kitchen, produced in 1958, while he was still a young student (Hilton and Blundell, 1996, pp. 15, 40–69). From then and until his tragic death, Whiteley produced a large number of works: not only visual works, but also writings.1 His studio in Surry Hills, Sydney, was posthumously converted into a museum of paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, catalogues, diaries, letters and films, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This assorted collection emphasizes the connection between Whiteley’s images and words, calling attention to the role that words played in the development and reception of his work.2 Whiteley’s words and images amalgamate in varied proportions, always entailing a sense of rhetorical excess. To start with, all his paintings and drawings include paratexts such as titles, dates, signatures and monograms. Moreover, many visual works include inscriptions, which accompany and complement pictures. In addition, some writings are embellished with pictures, others refer to his pictorial activity and in others still the layout of words is crucial to his self-representation. This essay analyses the relationship between words and images in Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second), a self-portrait produced by Whiteley in 1967 that features a drawing and a poetic inscription. The

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synergy of visual and verbal elements informing this artwork is discussed as one of the key aspects of Whiteley’s self- depiction. I argue that words liaise with pictures in defining and expressing the artist’s self. The method used in order to analyse Remembering Lao-Tse is interlingual translation, which thus becomes an interpretative lens. In practice, my analysis is oriented by the translation of Whiteley’s words from English into Italian. As a result, the translation process produces a critical interpretation, which actively integrates the analysis of the visual art with the scrutiny of the words. Translation, however, serves not only to decipher the literal meaning and comprehend the symbolic function of Whiteley’s words, but also to highlight the relation between art (regarded as the range of activities performed towards the creation of aesthetic objects, environments or experiences that are appealing to our senses and emotions) and language (conceived as a dynamic set of visual, auditory and tactile symbols of communication regulated by a system). From this perspective, beyond the analysis of Remembering Lao-Tse, the chapter discusses the functioning of images and the way in which interlingual translation might bring out latent connections in the source. The essay is structured in four main parts. The first part presents selfrepresentation not only as one of the most significant themes of Whiteley’s work, but also as an interartistic, intermodal and intertextual phenomenon. The second part illustrates the methodology adopted to analyse Whiteley’s self-representation, namely, interlingual translation. The third part contains the analysis of Remembering Lao-Tse , oriented by the translation process. The fourth part synthesizes the observations that emerge throughout the analysis, suggesting that Whiteley’s poetics of excess not only represents him as a total artist, but also reflects his failed endeavour to exert control on reality, seen as an all- embracing realm.

Whiteley’s Self-Representation as Interartistic, Intermodal and Intertextual Self-representation is one of the most significant themes in Whiteley’s pictorial work. To begin with, the quantity of his self- portraits is particularly high.3 Moreover, even when his body is not depicted, many of his visual works can be regarded as self-representations in absentia , in which the depiction of other people, animals and objects implicitly defines Whiteley’s self.

Translating an Artwork

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The noteworthy aspect, however, is not so much the quantity of Whiteley’s self- depictions as the fact that this self-representation is expressed and determined by the combination of words and images. In particular, a significant number of Whiteley’s paintings and drawings include inscriptions – short inscriptions such as individual words, or longer ones comprised of individual phrases, poems or prose pieces inscribed on the artwork.4 Inscriptions often accompany and complement Whiteley’s self-portraits, enriching his visual self-representation with a verbal element that integrates and hybridizes his pictorial work. Such a mixture of images and words calls attention to the composite dimension of Whiteley’s self- depiction. As is shown through the analysis of Remembering Lao-Tse, the presence of words in Whiteley’s work is not purely ornamental, but has the effect of over- emphasizing the artist’s presence. In this sense, the verbal and the visual are inseparable components of a complex interartistic, intermodal and intertextual phenomenon. The first aim of my analysis is to compare Remembering Lao-Tse and his writings, thus identifying cross-references, thematic affinities and points of divergence between different pictorial and literary themes and practices. The intention is to show how through the use of different artistic practices, Whiteley seeks to represent himself not only as a painter, but also as a writer. From this viewpoint, his self-representation is programmatically ‘interartistic’. However, as Michele Cometa suggests, investigating the link between words and images means not only studying their similarities and differences, but also the modifications that images produce on literary language, as well as their cultural significance (Cometa, 2004, pp. 16–17). In other words, by analysing the narrative and poetic forms in which Whiteley’s images are reflected and transformed, we can understand the cultural topoi related to them, the mythology that they display. Second, I consider the relationship between the words and the images in Remembering Lao-Tse a key feature of Whiteley’s self-representation. Because this self-representation is constructed by a blend of heterogeneous signs activating different channels, modes, and intellectual and emotional responses, it can be regarded as an intermodal phenomenon, which entails various media and stimulates multiple sensory and cognitive reactions. From this perspective, drawing upon William T. Mitchell’s visual theory, I regard Remembering Lao-Tse as an ‘imagetext’, that is, a composite, synthetic work that combines image and text (Mitchell, 1994, p. 89). This entails paying attention not only to images, or to images and words separately, but to words and images in a relationship. Reading the words embedded

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in Remembering Lao-Tse implies not only decoding their literal meaning, but also perceiving their layout, position, interaction with the composition and extratextual implications. Verbal and visual appear inseparably intertwined. The concept of Whiteley’s self-representation as an intermodal phenomenon echoes Mitchell’s proposition that every art is composite and every medium is mixed, regardless of the more or less evident relationship among different disciplines and techniques. On this topic Mitchell writes that: The image/text problem is not just something constructed ‘between’ the arts, the media, or different forms of representation, but an unavoidable issue within the individual arts and media. In short, all arts are ‘composite’ arts (both text and image); all media are mixed media, combining different codes, discursive conventions, channels, sensory and cognitive modes. (1994, pp. 94–5) In agreement with Mitchell, I deem it necessary to account for the imageword relationship as a dynamic intrinsic to any artistic manifestation, including Whiteley’s self- depiction. The third dimension of Whiteley’s self-representation is intertextuality. This fundamental notion – introduced by Julia Kristeva (1969) and re-elaborated by Gérard Genette (1997) as ‘transtextuality’, or literature of second degree5 – is that no text, much as it might like to appear so, is original and unique in itself. Rather, it is a network of inevitable and even unconscious references to and quotations from other texts. Other texts condition the meaning of each text. The text is an intervention in a cultural system. The intertextual effects of Whiteley’s work are particularly pronounced. On the one hand, it is possible to identify a series of intertextual links between different works by Whiteley, which call attention to recurrent themes and features in his work. On the other, his blatant references to artists and movements as diverse as Cubism, modernism, Dada, junk assemblage, the Duchamp tradition, surrealism, conceptualism, pop art and performance art (Smith and Smith, 1991, p. 391) brings to the excess an established tradition in Western art history, according to which artists appropriate from other works.6 He strategically worked through given, adopted and adapted material to achieve a depth and subtlety of practice that was transformative in character. He represented himself in intertextual terms.7 It must be said that Whiteley’s intertextual links are not limited to painting, but include also literature. Among others, a special relationship linked

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him to the Australian modern writer and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White. Whiteley describes this friendship in an interview with the journalist Andrew Olle, expressing both his admiration and sense of inferiority towards White’s ordered and disciplined approach to creation.8 In fact, Whiteley’s relationship with literature remains an object of controversy. His biographers Margot Hilton and Graeme Blundell claim that although he always showed curiosity about poetry and literature, he never deepened his literary knowledge in a consistent way (1996, p. 107). According to Sandra McGrath, by contrast, Whiteley’s interest in poetry was among the most significant sources of inspiration for his pictorial work (1979, p. 126). In particular, McGrath explores the mythical presences of Baudelaire and Rimbaud in Whiteley’s work, delving into the personal and the emotional elements filtering his comprehension of French poetry.9 As a result of this heterogeneous series of influences, Whiteley’s work appears as an eclectic mixture of styles, blended and harmonized. This eclecticism reflects Whiteley’s tendency to appropriate, adapt and transform different sources into original recreations, which express a unique, yet fragmented, self. His self-representation consists of an assembled combination of imports, references, quotations, adaptations and remakes, which transfers and re- elaborates an all-inclusive patchwork of intertextual identities.

Translation as a Hermeneutic Tool Why do I translate Whiteley’s words? Obviously, translation allows me to grasp the literal meaning of Whiteley’s words, and makes these words accessible to an Italian- speaking audience, with plenty of potential implications for the reception, interpretation and understanding of his work. Accessibility, however, is only a vital and noteworthy consequence. More importantly, translation serves a deep hermeneutic purpose: it facilitates the exploration of a series of multi-leveled meanings, deepens the textual analysis, and stimulates a new critical interpretation of Whiteley’s visual art, which emphasizes the link between his literal use of other artists’ imagery and his symbolic self-image. Thus, translation is an interpretative act, echoing a form and meaning of the source text ‘in accordance with values, beliefs and representations in the translating language and culture’ (Venuti, 2007, p. 28). The practical consequences of this approach are visible in the analysis of Remembering Lao-Tse, where I adopt translation as a tool to reach a better

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understanding of Whiteley’s interartistic, intermodal and intertextual selfrepresentation. My method encompasses four main phases: the translationoriented textual analysis, the translation process, the re- elaboration of the observations stimulated by translation and the final Italian translation. After examining the visual elements of Remembering Lao-Tse , I investigate the semantic, phonic, graphic and prosodic characteristics of the words comprised in this artwork. The first aim is to show that Whiteley’s words complete and sometimes clarify his visual representation, adding biographical, conceptual or symbolic elements that affect our understanding. The second suggestion is that the combination of signs and sounds is as meaningful as the choice of vocabulary – repetitions, alliterations, anaphoras and onomatopoeias emphasize particular aspects of Whiteley’s selfrepresentation, conveying a sense of obsession, solitude and void. Moreover, the medium, shape, colour, size and position of his words are analysed as technical and symbolic choices that affect the viewer’s understanding. Finally, the length of verses, their shape, rhythm and space organization are explored as features that strongly contribute to conveying meaning. This preliminary analysis allows the translation of Whiteley’s words into Italian. When translating, my physical involvement with the source imagetext produces a performance that expresses spontaneous associations and unworked possibilities. In particular, because his words are immersed in a drawing, their physical position, texture, dimension, proportion and handwriting are as significant as their literal meaning: therefore, I, in turn, use typographic variants, colour and repetitions of patterns as tangible ways to render Whiteley’s intermodal self- depiction.10 While translating, I record the reflections stimulated by translation via think-aloud protocols (TAP) as much as possible. Think- aloud protocols have been used by translation experts since the early eighties to study translation as a cognitive process (Danks et al., 1997, p. 139; Tymoczko, 2007, p. 167). Generally, the translator is asked to think aloud, and an observer records his or her reasoning; in my case, I have written down my own reasoning. This procedure could be compared to keeping a diary, a practical way to gain self- awareness of one’s own choices, practices and presuppositions. Thinking aloud is primarily used to unveil the translation process, hence emphasizing its interpretative and imaginative implications.11 Shifting the attention from the final result (my Italian translation) to the process (the translation- oriented analysis) allows me to document some details of the mental images stimulated by the source. During the translation process, two languages – English and Italian – meet, generating unexpected results. The mixture of Italian and English

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underpinning my discussion can at times render the results unusual or disturbing. However, it is programmatically offered as a tangible reflection of the cross- cultural process of analysis. Indeed, in the co-presence of at least two languages, the conference of the tongues (Hermans, 2007a) expands the source, inserting new images, associations and meanings. As Hermans suggests, the translator’s ‘agency, subjectivity, intentionality, [and] management of discourse’ (2007b, p. ix) retraces and multiplies the creative impulse of the original.

From Theory to Practice: Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second) | Ricordando Lao-Tse (Radendo Via Un Secondo) The early drawing Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second) (Figure 1.1) must be considered as a particularly clear example of Whiteley’s selfrepresentation, produced by the juxtaposition of images and inscription. Indeed, the act of self-representing is not only explicit, in that his face, bust and right hand are depicted, but also interartistic and intermodal, because a poetic inscription accompanies the artwork. Moreover, the references to other authors and their works add to the intertextual dimension of Whiteley’s self- depiction. In Remembering Lao-Tse as in other artworks by Whiteley (e.g. Art, Life and the Other Thing (1978), analysed in Zanoletti (2007), the artist’s distorted figure emphasizes the opposition between the finely rendered and the deformed, the right and the left, and the beautiful and the ugly. In the left side of the drawing his body and, in particular, his head, eyes, hair and hand are finely rendered, while the left side of his body is heavily distorted, as if it was flipping out of the paper surface in a swift whirlpool (the expression Shaving off a Second | Radendo via un Secondo also evokes a quick amputation). The distortion depicted in the drawing could also refer to the saying by the Chinese philosopher and spiritual leader of Taoism Lao-Tse, ‘To remain whole, be twisted! / To become straight, let yourself be bent’ (in Huisheng et al., 1999, p. 45). In this way, Whiteley represents himself as the painter of binarism and contrasts. This visual self-representation intertextually refers to many of Whiteley’s works as well as other pictorial traditions. First of all, his choice to draw only the upper part of his body immediately reminds us of a number of his self-portraits, in which head, eye, hair and right hand are strongly emphasized, while the rest of his body is either absent or hidden (for instance,

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Figure 1.1 Brett Whiteley, Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second), pencil, pen and ink on paper, 66 × 56 cm

Art, Life and the Other Thing). In addition, Whiteley’s style is meant to draw attention to his exceptional technical skills, and alludes almost literally to Leonardo’s drawings.12 Finally, this composition echoes the traditions of Chinese and Japanese drawing and calligraphy – traditions evoked not only by the title (Remembering Lao-Tse | Ricordando Lao-Tse), but also by the juxtaposition of picture and poetry.

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The inscription in ink, located in the upper left corner, consists of 15 verses, containing a chain of opposite images. This is the transcription in Lucida Handwriting, a font that imitates Whiteley’s handwriting: 7/4/67 Remembering Laotse . . . He who is to be made to dwindle (in power) Must first be caused to expand He who is to be weakened Must first be made strong He who is to be laid low Must first be exalted to power He who is to be taken away from Must first be given This is the subtle light. Gentleness overcomes strength Fish should be left on the deep pool And sharp weapons of state should be left where none can see them!!! At first glance, there are no direct connections between the words and the images, apart from the fact that words are made of the same medium as the drawing (pen and ink on paper). They do not contribute a straightforward comment on Whiteley’s face, nor do they seem to explain particular aspects of the drawing. However, careful consideration reveals that the drawing and the inscription are strategically related. A statement by Whiteley’s ex- wife Wendy about the painting Alchemy draws attention to a theme which also underpins Remembering Lao-Tse : his fascination with fame and contrasting forces: I suppose we would have to begin with Brett’s interest in people like Mishima, Hitler, Mussolini, and even pop stars, whose power to beguile large groups of people intrigued him. He had been struggling with various portraits of heroes to understand the principle of transformation and power. He was fascinated by pop stars and how they used their music, their medium, and the way it brought them fame, money, power and attention. (Pearce, 1995, p. 47)

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The reference to pop stars reflects the widespread phenomenon of artists across the sixties becoming pop icons (Andy Warhol is the clearest example). From this perspective, Whiteley’s obsession with power and popularity, together with his interest in Oriental spirituality and art, would explain the otherwise bizarre link between self-representation and LaoTse.13 Whiteley’s reference to opposites, extremes, and black and white patterns of life are not only a clear reference to Asian culture – Whiteley’s inscription echoes Lao-Tse’s emphasis on ‘what is generally regarded as negative morality, such as ignorance, humility, compliance, contentment, and above all, weakness’ (Wing-Tsit, 1963, p. 13); moreover, according to Lao-Tse (in Huisheng et al., 1999, p. 47), ‘the soft and weak overcomes the hard and strong’ – but also express his personality. Indeed, like a waka ,14 the poetic inscription that accompanies Remembering Lao-Tse reiterates and reinforces his visual self-representation, contributing to creating an effect of overload. This overload is particularly evident, because words add to the portrait of Whiteley the painter, and to the representation of Whiteley the poet. Images depict him as the charismatic artist; words represent him as a poet-philosopher. A number of typical features of Whiteley’s writing are immediately noticeable in this inscription. First, he chooses to write in verses, and therefore presents himself as a poet. Second, he adopts repetitions, anaphorae, verbs in the passive form (‘to be made’/‘to be laid down’/‘to be weakened’, etc.), abstract terms (‘gentleness’/‘strength’/‘power’), exclamation marks (indexes of vitalism, which serve also as an attention- grabber, and strongly mark the end of the composition) and rhythmic division of lines. My Italian translation aims at echoing and emphasizing these devices but, as shown below through the use of TAP, ends up opening new and significant layers of meanings: 7/4/67 Ricordando Laotse . . . [the hyphen between lao and tse has disappeared – sense of suspension and memory (. . .)] Colui che sta per scomparire (di potere) [colui = lui = masculine perspective; gospel-like – prophetic tone; semi- rhyme scomparire/potere; scomparire = disappear = hidden inscriptions = Scriptures] Deve prima essere causa di espandere [expansion – distortion] Colui che sta per essere indebolito [weak and heroin: a paradox]

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Deve prima essere rafforzato [prima / prima repetition – essere / essere] Colui che sta per essere deposto [deposto dalla croce] Deve prima essere esaltato al potere [come cristo- deposto-sta] A colui che sta per essere portato via [deprivato– privato] Dev’essere prima dato Questa è la luce sottile. [light – as in Dylan Thomas – another Gospel reminder] La gentilezza supera la forza [contrasts zzz boring] 15 Il pesce dovrebbe essere lasciato in acque profonde [fish is a symbol of Christ – deepness / Capon’s comments on Whiteley’s lack of profundity] 16 E le armi taglienti di stato dovrebbero essere lasciate dove nessuno può vederle!!! [tagliare il pesce; stato/sta per; l’ascia-te;hidden again] The expressions that must be examined as crucial to an understanding of Remembering Lao-Tse are ‘dwindle’, ‘caused to expand’ and ‘exalted with power’. During the translation process, they have evoked images respectively of movement/oscillation/invisibility (‘dwindle’ | ‘scomparire’ ), distortion (reflected in Whiteley’s distorted face) and landscape (Whiteley’s drawing titled Expandingness),17 and Whiteley’s portraits of Hitler and Mishima (mentioned by Wendy Whiteley in the passage quoted above). The Italian expressions scomparire and esaltato al potere are loaded with these mental images. Another significant mental association that occurred during the translation process links the reiterated word ‘power’ and Whiteley’s right hand – the symbol of his artistic skills depicted in the drawing, which points to the audience in a conative and symbolically deictic gesture. The artist has the freedom and power to influence people, but can completely disappear from their memory. It is not by coincidence that the word power appears twice: the first time, it expresses the idea of diminishing power (‘scomparire (di potere)’), while the second time it evokes triumph and victory. The image of Christ has arisen from the Italian word deposto (the expression deposto dalla croce corresponds to the English phrase ‘taken down from the cross’, and refers to the thirteenth station of the Via Crucis). The opposites

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defeat/victory (also implicit in the expression portato via [deprivato – privato, which in English means ‘deprived – private’] / Dev’essere prima dato) imply Whiteley’s concern with adversities in life and the awareness that controversial forces rule our existence, despite our attempts to be in control; it is worth noticing that according to Lao-Tse (in Huisheng et al., 1999, p. 45), ‘Those that have little, may get more, / Those that have much, are but perplexed’. It also suggests a religious, idealized and almost fanatical view of leaders such as Lao and Jesus. The juxtaposition of such different references suggests Whiteley’s strong eclecticism. Another verbal–visual connection relates to Whiteley’s bodily representation. Consistent with the choice of representing only his head instead of the whole body, in the inscription there are no hints to bodily parts; the only references to the body are indirect and metaphorical (‘weakened’/‘strong’), and the only physical action is related to the realm of vision (‘see them!!!’), a topic that imbues Whiteley’s work. The most poetic image is la luce sottile (better in Italian than in English, in my view),18 a synaesthetic combination of ‘light’ and ‘wit’ (sottile means ‘subtle’ in the sense of delicately humorous), which can be interpreted also as a reference to the philosophical conception of illumination. However, the image sottile (that is, the ‘subtle’ image – in Italian one can place the noun before the adjective) could also refer to the drawing technique – pen and ink – which has produced thin and ‘light’, yet black, lines. This inscription also presents other noteworthy features of Whiteley’s writing. These aspects are the sensitivity for sounds (evident in his insisting on the combination of dental and labial sounds in words such as dwindle , subtle and gentleness); the presence of nonsense – an extreme version of the ‘stream of consciousness’ writing, which reflects Whiteley’s interest in the subconscious and his freedom from intellectual commitment; and the dogmatic mindset behind expressions such as should , must be , is to be , a prescriptive stance that appears to match not only the pose of Whiteley in the drawing – his index finger pointing to the viewers – but also the contrasts between order/disorder and fine/distorted. Things are not always as they ‘should’ be. In particular, the use of nonsense is very common in Whiteley’s writings and characterizes his use of words in general (McDonald, 1995; James, 2000). His tendency to play with words and to abandon himself to streams of consciousness (reciprocated by the translator in tagliare il pesce; stato/ sta per; l’ascia-te , which means ‘to cut the fish; been/is going to; let’, where l’ascia means ‘the axe’) is possibly a reflection of a combination of factors, such as the use of drugs, a form of diversion from reality and rationality,

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and a form of derangement from common sense; an expression of freedom from rules; an expression of his self- determination; a refusal to commit to intellectualism; the dissatisfaction with social commitment that informs all the waves of artists after the Vietnam War; and on a psychological level, a sign of depression and renunciation, a symptom of solitude.19 Below is the final Italian translation: 7/4/67 Ricordando Laotse . . . Chi dev’essere fatto diminuire (di potere) Va fatto prima espandere Chi dev’essere indebolito Deve essere prima rafforzato Chi dev’essere umiliato Deve essere prima esaltato al potere A chi dev’essere rimosso Dev’essere prima dato Questa è la luce sottile. La mitezza supera la forza Il pesce dovrebbe essere lasciato nel pozzo profondo E le armi taglienti di stato vanno lasciate dove nessuno può vederle!!! The major change from the previous draft is the translation of has to be as va fatto, rather than dev’essere fatto. The revised translation maintains the passive meaning, emphasizing a sense of acceptance that resembles the language of Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew (5: 3–12) and the Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke (1: 46–55). I have also turned acque profonde (‘deep waters’) into pozzo profondo (‘deep well’), which suggests a more enclosed space. In conclusion, a close analysis of Whiteley’s words, complemented by the process of translating, suggests that in Remembering Lao-Tse multiple signs convey one chief message: I am the total artist, who expresses himself in images, verses, art, philosophy, body, spirit, politics and nonsense. I am free, and you must look at me. In this sense, Whiteley’s interartistic, intermodal and intertextual self-representation must be interpreted not only as an aesthetic choice, but also as a communicative strategy. Pictures and words redundantly convey Whiteley’s central message – the idea that he is a charismatic, almost prophetic artist. By overloading his work with a series

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of verbal-visual repetitions, he intends to represent himself not only as a painter, but also as a writer, with the ultimate aim of promoting his work. The accumulation of words and images allows Whiteley to repeat his message in a bombastic way. Parallel signs multiply his message, so that if we are not convinced by the images, we will be persuaded by the words, and vice versa.20 In this partnership of excesses, words reinforce and complement the images, adding extra emphasis to the already hyperbolic composition.

From Textual to Imagetextual The translation process displayed has facilitated identifying and highlighting the connection between the words and the images in Remembering LaoTse, suggesting that they cooperatively contribute to Whiteley’s interartistic, intermodal and intertextual self- depiction. This appears to be the result of the combination of a verbal element and a visual element that are spatially contiguous, intratextually linked, yet medially heterogeneous. First of all, the translation of Whiteley’s words has implied a careful examination of his visual self- depiction. This scrutiny has shown that through his pictorial self-representation, Whiteley calls attention to the intellectual and the technical qualities of his artistic personality. To this end, he represents himself by depicting his head and his right hand, while the rest of his body remains implicit. Moreover, the joint analysis of Whiteley’s images and words through translation has highlighted two major features: Whiteley’s overloaded style, and his self-representation as a total artist. The first feature is his poetics of excess, that is, his tendency to load his work with myriad different signs, so as to reinforce his message. The second feature is realized through the combination of words and images whereby Whiteley aims at representing himself not only as a painter, but also as a poet. First, in Remembering Lao-Tse, the co-presence of words and images produces an overload of signification, which draws attention to Whiteley’s poetics of excess. The title and the date are conventional yet crucial components of Whiteley’s self-representation. The combination of paratexts and images produces a complex ensemble of signs, in which the words repeat or clarify the images, diverting, attracting or guiding our understanding. In this sense, Whiteley’s rhetorical overplay can be seen as a fetishistic practice, and the repetition of the same ideas through verbal and visual signs highlights his tendency to represent himself in a bombastic and even buffoonish way.

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The title, the date and the inscription have different roles in relation to Whiteley’s self- depiction. The title Remembering Lao-Tse (Shaving off a Second) clarifies the subject and highlights some aspects of his artwork, so that the viewers feel guided in their reading of the drawing. In this sense, the function of the title is not only to identify and clarify the piece of art, but also to establish some contact between the artist and the public. The date serves as a biographical element that alludes to Whiteley’s physical presence, thus implying his historical intervention. The inscription also contributes strongly to defining Whiteley’s self- depiction, by adding information about the artist, evoking his presence or, more importantly, verbalizing the meaning of the artwork. In fact, the inscription serves as a metonym which in praesentia of the artist multiplies his presence. Secondly, as the inscription is neatly divided from the images, it is evident that Whiteley represents himself not only as a painter, but also as a poet. The separation between the drawing and the writing has the effect of representing Whiteley as a double artist. Whiteley’s tendency to perform as a total artist can be viewed as a compensatory and fetishistic mechanism aiming for control, that lies halfway between a great Gesamtkunstwerk , an all- embracing work of art that makes use of all or many art forms, and an unwitting pastiche similar to a commedia . As in a commedia , Whiteley’s performance is based on archetypes (i.e. the artist, the alter ego), distortion – verbal and pictorial – and a largely improvised format (i.e. use of the line as a virtuoso exercise), which call attention to his addiction to drugs. From this perspective, Whiteley’s compulsion to incorporate literary and pictorial references in his work suggests the artist’s failed attempt to exert power on reality, seen as an all-inclusive realm. Whiteley’s self- depiction has been accounted for and reciprocated by my translation, through a deliberate and liberal appropriation of his work, in which author and translator become two composite writing subjects (Karalis, 2007, p. 231). My translation has freed the text from its hic et nunc (at the present time), opening its modality to the questioning of another linguistic pattern and another cultural tradition. The co-presence of English and Italian has produced unforeseen associations, observations and discoveries. Through the dialogue between the author and the translator, different historical perspectives, cultural agendas and geographical dislocations have provided the setting to a new interpretative path. Among the major challenges of this approach has been the attempt to combine visual, linguistic and literary analysis, drawing upon different disciplines such as translation studies, comparative literature, semiotics, the

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history of art and visual studies. Different disciplines have provided a rich theoretical framework to analyse Whiteley’s self-representation in all its complexity. In this sense, one of the aims has been to open up a framework of analysis that could be applied to other visual authors. My cultural and linguistic background has required translation as a necessary and effective instrument to investigate Whiteley’s work, and this perspective could be applied to analyse the interaction of words and images in other artistic contexts. To conclude, an interdisciplinary approach that has considered Whiteley’s Remembering Lao-Tse as an imagetext combined with an innovative perspective on translation has yielded new insights into the interpretation of his work, highlighting a series of complex issues inherent in his self-representation that up until now had not been adequately considered. But also, the shift from textual to imagetextual has hopefully stimulated new reflections on interdisciplinarity as the locus from which to contribute actively to a new understanding of cultural phenomena. Indeed, going beyond established frameworks is a way to take part in the ever- evolving dynamics of art.

Notes 1. Whiteley’s earliest paintings, produced in Europe (1960–1965), were particularly influenced by the modernist British art of the time, and signal the emergence of his tendency to combine different media and techniques, including the use of painted and collaged words. From 1969 on, Whiteley spent most of his time in Australia, and translated a mixture of European, American and Asian models into the typically Australian subjects of his works. In this period, it must be remembered, Whiteley moved from alcohol to more serious mindaltering chemicals (Pearce, 1995, p. 249; Dickins, 2002, pp. 62–3). In the seventies, Whiteley’s career reached its apex (Hilton and Blundell, 1996, pp. 106–15, 159). Some of his most famous artworks were produced in this period, including Alchemy, his ‘most ambitious self-portrait’ (Pearce, 1995, p. 164), and his depictions of the Sydney Harbour and Lavender Bay, where he lived and worked from the mid seventies until the late eighties (McGrath, 1979, pp. 165–210). In his later years, Whiteley became increasingly dependent on alcohol and heroin. His work output began a steep decline, although its market value continued to climb. After several attempts to rehabilitate, all ultimately unsuccessful, on 15 June 1992, Whiteley was found dead from an overdose in a motel room in Thirroul, on the south coast of New South Wales (Hilton and Blundell, 1996, pp. 237–46). 2. The images of some of Whiteley’s most famous paintings, including Alchemy and Art, Life and the Other Thing, are available on the website of the Brett Whiteley Studio, www.brettwhiteley.org.

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3. Whiteley produced not only a prolific amount of self-portraits, but also a substantial number of paintings and drawings that are not self-portraits but do include a physical depiction of himself. For this reason, his tendency to selfrepresent has been often criticized as one of the most obsessive leitmotivs of his production (e.g. Maloon, 1983; McDonald, 1995). 4. In the catalogue Brett Whiteley: Art and Life (Pearce, 1995), more than half of the visual works reproduced feature inscriptions. 5. Building on Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva, Genette proposes a more inclusive term, transtextuality, to refer to ‘all that which puts one text in relation, whether obvious or conceived, with other texts’ (1997, p. 1). 6. Art history and art historical practice have a long tradition of borrowing and using styles and forms from the past. Therefore, from an art historic perspective, Whiteley’s tendency to appropriation is not a unique phenomenon. However, I wish to stress that his appropriation is a particularly significant feature of his work and a key dynamic of self-representation. 7. Arguably, the seminal phase in Whiteley’s career was his European period (1960–1965), during which he saw and learnt from artists and works often very different from himself, historically and geographically. Another influential experience was his sojourn in New York at the end of the 1960s. In that period Whiteley was particularly ‘exposed to the powerful and confl icting pressures of abstract expressionism and Pop art’ (Smith and Smith, 1991, p. 390), and this exposure further enhanced his awareness of the international art scene. On the intertextual dimension of Whiteley’s work, see Zanoletti (2009a, 2009b). 8. It is well known that White was inspired by Whiteley’s art and persona to develop the main character of his novel The Vivisector, which follows the life of a Sydney painter. However, their friendship also produced a series of drawings and paintings that Whiteley dedicated to White (e.g. Patrick White as a Headland , 1981). On this topic, see Hewitt (2002). The transcription of Whiteley’s interview with Olle is currently on display at the Brett Whiteley Studio, in Sydney. 9. A future development of the present study will involve analysing Whiteley’s appropriation of Baudelaire and Rimbaud’s work in light of Clive Scott’s writing on translating these authors from French into English (Scott, 2000, 2006). 10. This approach, recently discussed by Scott (2009), hinges on the phenomenological assumption that we perceive the universe with the totality of our bodies, and encourages regarding translation as physiological involvement with a text instead of a cognitive activity. 11. On translation as an imaginative process and the relationship between translation and creativity, see Bassnett and Bush (eds) (2006), and Aranda (2009). 12. Similarly, the handwritten inscription immediately reminds us of Leonardo’s manuscripts. An example of Whiteley’s admiration for Leonardo’s work is the drawing Self-portrait after Looking at Leonardo (1973) (McGrath, 1979, p. 98) (Illus.). 13. On Lao-Tse’s biography, see Wing-Tsit (1963, pp. 35–59). 14. Waka is the Japanese word for ‘poem’ (Miyamori, 1938, p. 3), and alludes to the use of brief poems to accompany paintings in Japanese culture. Although interdependent, verbal and visual elements are visually and thematically distinct in Japanese art. On the concept of Japanese juxtaposition – a concept that informs the production of wakas – see Perniola (2006, pp. 129–34).

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15. The repetition of the sound [ts] has created the combination of letters zzz, stimulating the image of sleep and boredom, and the idea that this inscription is particularly repetitive. 16. Edmund Capon maintains that Whiteley’s sensuality does not reach the profundity that stretches beyond the realm of human experience, engaging the human condition: ‘Whiteley’s investigations have no profounder aspirations than to immortalize the experience, and this he achieved with unrelenting imagination, individuality and ultimately an immense and humane beauty’ (in Pearce, 1995, p. 7). 17. Pearce, 1995, Illustration 29. 18. The combination of luce and sottile creates a particularly gentle sound that echoes and possibly intensifies the grace of the English expression ‘subtle light’. 19. These aspects of Whiteley’s personality are discussed by a number of critics, including David Shteinman (1996), John Olsen (1996), and Bruce James (2000). 20. This parallel has a communicative effect similar to propaganda posters, in which words and images jointly convey the message.

References Aranda, L. V. (2009), ‘Forms of creativity in translation’. Cad. de tradução, 1, (23), 23 – 37. Bassnett, S., and Bush, P. (eds) (2006), The Translator as Writer. London and New York: Continuum. Cometa, M. (2004), Parole che dipingono. Roma: Meltemi. Danks, J. H., Shreve, G. M., Fountain, S. B., and McBeath, M. K. (1997), ‘Cognitive processes in translation and interpreting’. Applied Psychology: Individual, Social and Community Issues, 3, 137–160. Dickins, B. (2002), Black and Whiteley: Barry Dickins in Search of Brett . South Yarra: Hardie Grant Books. Genette, G. (1997), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hermans, T. (2007a), The Conference of the Tongues. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. —(2007b), ‘Foreword’, in M. Perteghella and E. Loffredo (eds), Translation and Creativity. London: Continuum, pp. ix–x. Hewitt, H. V. (2002), Patrick White, Painter Manqué: Painting, Painters and their Influence on his Writing. Carlton South: The Miegunyah Press. Hilton, M., and Blundell, G. (1996), Whiteley: An Unauthorised Life. Sydney: Pan Macmillan. Huisheng, F., Waley, A., and Guying, C. (eds) (1999), Laozi . Changsha: Hunan ren min chu ban she. James, B. (2000), Whiteley with Words. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Karalis, V. (2007), ‘On transference and transposition in translation’. Literature and Aesthetics, 17, (2), 224 – 36.

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Kristeva, J. (1969), Séméiôtiké: Recherches pour une Sémanalyse . Paris: Edition du Seuil. Maloon, T. (1983), ‘Maloon on Whiteley on Van Gogh’. The Sydney Morning Herald , 23 July, n.p. McDonald, J. (1995), ‘What if Brett Whiteley was just very, very overrated?’ The Sydney Morning Herald , 9 September, n.p. McGrath, S. (1979), Brett Whiteley. Sydney: Bay Books. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994), Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Miyamori, A. (1938), An Anthology of Japanese Poems . Tokyo: Maruzen. Olsen, J. (1996), ‘Whiteley’. The Sydney Morning Herald , 29 June, n.p. Pearce, B. (1995), Brett Whiteley: Art and Life . London: Thames & Hudson. Perniola, M. (2006), ‘The Japanese juxtaposition’. European Review, 14, (1), 129–34. Scott, C. (2000), Translating Baudelaire. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. — (2006), Translating Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. — (2009), ‘Intermediality and synaesthesia: literary translation as centrifugal practice’. Paper presented at the CRASSH conference on Intermedia Translation, May 2009, University of Cambridge. Shteinman, D. (1996),‘Tribute to a Dionysian free spirit: the Brett Whiteley retrospective’. Philosopher, s.n., 9–13. Smith, B., and Smith, T. (1991), Australian Painting, 1788–2000. Third edition. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Tymoczko, M. (2007), Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Venuti, L. (2007), ‘Adaptation, translation, critique’. Journal of Visual Culture , 6, (1), 25–43. Wing-Tsit, C. (1963), The Way of Lao Tzu . New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Zanoletti, M. (2007), ‘Figures of speech | Figure retoriche: verbal and visual in Brett Whiteley’. Literature and Aesthetics, 17, (2), 192– 208. — (2009a), ‘Self in translation’, in E. Bellina, L. Eufusia and P. Ugolini (eds), About Face: Depicting the Self in the Written and Visual Arts . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, pp. 105–207. — (2009b), ‘In other images. Brett Whiteley’s image of Europe | Europe’s image of Brett Whiteley’, in R. Summo- O’Connell (ed.), Imagined Australia . Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 233–48.

Chapter 2

Biographical Resonances in the Translation Work of Florbela Espanca Chris Gerry Universidade de Trás- os-Montes e Alto Douro

Introduction Flor Bela de Alma da Conceição Lobo was born in 1894 in Vila Viçosa, a conservative rural backwater about 180 kilometres east of Lisbon, Portugal. The details of her short and turbulent life read like the plot of a romantic novel: she was the illegitimate daughter of a petty entrepreneur and a domestic servant, became one of the first generation of Portuguese girls to attend public secondary school, idolized her younger brother Apeles to the point of obsession, began a law degree at Lisbon University, had published two collections of poetry by the time she was 30, was married three times and divorced twice, and enjoyed a number of extramarital affairs. By her early 30s, Florbela Espanca (as she now called herself, having adopted her father’s name) ‘had no money, lived with her in-laws, [. . .] translated mediocre novels, and was ill’ (Bessa Luís, 1984, p. 172, my translation). She also appeared to have lost her poetic inspiration and was unsuccessfully trying to interest publishers in a third collection of sonnets. Notwithstanding this inauspicious state of affairs, during the second half of the 1920s, while also experiencing a very productive burst of short story writing, Espanca translated ten novels for two publishers in the northern coastal city of Oporto. By 1930, with her third marriage a sham and her creative powers waning, she had reached her lowest ebb, and committed suicide on the eve of her 36th birthday. Following her death, and the publication of her remaining poems, her work came to be accepted as a key element in the canon of twentieth- century Portuguese poetry. The aim of this essay is to assess the extent to which aspects of Espanca’s life and views may have influenced the strategy and procedures she adopted in four of the French popular romantic novels she translated.1 Authors such as Delisle recommend the use of this biographical prism to cast light on the translator’s work (2002, pp. 1–2); while others, such as Hermans,

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would see the translator’s attitude towards the source text as one of the constitutive factors of the ‘diegetic margin’ that allows his/her voice to consciously or unconsciously obtrude (2001). With specific regard to Espanca, such an approach is plausible for two reasons. First, the themes covered in the type of novels she translated (focusing on how women, in their search for an enduring emotional relationship, often find themselves caught between the pressures of social conventions and the temptation to assert their personal freedom), correspond to key elements of Espanca’s own life (e.g. her three marriages, her love affairs, family disapproval of her divorces, her thwarted ambition to make her living as a writer, and her parlous physical and mental health). Secondly, the moralizing in which popular romantic novels often indulged touched on issues on which Espanca held diametrically opposed or at least equivocal positions (e.g. on the subordination of women’s personal freedom and professional self-affirmation to androcentric bourgeois morality, and on the sanctity of marriage and life itself). The recent growth of interest in female translators has produced a number of book-length surveys and studies (e.g. Simon, 1996; von Flotow, 1997; Delisle, 2002; Santaemilia, 2005), that have employed varying methodologies (ranging from conventional historiographical, sociological and cultural studies approaches, to explicitly feminist perspectives), as well as numerous papers on specific translators, themes, periods and problems (e.g. Arrojo, 1994; Al-Jarf, 1999; Stark, 1999; Pieretti, 2002; and Wolf, 2006). Delisle (2002) identifies a number of features common to the specific habitus of women translators of the past that shed light on the particularities of their work, the specific obstacles they faced and the translation strategies they adopted: a subordination to male- dominated social, economic and cultural norms that constrained every aspect of a woman’s life; the pecuniary imperative that often drew them into translating; the way they frequently combined translating with their own literary endeavours; and their explicit or implicit solidarity with women’s struggle for greater personal, political, professional and creative autonomy. However, in the act of translation – particularly when performed by women – key dimensions of the habitus intersect and interact with the translator’s ‘intervenience’ (Maier, 2007), generating moments in which his/her biography and personal values display their potential to mediate, more or less consistently, more or less consciously, between the author’s voice and what will become the reader’s perception of the author’s purpose. Legitimately, research on women translators first of all focused on the scholarly women of the past whose translations of literary classics, key

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philosophical tracts or scientific texts for an elite readership have only recently brought them the recognition they deserve (see, for example, Delisle, 2002). On the more rare occasions that analysts have examined the work of contemporary women translators, they have understandably taken as their main point of departure the globalized capitalism of the publishing sector, the full commoditization of cultural goods and services, and recent mutations in gender inequalities (see, for example, Kalinowski, 2002). However, in Europe and the Americas of the Belle Époque, sandwiched between the erudite artisanal amateurs of the past and the proletarianized professionals of the present,2 there emerged a generation of ‘ jobbing translators’, many of whom aspired to be writers themselves, who were recruited by publishers eager to meet a growing demand for popular literature on the part of the new educated middle classes. Florbela Espanca was one such translator: the work undertaken and the lives led by these protoprofessionals – a large number of whom were women, as were the writers they translated and the readers they hoped to reach – provide a distinctive vantage point from which to contemplate some of the complexities of the act of translation.

Espanca’s Translations By the 1920s, middle class Portuguese families that had benefited from the opening up of secondary education to their daughters constituted a growing market for local publishers. On the demand side, the tastes of women readers now went far beyond what fashion and housekeeping magazines could provide; on the supply side, publishers were obliged to supplement their meagre stock of home- grown authors by buying the rights to translate foreign novels – mainly from France, Spain and Britain – ranging from the classics, through ‘morally improving’ works inspired by the late nineteenthcentury French Catholic cultural renaissance, to sensationalist literature from Europe and Latin America.3 To satisfy the growing demand for popular fiction, publishers had to supplement the work of author-translators4 with that of new recruits, among whom women became increasingly prominent due to their availability, their eagerness to enter professional life and, undoubtedly, the cost of their services. Furthermore, under pressure of both demand and competition, publishers began to manage the work of their network of translators more rationally.5 Florbela Espanca’s reasons for seeking work as a translator were more pecuniary than literary. She had left her second husband in late 1923 and,

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though her life with the physician who was to become her third husband was financially secure, it was not lavish. She had no income of her own, and both her lover and her father had apparently refused to finance the publication of her most recent poems. Augusta Bessa Luís confirms that by June 1926 Espanca was already translating (1984, p. 132), Guedes states that by the spring of 1927 she was already working for Civilização (1986, p. 64), and in a letter dated June 1927, Espanca herself makes an oblique reference to the new line of work in which she has been engaged (Espanca, 1986b, p. 69). However, it is more likely that Espanca began translating in the summer of 1924, or even earlier: among the books found on her shelves after her death there was a number of popular romances in French, mainly from the Arthème Fayard publishing house, and the flyleaves of five of them had been dated August 1924 by Espanca, strongly suggesting they had been sent to her by a publisher so she might decide which to translate. Over the period from mid-1924 to late 1927 – by which time all but one of her translations had been published, and she was working full time on a second collection of short stories – Espanca’s productivity as a translator was impressive, averaging around three novels a year, in addition to the short stories she was writing and the compilation and revision of what was to be her last volume of poetry. The few commentators that have mentioned Espanca’s translations assume, with Augusta Bessa Luís, that they were popular romantic novels, mediocre romances cor de rosa written by equally mediocre authors. Before offering a more balanced assessment of the style and quality of these novels, it would be useful to try to clarify of what the popular romantic genre consists. Holmes defines it as follows: What is at stake, the enjeu , is the possible achievement of a mutual, lasting, passionate love. The narrative is sustained by the series of obstacles that delay (. . .) or finally prevent the desired outcome [. . . important among which] are the rivals, and particularly the female rivals, who act as foils to the heroine’s incarnation of a positive or ideal model of femininity. (2003, p. 17) Seen in these terms, of the ten novels that Espanca translated, five can be plausibly categorized as popular romantic novels, with the remaining five sharing only some of the genre’s thematic, structural and stylistic characteristics. Of the four novels analysed in this essay, two (Maryan’s Le Secret de Solange and Rameau’s Le Roman du Bonheur) correspond fairly closely to Holmes’s definition, and the remaining two (de Peyrebrune’s

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Doña Quichotta and Benoit’s Mademoiselle de la Ferté )reflect only some of the model’s key features.6 Biographical and bibliographical notes on the four translations under scrutiny here are presented in Table 2.1. In terms of quality, regardless of whether the novels that Espanca translated meet Holmes’s criteria, a few (those by Georges Thierry, Claude Saint- Jean and, arguably, Jean Thiéry) can be legitimately categorized as ‘potboilers’ turned out by authors whose productivity exceeded their talent. And yet the majority of her authors had well- established national and even international reputations: they were contracted to prominent literary publishers, some had already had novels translated, the quality of their work had been publicly recognized7 and, in two cases, the authors would see some of their novels transformed into films.8 However, a neatly dualistic distinction between purveyors of quantity and providers of quality would be deceptive, for the reality is more complex: towards the middle of the continuum lie not only the more talented authors such as Maryan and Champol (who both wrote for a living), but also those whose initial talent or luck simply ran out, and who subsequently found refuge in writing to order.

Tracking Down the Original Texts and Translations While an extensive literature exists on Espanca’s poetry, critics have largely ignored her short stories and, to date, neither Espanca the translator nor the novels on which she worked appear to have attracted any interest, despite the insights into her poetry and her prose that such analysis might provide. In 2008, I was in the final stages of translating Espanca’s short stories into English and had found a casual reference in Guedes’s introductions to the Dom Quixote and Bertrand editions of the contos, to the fact that she ‘had started to undertake professional translations of French authors’ (Espanca, 1995, p. 9; Guedes, 2000, p. 16). Having found in Guedes’s own archival research references to ten novels (nine French and one Spanish) translated by Espanca (Guedes, 1986, pp. 95–6), I was eager to find out the type of books she had translated, and intrigued as to whether this ‘other Florbela’ (Gerry and Reis, 2008) could cast any light on the more familiar Florbelas already encountered. Before presenting the results of the parallel reading of the four novels and their translations, it may be of interest to outline how the source texts and translations were uncovered. Internet searches (1) provided biographical and bibliographical details on the better-known authors she

Table 2.1 Four novels translated by Florbela Espanca: authors, biographical notes, bibliographical references and synopses Original (and Portuguese) Title

Original (and Portuguese) Publication

Synopsis

M. Maryan (1847–1927)

Pseudonym of Marie Rosalie Virginie Deschard, author of almost 100 novels that were popular with generations of young French women. Many were translated (e.g. Annie , Reconquise , La Faute du Père , Le Secret du Mari and Le Secret de Solange), several into Portuguese.

Le Secret de Solange ; (O Segredo de Solange).

Paris: Gautier, 1888; (Porto: Figueirinhas, 1927).

George de Peyrebrune (1841–1917)

Pseudonym of Mathilde- Marie Georgina Élisabeth de Peyrebrune who, like Espanca, was illegitimate. She only began writing in her late thirties, publishing more than 30 novels (e.g. Victoire la Rouge , Une Separation and Giselle). Though she died in poverty and obscurity, she is today considered – along with Marcelle Tinayre and Myriam Harry, a key proto- feminist Belle Époque writer.

Doña Quichotta ; (Dona Quichotta).

Paris: Librairie Plon, 1903; (Porto: Civilização, 1927).

Jean Rameau (1858–1942)

Pseudonym of poet and prolific novelist Laurent Lebaigt, many of whose novels (e.g. Moune , La Rose de Grenade , Le Champion de Cythère and Les Chevaliers de l’Au- delà) were published by the same Librarie Paul Ollendorf that had championed the work of Poe, Balzac, Maupassant, Alain- Fournier and George Sand.

Le Roman du Bonheur ; (O Romance de Felicidade).

Paris: Albin Michel, 1926; (Porto: Civilização, 1927).

In order to marry Savinien, Solange must reveal the secret behind her father’s strange behaviour: he has served a jail sentence for altering a relative’s will in his own favour, a crime of which he is innocent. Savinien unmasks the real culprit, who commits suicide. Madeleine Delarive, driven away by her husband’s cruelty, returns sick and penniless years later, hoping to see the children she felt compelled to abandon. Both her daughter (nicknamed Quichotta) and son refuse to take their father’s side, who finally repents at the bedside of his dying wife. Le Gal, a rich widower, adopts a street urchin as an experiment in practical philanthropy. He manages only to turn the child first into a spoilt brat, then into a swindler. In the process, Le Gal loses both his fortune and Mayette, the young woman he secretly loves.

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Biographical Notes

Biographical Resonances in Translation Work

Author

32

Table 2.1 (contd.) Biographical Notes

Original (and Portuguese) Title

Original (and Portuguese) Publication

Pierre Benoit (1886–1962)

Journalist who interviewed such political leaders Mademoiselle de la Paris: Albin as Haile Selasse, Mussolini, Salazar and Goering Ferté ; Michel, 1923; for Le Journal and France- Soir. In 1919, his early (Mademoiselle de la (Porto: work L’Atlantide won the Grand Prix du Roman Ferté: um Romance Civilização, of the Académie Française. Many of his novels da Actualidade). 1927). (including Koenigsmark , Le Lac Salé, La Chaussée des Géants, Le Puits de Jacob) are set in exotic or dangerous locations (e.g. Indo- China, the New Hebrides, Palestine, Dublin).

Synopsis

Anne de la Ferté, having inherited only debts, loses her beloved to the heiress Galswinthe who, widowed within a year, adopts a dissolute lifestyle, and eventually contracts tuberculosis. Finding that her husband’s family only covet her assets, Galswinthe is selflessly cared for by Anne, to whom she bequeaths everything.

Words, Images and Performances in Translation

Author

Biographical Resonances in Translation Work

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had translated; (2) identified the French publishers of popular romantic literature from whom Portuguese publishers would have bought translation rights; and (3) indicated libraries from which source texts or translations might be borrowed and second-hand booksellers from whom the remaining texts might be purchased. By 2009, I had succeeded in acquiring the originals of seven of the ten novels on which Espanca worked (often in the edition she would have used) as well as the corresponding translations.9

Biographical Resonances in Espanca’s Translations Initial reading of individual texts was followed by more systematic parallel reading, the focus of which was to examine the contextual and other factors that may have influenced the procedures and strategy Espanca adopted. To this end, the main priority was to look for evidence of two key aspects in her translations: (1) Biographical resonances corresponding to events in her own life or to values she held dear (or those she opposed) that may have caused her consciously or unconsciously to adopt a specific translation procedure or adjust her translation strategy; and (2) Figurative echoes reflecting how some of the specificities of the type of novels she was translating may have resurfaced in her own short stories in the form of particular themes, or plots and, in particular, imagery. Only the first of these parameters is discussed here; the results of using the second prism have been reported on elsewhere (Gerry, 2010). Since most critics have acknowledged the profoundly autobiographical nature of Espanca’s short stories, it made sense to assess the extent to which aspects of her unconventional lifestyle and views (unconventional, that is, for 1920s Portugal) might help to explain some of the translation procedures and strategies she adopted. The examples of ‘biographical resonance’ presented below constitute a small but representative sample of the numerous cases that were detected as the four pairs of texts were read. The explanations offered are tentative, largely because our knowledge of precisely when and in what personal circumstances Espanca made each of the translations is minimal. Notwithstanding this limitation, the assessment provides an initial test of the extent to which her personal and creative life may have ‘bled into’ her translations.

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Biographical resonances appear to have asserted themselves in Espanca’s translations in various forms, notably minor ‘adjustments’ achieved by way of specific translation procedures (such as substitution, omission/deletion, addition and hardening/softening of the original text) as well as more substantial ‘manipulations’ of the authors’ poetics. The remaining sections of this essay focus successively on three interlocking aspects of Espanca’s life that appear to have constituted mediating factors in her translation strategy: her proto-feminist views, her sexuality and her mental health. Espanca’s Translation Strategy as Mediated by Her Proto- Feminism While there is a general consensus that Espanca’s poetry contains an abundance of what Pitta (2007) has called her ‘proto-feminism’, this is also true of her prose – as articulated in her contos (both by her characters, and when her own voice as author obtrudes), in the diary she wrote in the last year of her life and in her letters. This being so, her views on a woman’s right to sexual, professional and artistic autonomy offer an elucidative perspective from which to assess Espanca the translator. In the 1920s, Espanca’s proto-feminism was directed at much the same series of constraints that young educated middle class women had faced earlier in the more advanced countries of Europe: irrespective of whether they were of noble, bourgeois or humble origins, they were expected to affirm themselves through marriage and child-bearing, with any personal preferences regarding partners subordinated to family strategies of upward socio- economic mobility and/or defence of traditional privileges. Since art tends also to reflect the friction of social change, it is hardly surprising that both the preservation of traditional ruling class status and/or its appropriation by parvenus from the emerging industrial, commercial and professional bourgeoisie often provided a context for the plots of late nineteenth- century European romantic novels. More specifically, the tension between marriage and a woman’s personal freedom is a recurrent theme in popular romantic fiction and, while addressed in only two of Espanca’s own short stories,10 the motif can be found in many of the novels she translated, albeit in different guises: sometimes it is treated in a moralistic and androcentric manner (as in Rameau’s Le Roman du Bonheur or Maryan’s Le Secret de Solange), sometimes in a nuanced fashion that is more sympathetic to the woman (as in de Peyrebrune’s Doña Quichotta) or more sardonically (as in Benoit’s Mademoiselle de la Ferté ). This same contradiction was a constant in Espanca’s life: while she yearned for the normal, stable, bourgeois family existence she herself had

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never experienced, she found marriage, when it came – and it came three times – intolerably stifling. None of the partners she chose proved able to offer her either the emotional or material conditions in which she might focus on her writing, or provide her with someone to idolize as she idolized her brother Apeles. Espanca had already developed a highly sceptical view of marriage by her early twenties; in a letter to her friend Júlia Alves, she writes: Marriage is brutal, as possession always is brutal – always! [. . .] with the exception of those women who are more carnal than spiritual in temperament, we all find marriage to be the greatest disappointment [. . .] If we manage to have a man as a good friend, how we suffer! All that is delicate in us, all that is offended and angered by the countless affronts [. . .] rises up in revolt! And there isn’t a man – not even the best of them – that understands this revulsion or would excuse it! (Espanca, 1986a, p. 130, my translation) The following examples from Espanca’s translation work illustrate how her defence of a woman’s right to greater autonomy in her relations with men led her to ‘interfere’ with the text she was translating. In the first, from Maryan’s Le Secret de Solange, the hero’s aunt describes to her nephew Savinien, her daughter’s stubbornly unconventional attitude to marriage: Original: [U]n parti presque inespéré s’est offert récemment. Rien n’a pu la convaincre de l’accepter. J’ai dû la contraindre à réfléchir, l’interroger même, pour découvrir si, à son insu, une autre image n’occupait point sa jeune imagination. Elle est libre autant que pure, mais elle non plus ne veut pas se marier. (Maryan, 1900, p. 22) Translation: [A]inda há pouco teve, inesperadamente, uma bella ocasião de se casar; mas, apesar de todos os meus esforços, não consegui modificar-lhe a resolução inabalavel. Disse-lhe mesmo que pensasse, que reflectisse, chegando até perguntar-lhe se, sem eu o saber, já teria dado a alguem o coração. Mas vi que não. Martha é ainda a mesma donzella que não pensa sequer nessas cousas, porque aspira á liberdade e não sente, portanto, tentações pelo casamento. (Maryan, 1927, pp. 26–7)11 Having stretched and strengthened one phrase to stress the mother’s role (‘despite all my efforts I was unable to alter her unshakeable resolve’), and added another to underline that there was no rival suitor (‘I saw that it was not the case’), Espanca inserts yet another to further emphasize the

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young woman’s disinterest in marriage (‘Martha is still the same sweet girl who doesn’t even think of such things’). While the word she uses (donzella or ‘maiden’) does imply the ‘purity’ that is explicit in the French, Espanca ends the sentence by asserting that Martha refuses to marry because she wants to retain her independence. Thus, freedom and purity are placed in contradiction to one another, transcending the simple juxtaposition in the original (‘elle est libre autant que pure ’ – ‘she’s as free as she is pure’). In the second example, from the novel Doña Quichotta , by the protofeminist George de Peyrebrune, the heroine Germaine listens to her fiancé Antoine explain how a modern couple might conceivably reconcile the supposedly natural differences between the sexes so as to consummate their wish for greater equality in marriage: Original: [La femme] est moins avertie que l’homme, moins entraînée, jusqu’ici, a se débattre seule contre les difficultés de l’existence. En s’affranchissant délibérément de toute tutelle, de tout contrôle, elle court de grands risques [. . .] Mais elle doit, en retour, concéder à celui- ci [le compagnon de sa vie] le droit de contrôle et de conseil. (de Peyrebrune, 1906, p. 205) Translation: [A mulher] está menos experiente do que o homem, está menos preparada, até a esta data, para lutar sozinha contra as dificuldades da existência. Libertando- se deliberadamente de toda a tutela, de todo o freio, corre grandes riscos [. . .] Mas deve, em compensação, conceder a este [o seu companheiro de vida] o direito de crítica e de conselho. (de Peyrebrune, 1927, p. 198) The husband’s right to ‘control and counsel’ his wife appears as ‘criticize and counsel’ in Espanca’s translation – a small but significant alteration that has the effect of disproportionately shifting the balance of power between husband and wife, boosting the degree of autonomy de Peyrebrune had intended women to be accorded in modern marriages. A particular difficulty that women of Espanca’s generation faced was that of affirming themselves in professions involving the arts. In Le Secret de Solange, the eponymous heroine writes novels out of economic necessity, and Maryan provides the reader with a cautious defence of women authors, stressing that their novels should be morally uplifting, and that this creative act should not interfere with a woman’s primary role as wife and mother (1900, pp. 80–9). However, it is in Rameau’s Le Roman du Bonheur – where the more general issue of the difficulties experienced by young artists (male or female) in establishing themselves professionally arises – that Espanca

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chooses to intervene, perhaps more so as a poet than as a woman. When Le Gal is told by a cynical friend that even ‘the poet who wants to produce alexandrines’ needs publicity, Espanca opts for the more specific verb ‘to publish’: at a time when she had no publisher for what was to be her last book of poems, Espanca’s choice of words is not without significance. Original: . . . et vous devez savoir qu’on ne vit plus sans publicité; tout le monde est obligé de la faire; depuis le confiseur qui vende des berlingots jusqu’au poète qui veut produire des alexandrins. (Rameau, 1926, p. 40) Translation: . . . e você deve saber que se não vive sem reclame; toda a gente é obrigada a fazel- o, desde o confiteiro que vende bonbons até ao poeta que quer publicar alexandrinos. (Rameau, 1927, p. 41, original emphasis) Espanca’s Translation Strategy as Mediated by Her Sexuality As a writer whose poetry was often passionate and frequently erotic (at least by the standards of the day), and whose unsuccessful search for an ideal partner figured prominently in both her interpersonal relations and in her literary output, it is legitimate to ask whether Espanca’s translations bear the mark of this particular dimension of her life and work. A first example of how Espanca’s views on a woman’s right to both social and sexual equality may have influenced the content of her translations is to be found in Rameau’s novel Le Roman du Bonheur. Emmanuel Le Gal falls in love with Mayette, a woman much younger and from a lower social class than himself, and agonizes over whether to take her as his mistress, or to accept the social opprobrium that marriage to her would inevitably provoke. Original: Mayette, entretenue, dégradée, proposée au vice, dirigé vers le terminal ruisseau [. . .] Non, non, elle méritait mieux. Elle serait sa femme légitime ou rien. (Rameau, 1926, p. 158) Translation: Mayette por conta, aviltada, destinada ao vício, atirada para a prostituição final [. . .] Não, não, ella merecia mais. Seria sua legítima mulher ou nada. (Rameau, 1927, p. 154) Here, Espanca hardens a key phrase relating to the plight of ‘kept women’: whereas Rameau uses the familiar metaphor of the gutter (ruisseau) to suggest that a mariage de la main gauche (i.e. a morganatic relation) – particularly

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where there is a considerable age difference – is an almost inevitable prelude to the ultimate of moral degradations, Espanca pulls no punches, opting to employ both the word prostituição and a stronger, more active verb atirar (here, ‘to throw’ or ‘thrust’) rather than the more euphemistic ruisseau and dirigir (‘to lead’). Though Espanca the translator equivocates between social convention and self-interest just as much as Rameau’s hero, she ultimately inclines towards a harsher condemnation of concubinage: express your sexuality freely, she is saying, or find yourself a good man to marry – a circle she strove to square without success in her own life. Of the four novels under consideration here, it is only Benoit’s that contains a strong erotic undercurrent, ranging from suggestions of a lesbian relationship between heroine and anti-heroine, through an exploration of the confluence of sex and illness, to the cynical salaciousness of the medical profession with respect to women patients. In Mademoiselle de la Ferté , the sexual appetites of Galswinthe, a widowed heiress, increase and diversify as her health declines; her friends visit her less and less, and finally she no longer needs to make an effort to keep her new loves secret (‘n’eut guère de peine à garantir le mystère des ses nouvelles amours’) (Benoit, 1923, pp. 86–7). This phrase could conceivably imply partners of either gender; however, as the plot unfolds, and Galswinthe and Anne de la Ferté become neighbours, not only does Benoit hint that Galswinthe’s feelings for Anne are sexual in nature, but that Anne’s selfless decision to nurse the heiress in the final stages of tuberculosis – the very woman for whom her fiancé abandoned her – contains a sexual, almost necrophiliac element. Whenever Benoit hints at lesbianism, Espanca’s translation never shies away from or suppresses the suggestion: sometimes she maintains the phrase’s original ambiguity, sometimes she transforms it into something more explicit. In just one of many scenes in which this takes place, when Galswinthe falls and sprains her ankle, Anne simply wants to lean the ‘fine body’ of the injured woman up against the side of the ditch into which she had fallen (a sexually neutral gesture). In the translation, Espanca makes it Anne’s intention to thrust Galswinthe away from her, implying she was motivated by antipathy rather than by some indefinable ‘confusion’ caused by close physical contact with another woman, making Benoit’s hint more explicit and anticipating the later developments in the plot. Also, as Anne comforts Galswinthe, in the original the heiress pushes her head more firmly into Anne’s neck, a gesture that Espanca characterizes as being ‘with even greater abandon’ (Benoit, 1923, pp. 117–18; 1937, pp. 105–6, my emphasis). Much of the speculation concerning Espanca’s own sexuality has focused on her feelings for her brother, rather than on the possibility that her

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orientation was bisexual or lesbian, though the tone of many of her letters to Júlia Alves bears the hallmark of someone with a schoolgirl crush. According to Bessa Luís (1984, p. 150), when Espanca met the Portuguese novelist and translator Aurora Jardim Aranha, she called her ‘the blond prince with the Atlantic blue eyes’ – a comment replete with the poetess’s characteristic lyricism, but which also resonates with a sexual ambiguity that is normally absent in her writing. Espanca’s Translation Strategy as Mediated by Her Mental State Madness was a common theme of popular romantic fiction; nineteenthcentury middle- and upper- class parents took seriously any hint of insanity, physical infirmity or serious disease in the family of a potential son- or daughter-in-law, for the intergenerational transmission of mental and other illnesses was apt to undermine a family’s attempts to consolidate or improve its social status. In Maryan’s story Le Secret de Solange – part romance, part detective novel – insanity constitutes one of the potential obstacles (in Holmes’s [2003] sense of the word) to the marriage that Savinien and the eponymous heroine are planning. Early in the original version of the novel, Savinien uses the word pénible when speculating that the protracted absence of Solange’s father may be due to some serious illness. Original: Je crains (. . .) que sa maladie ne soit d’une nature . . . pénible, et n’ait exigé son éloignement’. (Maryan, 1900, p. 87) Translation: Quer parecer-me que a doença delle deve ser . . . terrivel; e que, por isso mesmo, não foi elle quem pediu que o separassem da familia. (Maryan, 1927, p. 86) Not only does Espanca make a point of stressing that the absence of Solange’s father must have been against his will (‘he was not the one who asked to be separated from his family’), she also enhances both the gravity and potential threat of the mystery ailment, describing it somewhat melodramatically as terrível , and thereby hinting at the possibility of insanity earlier than the plot demands. Maryan also takes up the debate over the origins and nature of insanity: in the original text, when Savinien’s aunt voices the popular myth that all madness is hereditary, the physician defends a more scientific perspective, albeit with a degree of qualification, saying that the effects on future generations of mental imbalance resulting from illness or emotional shock are not necessarily ‘fatal’ or irrémissible (here, ‘inevitable’ or ‘permanent’). In

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her translation, Espanca distances the doctor even more from the popular myth by having him stress that such afflictions need not necessarily be passed on to one’s children (‘pode não se transmittir ’), perhaps reflecting her own belief – at least at the time – that the emotional disturbances from which she was suffering could be cured or at least alleviated by conventional medicine. Original: La folie n’est pas toujours héréditaire, dit-il. Un cas accidentel, déterminé soit par une maladie, soit par un choque moral trop violent, peut ne pas avoir une transmission fatale, irrémissible. (Maryan, 1900, p. 165) Translation: A loucura nem sempre é hereditaria – disse elle. Um acaso accidental, determinado por uma doença ou por um choque moral demasiado violento, pode não se transmittir. (Maryan, 1927, p. 162) In her novel Doña Quichotta , de Peyrebrune provides a purely physical description of the pitiful condition of the heroine’s father Delarive as he approaches his estranged wife’s deathbed to seek reconciliation and forgiveness (1906, pp. 316–17): his face was ‘ravaged, eyes puffy, beard long and white as snow, his back bowed, his gait faltering’ (my translation). By translating the next phrase – ‘son regard vacillant s’orientait ’ – as ‘o seu olhar vacilante parecia enlouquecido’ (‘his wandering gaze seemed that of a madman’), Espanca taints with insanity the old man’s disorientation as he makes his shamefaced entrance (de Peyrebrune, 1927, p. 302). No stranger to marital violence herself (Espanca, 1986b, p. 21), the translator may have felt that a husband could not possibly treat his wife as badly as Delarive had, unless he were mentally unbalanced, or shame over his behaviour had turned his mind. The theme of madness is one towards which Espanca had an equivocal attitude: she was simultaneously appalled by the possibility she might be suffering from something more than the ‘nerves’ so commonly attributed to women in the early twentieth century, and fascinated enough to refer to madness both in her poetry and in several of her short stories. Two of the contos (‘Between the lines of a sonnet’ and ‘When my son comes home’) from her collection O Dominó Preto (Espanca, 1982) – work on which partly overlapped with many of her translations – deal explicitly with madness, as do at least two of the short stories in The Masks of Destiny (Espanca, 1931), a later collection that she dedicated to her dead brother. The incidence of the same theme in the novels she was translating, mediated by her growing concern with her own mental state – which only began to seriously deteriorate

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after 1927 when all but one of her translations had already been published – may help to explain the strategy of accentuation adopted here.

Conclusions and Further Research In the four novels analysed here, there are many examples of Espanca ‘adjusting’ the texts that she translated. Many of these adjustments would be familiar to students of translation (smoothing, correcting infelicitous repetitions or word- choices, explaining unfamiliar terms or practices, etc.). When, however, a novel touched on issues that resonated positively or negatively with her key beliefs on women’s autonomy in their emotional relations and in their professional life, or other sensitive aspects of her life (such as her sexuality and her mental health), there is no doubt that Espanca consciously or unconsciously altered the original text to conform to her own views. A fuller analysis of the extent to which the final form of all ten of Espanca’s translations bear the marks of her very particular life and lifestyle lies in the future. The parallel reading of the three remaining pairs of texts currently available has yet to be undertaken, and the original versions of three more rather obscure novels still must be tracked down. If the relevant material exists in the archives of her two publishers, it may be possible to clarify the precise chronological sequence of her various translations, and thereby confirm or reject hypothetical links between biographical ‘causes’ and translation ‘effects’. Nevertheless, the initial evidence presented here may be of interest to those seeking to complement their understanding of Florbela Espanca the poet and short story writer with reflections on Florbela Espanca the translator. Furthermore, those wishing to assess the translation strategies of women translators – and, in particular, author-translators – in early twentieth- century Europe may find some useful points of departure in what is, after all, a preliminary study.

Notes 1. My thanks go to Rita Wilson and Lawrence Venuti for so constructively encouraging someone who is a beginner in both literary translation and translation studies. Comments provided by two anonymous reviewers were also very helpful, as were the inputs of Anabela Oliveira, Elisa Gomes da Torre and Maria José Cunha (all colleagues at Universidade de Trás- os- Montes e Alto Douro) on some tricky points of translation.

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2. The dichotomy between the ‘artisan’ and ‘commodity producer’ understates the complexity of the continuum. Kalinowski reports that, as early as the eighteenth century, Leipzig’s ‘translation factories’ organized their work on a production-line basis (2002, p. 47). Milton’s research on mass fiction during the twentieth- century Brazilian dictatorships suggests that the state, in addition to the use of censorship, promoted the publication of bowdlerized translations of classics as a means of moulding popular reading habits; he also refers to the early adoption of fordist translation processes by publishers of mass fiction as a means of meeting market demand (2000). By the second half of the twentieth century, the ‘homeworker ’ was the predominant form of translation labour, ‘epitomizing the flexibility criteria of rational management – [. . .] paid by the piece, available on demand, supplying the tools of their trade and their own office space, with no rights to social benefits, [. . .] in total submission to the conditions imposed by the publisher, [. . .] with incomes equivalent to the minimum wage, working in creative solitude and painful isolation’ (Kalinowski, 2002, p. 47, p. 49, my translation). Today, global publishing and media companies outsource their foreign language needs to companies that manage a network of translators working from home who, despite their ostensible autonomy, are little more than disguised wage-workers. 3. In its Colecção de Hoje , Civilização offered a variety of foreign novels, ranging from daringly controversial Cuban works (e.g. by Álvarez Insúa and Alfonso Hernandez Catá), through French novels full of gentle satire or thrilling exoticisms (e.g. by Vautel and Benoit), to Spanish works reflecting mild social disenchantment (e.g. by Palacio Valdés and Wenceslao Fernández Flórez). However, four of Espanca’s translations (of books by Thiéry, Saint-Jean, de Peyrebrune and Champol) appeared in Civilização’s Biblioteca do Lar, a series that explicitly promoted traditional moral values, and which included novels by the Dellys, Maryan and Jeanroy. 4. Established Portuguese authors (from Camilo Castelo Branco, Eça de Queiroz to Fernando Pessoa and, more recently, José Saramago) have typically constituted a first port of call for local publishers seeking reliable translations, with the work providing a useful supplement to a writer’s often- sporadic income. 5. Instead of giving the same person the works of a single author to translate sequentially, publishers began to employ several translators simultaneously on novels by the same author. For example, at the same time that Espanca was undertaking her first translation (Georges Thierry’s L’île Bleu) for Figueirinhas, Sousa Martins was working on another of Thierry’s novels for the same publisher. Four books by Jean Thiéry published by Civilização between 1926 and 1929 had four different translators, including Espanca. 6. Of the seventeen contos Florbela wrote, only four seem to meet Holmes’s criteria: two early pieces, ‘Sacrificial love’ and ‘A woman’s soul’ (both written in 1916), and two later short stories, ‘The siren’ (probably an unfinished attempt at a novel) and ‘A love from times long past’. For a detailed discussion of this assessment (in Portuguese), see Gerry and Reis (2008). 7. Champol’s novels Les Justes and Sœur Alexandrine won Académie Française prizes, as did an early novel, Moune (1890), by Rameau. George de Peyrebrune was for many years one of the judges of the Prix Fémina. Benoit’s early work l’Atlantide

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was one of the first novels to win the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie Française. Such was the prestige enjoyed by Armando Palacio Valdés that the Spanish literary establishment proposed him for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 8. Some of Palacio Valdés’s stories were filmed, one with a screenplay by Alberto Moravia, while Pabst, Epstein and Tourneur directed films based on Benoit’s novels. 9. Two of the missing French texts are by more obscure authors; the third, by the better-known novelist Champol, published in Portugal under the title Dois Noivados, appears to consist of two yet-to-be-identified novellas published in tandem. 10. The self- same friction between marriage and freedom is central to the two short stories Espanca wrote in something approaching the popular romantic style. In ‘The siren’, naval officer João Eduardo is caught between settling down into safe and comfortable marriage and embarking on a potentially disastrous and ultimately self- destructive liaison with a femme fatale . In ‘A love from times long past’, Cristina finally abandons her attempt to rekindle her first love affair when she comes to understand that by single-mindedly pursuing her freedom and happiness, she is destroying a marriage and, above all, her lover’s relationship with his young son. 11. In the quotes from the various Portuguese translations, I have respected the original orthography, which is not always consistently used, and which is at times different from today’s Portuguese orthography.

References Al- Jarf, R.S. (1999), ‘Unemployed female translators in Saudi Arabia: causes and solutions’. Meta , XLIV, (2), 391–7. Arrojo, R. (1994), ‘Fidelity and the gendered translation’. TTR (Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction), 7, (2), 147–63. Benoit, P. (1923), Mademoiselle de la Ferté . Paris: Albin Michel. — (1937), Mademoiselle de la Ferté; um Romance da Actualidade . Translated by F. Espanca Lage. Oporto: Civilização, [first published in 1927; Oporto: Civilização]. Bessa Luís, A. (1984), Florbela Espanca: a Vida e a Obra . Lisbon: Guimarães Editores. Delisle, J. (2002) (ed.), Portraits de Tradutrices. Ottawa: Artois Presses Université/ Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Espanca, F. (1931), As Máscaras de Destino. Oporto: Editora Marânus. — (1982), O Dominó Preto. Lisbon: Bertrand. — (1986a), Cartas 1906–1922 , volume V of Obras Completas de Florbela Espanca , R. Guedes (ed.). Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote. — (1986b), Cartas 1923–1930, volume VI of Obras Completas de Florbela Espanca , R. Guedes (ed.). Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote. — (1995), Contos Completes. Second edition. Lisbon: Bertrand Editora. — (2000), Contos e Diário. Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote. — (forthcoming), Short Stories. Translated by C. Gerry. Bristol: Seagull/Faoileán. Gerry, C. (2010), ‘Figurative resonances between the translation work and short story writing of Florbela Espanca’. Revista de Letras (Vila Real, Portugal: Centro de Estudos em Letras, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro), II, (8), 307–30.

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Gerry, C., and Reis, J. E. (2008), ‘A outra Florbela Espanca: reflexões sobre a sua prosa romanesca e a prosa ficcional por ela traduzida’. Paper presented at the 1st International Congress of Intercultural Studies, December 9, Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto, Oporto. Guedes, R. (1986), Acerca de Florbela: Biografia, Bibliografia, Apêndices, Discografia e Índice Remissivo Geral . Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote. — (2000), ‘Sobre Florbela Espanca e sobre este livro’, in F. Espanca (ed.), Contos e Diário. Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, pp. 9–17. Hermans, T. (2001), ‘Shall I apologize translation?’ Journal of Translation Studies, 5, 1–17. [Online, accessed 7 August 2010 at http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/516/1/ Ep_Apologizetrans.pdf] Holmes, D. (2003), ‘Decadent love: Rachilde and the popular romance’. XIX – Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, 1, September, 16–28. Kalinowski, I. (2002), ‘La vocation au travail de traduction’. Actes de la Recherché en Sciences Sociales, 144, September, 47–54. Maier, C. (2007), ‘The translator as an intervenient being’, in J. Munday (ed.), Translation as Intervention . London: Continuum/IATIS, pp. 1–17. Maryan, M. (c. 1900), Le secret de Solange . Paris: Gautier [first published in 1888; Paris: Gautier]. — (1927), O segredo de Solange . Translated by F. Espanca Lage. Oporto: Figueirinhas. Milton, J. (2000), ‘The translation of mass fiction’, in A. Beeby, D. Ensinger and M. Presas (eds), Investigating Translation . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 171–80. Peyrebrune, G. de (1906), Doña Quichotta . Paris: Hatier [first published in 1903; Paris: Librairie Plon]. — (1927), Doña Quichotta . Translated by F. Espanca Lage. Oporto: Civilização. Pieretti, M. P. (2002), ‘Women writers and translation in 18th century France’. The French Review, 75, (3), 474–88. Pitta, E. (2007), review of Espanca’s A Charneca ao Entardecer in Público newspaper, Supplement ‘Y’, 4 May. Rameau, J. (1926), Le Roman du Bonheur. Paris: Albin Michel. — (1927), O Romance de Felicidade . Translated by F. Espanca Lage. Oporto: Civilização. Santaemilia, J. (2005), Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities. Manchester: St. Jerome. Simon, S. (1996), Gender Identity and the Politics of Transmission . London: Routledge. Stark, S. (1999), ‘Women and translation in the nineteenth century’, in S. Stark (ed.), Behind Inverted Commas: Translation and Anglo- German Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 31–63. von Flotow, L. (1997), Translation and Gender: Translating in the ‘Era of Feminism’. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Wolf, M. (2006), ‘The female state of the art: women in the “translation field” ’, in A. Pym, M. Shlesinger and Z. Jettmarová (eds), Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 129–41.

Chapter 3

Mediating the Clash of Cultures through Translingual Narrative Rita Wilson Monash University

Introduction Studies on the interconnection of language and power in postcolonial contexts have radically re- evaluated the relationship between text and translation, interrogating the standard metaphors of fidelity and equivalence and opening the field up to consideration of the power relations imbricated in any linguistic or cultural exchange (Niranjana, 1992; Mehrez, 1998; Apter, 2001). In this body of scholarship, language is never distant from the dialectic of authority and resistance: the meeting (or clash) of languages and cultures in colonial and postcolonial conditions has been widely credited with producing hybridized literature that breaks down the homogeneous discourse of nationalism and cracks its authority (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 139–70).1 Those studies, however, tend to focus on the politics of translation as a process applied to a text rather than a process that takes place within it. In contrast, literary studies of hybrid texts, which focus on the ‘impure’ language of the source text, have not generally utilized the concept of translation to talk about narrative.2 Many studies of the ‘hybridized’ language of postcolonial texts (the writings of Salman Rushdie and North African beur writers being oft- cited examples) analyse their impact on the ‘major’ language and its literary culture, while assuming that language inside the narrative (i.e. language as used and perceived by the narrator and characters) remains a transparent medium. Thus, we find that the linguistic innovations and transgressions of Francophone and Anglophone writers are usually either celebrated or criticized as the contamination, infiltration or hybridization of one language – the receiving or ‘host’ language – rather

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than being viewed as explicit and conscious negotiation between distinct languages taking place within the writing of the text.3 Samia Mehrez insightfully draws attention to the intratextual role of translation in Arab Francophone writing, asserting that ‘by drawing on more than one culture, more than one language, more than one world experience, within the confines of the same text, postcolonial Anglophone and Francophone literature very often defies our notions of an “original” work and its translation’ (1998, p. 122). To describe such works, she proposes the notion of the ‘double’ text, one that can be decoded only by the bilingual reader conversant in both cultures and traditions, and whose reading can, therefore, be ‘none but a perpetual translation’ (1998, pp. 122–4). However, while Mehrez adduces the translation process as essential to the decoding of the ‘double’ text, she does not identify translation as an integral component of the narrative code itself. This chapter takes as its point of departure the thematic function of translation within the internal dynamics of the narrative code, and seeks to examine the topos of translation in narratives by writers who are variously described as ‘migrant’, ‘diasporic’ and, more recently, ‘transnational’ (Seyhan, 2001). Following Arjun Appadurai,4 I use the term ‘transnational’ to describe narratives that operate outside a national canon and are located between languages: whether languages in the conventional sense of the term or different modes of discourse operating within and drawn from discrete polysystems. Contrary to postcolonial writers whose narratives self- consciously engage with their own linguistic hybridity by explicitly thematizing the negotiation between different linguistic strands, the narratives of transnational writers explore new identities by constructing new dialogic spaces that, at once, foreground, perform and problematize the act of translation. In such texts, the relationship of the language(s) to the dominant structures of power not only informs the narrative implicitly, but also comes to the fore in the narrative as part of its thematic material. Translation then operates inside the narrative both in the traditional, pragmatic sense (in terms of the conversion of language) and in a derivative, metaphorical sense, as the narrative symbolically ‘converts’ the contested structures of power through strategic, intentional moments of linguistic or communicative slippage. In the latter case, translation is less a distinct operation and more a habitus,5 in which the breathing space between two languages, or between the message intended by the speaker and the message received by the listener, becomes a space of latent resistance. Translation frequently appears, both as a literary topos and as metanarrative, in works by translingual authors, who ‘write in more than one

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language or in a language other than their primary one’ (Kellman, 2003, p. ix). Amara Lakhous, a contemporary Algerian-Italian novelist, living in Italy and writing in Italian,6 is a good example of a translingual writer who, in attempting to navigate between two languages and their associated social contexts, has brought both linguistic and cultural translation into play as processes potentiating encounter and transformation. Through a reading of Lakhous’s 2006 novel, Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio), this chapter will examine how thematizing translation and interlinguistic tensions serves as a vehicle for disrupting the truth value of the dominant ‘national’ discourse and how the choice of a translator as the main character intriguingly emphasizes the complex implications of ‘translating’ one’s self from one culture to another.

Locating Transnational Narratives My premise is that transnational/translingual narrative introduces into the centre of a different polysystem peripheral elements that serve both to renew literary language and literary traditions and to highlight the value of difference. Marked by those ‘multiple deterritorializations of language’ that Deleuze and Guattari find in ‘minor literatures’ (1986, p. 19), transnational narratives transform literary and cultural discourse, not only by relocating it on cultural margins, and by foregrounding intercultural dialogue and translation, but also by drawing discrete literary traditions into contact.7 Such narratives doubly manifest that particularly ‘palpable’ heterogeneity that Even-Zohar finds in ‘bi- or multilingual’ societies, manifested ‘within the realm of literature [. . .] in a situation where a community possesses two (or more) literary systems, two literatures, as it were’, one of which is typically ignored by scholarship (1990, p. 12). A distinctive feature of such narratives is the conscious effort to transmit a linguistic and cultural heritage that is articulated through acts of personal and collective memory. In this way, writers become chroniclers of the displaced, whose stories will otherwise go unrecorded (Seyhan, 2001, p. 12) and their narratives perform the essential function of giving a voice to ‘paranational’ communities (p. 10). As Gnisci notes, they have already undertaken il salto triplo (the triple jump), going beyond multi- and interculturalism and providing a new model of reciprocal education that can be defined as ‘transcultural’ (2007, n.p.).8 Lakhous is exemplary in offering a new transcultural outlook on the Italian way of life by representing

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a mixed and decentred subjectivity that is always in dialogue with cultural otherness. His narrations are the locus of multiple dislocations, translations and border crossings, which range from his linguistic choices to the typographical composition of his texts, to the culturally defined geographical spaces in his narrative.

Transforming Italian Spaces Lakhous’s first novel, written in Arabic and published in Algiers in 1999, was published in Italy in the same year in a bilingual edition: al-baqq wa-lqursan / Le cimici e il pirata [Bedbugs and the Pirate]. This is truly a ‘double text’ (Mehrez, 1998), not only in that it straddles two worlds, but in that it is literally written (and read) in two languages. This bilingual edition constructs a privileged space where double linguistic and cultural palimpsests create an intricate relational model between two worlds. The double palimpsest – horizontally from language to language and vertically from oral tales to text – destabilizes meaning and deterritorializes both source and target language, while simultaneously reterritorializing them through the ‘mirroring’ effect of a bilingual edition. This is a process akin to what Ioanna Chatzidimitriou has described as a ‘minorization’ process in which the ‘host body’ undergoes ‘a dehistoricization of sorts, rendering [. . .] the palimpsest of its potentialities visible, and allowing its signifying pluralities to take shape and subsequently assign form to novel historical associations’ (2009, pp. 23–4). The original Arabic version of Cimici begins at what for an Italian reader would be the ‘back’ of the book. Both the Italian version, translated by Francesco Leggio, and the Arabic version end in the ‘middle’ of the book. Thus, the space of the translingual writer’s in-betweenness materializes in Cimici, not only as the obvious division separating the two texts, but most importantly, as a process of displacement both vertically (from oral storytelling to text) and horizontally (Arabic to Italian). The ‘meeting in the middle’ of the two texts is a useful metaphoric construct to bear in mind when considering the mediation at work in Amara Lakhous’s second novel. Also originally written in Arabic, it was released in 2003 in Algeria with the title Kayfa tarḍa’u min al-dhi’ba dūna an ta’aḍḍaka [How to Be Suckled by the She-Wolf Without Getting Bitten]. The novel was later re-written in Italian and re-titled Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio). Lakhous emphasizes the fact that the Italian version is not ‘simply’ a

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translation but an act of re-writing that transcends the limitations of linguistic precision while validating linguistic choices that mimic the voices of the characters: Prima scrivo il mio testo in arabo. Poi dico che lo riscrivo in italiano, perché non si tratta di una semplice auto-traduzione, non essendo obbligato a rispettare il testo originale, lo ricreo a mio piacimento. In tal senso godo di una libertà che il traduttore normalmente non ha. [. . .] Cerco di usare il napoletano, il milanese a seconda del linguaggio che usano i diversi personaggi. (Lakhous, 2005, n.p.) First I write my text in Arabic. Then I say that I re-write it in Italian, because it is not simply a case of self-translation; as I am not obliged to respect the original text, I re- create it as I wish. In that sense, I enjoy more freedom than a translator normally has. [. . .] I try to use Neapolitan, or Milanese according to how the different characters would use language. (my translation) Further, by inscribing within written Italian the trace of oral Arabic, Lakhous again creates a double palimpsest: not only, as he says, does he ‘Arabicize Italian and Italianize Arabic’ (2009, p. 137), he also arguably performs an intermodal translation (oral into written). In the case of transnational narratives, such as this one, which relate to a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous minority group, the very affirmation of diversity burdens the creative voice with the additional task of social and cultural interpretation, of mediating not only between different spaces but also between different histories. In other words, in a situation in which cultural and linguistic homogeneity cannot be assumed, the characters, the author and the readers do not necessarily belong either to the same spatiality – as illustrated, for example, by the different dialects – or to the same temporality, as exemplified by different migrant (hi)stories. The very language in which the novel is written, while it is seemingly the ‘national’ language, nevertheless calls for translation because its idiom includes the legacies of many other idioms.9 Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio is a novel ‘about translation’, which directly confronts the social challenges faced by the ‘new Italy’ (i.e. a country that has gone in less than a decade from being a largely mono- cultural and mono-religious state to a diverse multicultural society). The story is shaped around a single apartment building on Piazza Vittorio in the Esquilino suburb of Rome. The building’s residents, whose stories interweave, offer a microcosm of modern Rome as they battle over

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the deteriorating condition of their elevator. It is the catalyst for daily clashes between the tenants: an out- and- out war that brings to the fore the inability to relate to the other: be the ‘other’ a foreigner, like Johan Van Marten, a Dutch film student who wants to revive 1950s Neorealism by making a movie (titled, naturally, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio), or a ‘native’ Italian, like Antonio Marini, a Milanese who has moved to Rome to take up an academic post at La Sapienza University, thinks southern Italians are all criminals and believes the unification of Italy was an ‘irreparable historical mistake’ (2008, p. 76). In short, Scontro can be said to epitomize a ‘narrative space in which language and identity conflicts become textualized’ (Millán-Varela, 2004, p. 52). The elevator, with its frequent breakdowns, is a metaphor for contemporary Italy and the difficulties faced by contemporary Italian society on the road to living together (convivenza). The attitudes of the ‘natives’ toward migrants are represented as ranging from cordial acceptance, to indifference, to guarded diffidence, to explicit hostility. The story’s sub-text is that cultural diffidence exists not only between natives and migrants, but also between different migrant nationalities as seen, for example, in the frustration of Iqbal’s rhetorical question: Perché la polizia non si comporta con fermezza con gli immigrati delinquenti? Che colpa hanno quelli onesti che sudano per un pezzo di pane? (Lakhous, 2006, p. 73) Why can’t the police be strict with immigrants who are criminals? Why should the honest ones who sweat for a piece of bread suffer? (Lakhous, 2008, p. 54)10 The constant shifts between the perspectives of the multiethnic cast of characters generate a ‘plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 6), each of which has a different opinion on the recent disturbances in the neighbourhood.

Whose Truth Is It Anyway? One of the three epigraphs at the start of the novel is taken from Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl ) by Leonardo Sciascia (1961), and signals the start of a process of writing that delves into the ambivalence of

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truth, in its fragmentation and individualization, exposing its gradual disappearance: La verità è nel fondo di un pozzo: lei guarda in un pozzo e vede il sole o la luna; ma se si butta giù non c’è più né sole né luna, c’è la verità. (Lakhous, 2006, p. 9) The truth is at the bottom of a well: look into a well and you see the sun or the moon: but throw yourself down and there is neither sun nor moon, there is the truth. (Lakhous, 2008, p. 11) Lakhous, following Sciascia, believes that a writer ‘discloses the truth by deciphering reality’ and, to this end, adopts the discourse of the detective story, ‘a form of narrative aimed toward the truth of the facts and the indictment of the culprit, even if the culprit can’t always be found’ (Sciascia, 1994, p. 97), and constructs the plot of his novel around the murder of Lorenzo Manfredini, a thug nicknamed ‘The Gladiator’, whose body is found in the building’s elevator. The neighbourhood is thrown into disarray, especially because one of the residents, Amedeo, who has apparently disappeared, becomes the chief suspect. The police question everyone who knows him, and each character gets a chapter to relate the truth as he or she knows it (or wants it known), in the form of a deposition to the police. By allowing the individual voices to take the floor, Lakhous offers new perspectives and reveals new social dynamics – with a marked emphasis on the conflictual side of these interactions. The complexity at the base of urban social relations is further entangled by the need to negotiate the uncertain articulations of racial, class and gender differences between both the ‘natives’ and the migrants as well as between the different ethnicities of the migrants. Indeed, as the words of the first voice to be heard, that of the Iranian cook Parviz, suggest, not all meanings can be immediately understood, and complex questions, like those relating to identities, often do not provide answers but rather allow endless queries to lie dormant: Ma poi chi è italiano? Chi è nato in Italia, ha passaporto italiano, carta d’identità, conosce bene la lingua, porta un nome italiano e risiede in Italia? Come vedete la questione è molto complessa. Non dico che Amedeo è un enigma. Piuttosto è come una poesia di Omar Kayyam, ti ci vuole una vita per comprenderne il significato, e solo allora il cuore si aprirà al mondo e le lacrime ti riscalderanno le guance fredde. Adesso, almeno, vi basti sapere che Amedeo conosce l’italiano meglio

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di milioni di italiani sparsi come cavallette ai quattro angoli del mondo. (2006, p. 14) But then who is Italian? Only someone who was born in Italy, has an Italian passport and identity card, knows the language, has an Italian name, and lives in Italy? As you see, the question is very complicated. I am not saying that Amedeo is an enigma. Rather, he’s like a poem by Omar Khayyam: you need a lifetime to understand its meaning, and only then will your heart open to the world and tears warm your cold cheeks. Now, at least, it’s enough for you to know that Amedeo knows Italian better than millions of Italians scattered like locusts to the four corners of the earth. (2008, p. 15) As the testimonials unfold, the uncertainty about Amedeo’s true identity increases, with the discussion centring around his ‘real’ name. Although in Rome everyone calls him Amedeo, this is as a result of an initial error on the part of the local barista, Sandro, who mishears the Arabic pronunciation and inadvertently changes it to an Italian name: quando Sandro mi ha chiesto il mio nome gli ho risposto «Ahmed». Ma lui l’ha pronunciato senza la lettera H perché non si usa molto nella lingua italiana, e alla fine mi ha chiamato Amede’, che è un nome italiano che si può abbreviare con Amed. (2006, p. 139) when Sandro asked me my name I answered, ‘Ahmed’. But he pronounced it without the letter ‘h,’ because ‘h’ isn’t used much in Italian, and in the end he called me ‘Amede’ which is an Italian name that can be shortened to Amed. (2008, p. 99) On the level of the narrative, this slip- up characterizes Sandro’s monolingual worldview. The same slip-up, however, also functions on the level of meta-narrative as a strategic communication aimed directly at the reader: a linguistic error that bears the real truth value within Lakhous’s economy of meaning. The manipulation of the cognate Ahmed/Amedeo exemplifies Lakhous’s narrative strategy: from here on, the tale that unfolds is one of slight shifts, of double entendres, in which appearances of familiarity are misleading. While such moments of ‘play’ are interspersed throughout the novel, often it is not simply language, but actual, material survival that is at stake: these verbal exchanges are power plays as much as they are wordplays. The representation of linguistic negotiations (i.e. translation and mistranslation) between the mix of cultures

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represented by the characters becomes an internal literary strategy, deployed first in order to expose the mechanisms of power, and then to subvert them. Sandro’s error draws attention to a writing process that Michaela Wolf describes as ‘the authorial unmasking of another’s speech through a language that is “double- accented” and “double- styled.” [. . .] [T]hrough this hybrid construction [. . .] one voice is able to unmask the other within a single discourse. It is at this point that authoritative discourse becomes undone’ (2000, p. 133). The thematic potential of the ‘hybrid construction’ is exploited by Lakhous throughout the novel to make a point not only about the instability of language itself, but more particularly about the relationship between names and ‘national’ identities. Not only can language come to ‘mean’ something other than what the speaker intends, but cognates and shared roots can cross the delineating boundaries of language and national identity, thereby destabilizing the distinction between self and other. The error caused by the homophony of the two names coincides with a self- translation that has been taking place all along, and results in a fortuitous ‘double’ identity: the re-naming allows the protagonist to construct an Italian life, perfectly integrated thanks to his excellent grasp of the Italian language and his generous nature, that enable him to become a positive role model and ‘point of reference’ for all the residents in the condominium and the neighbourhood. The relationship between name and identity intensifies as the conflict between cultures builds up, and becomes the driving force in the struggle for recognition within the public, hence political, spaces of a community, as exemplified in Sandro’s recollection of his first encounter with Ahmed/ Amedeo: Ha chiesto un cappuccino e un cornetto, si è seduto e ha cominciato a leggere la rubrica di Montanelli sul Corriere della Sera . Non ho mai visto nella mia vita un cinese, un marocchino, un rumeno o uno zingaro o un egiziano leggere Il Corriere della Sera o La Repubblica ! Gli immigrati leggono solamente Porta Portese per vedere gli annunci di lavoro. (2006, p. 130) He asked for a cappuccino and a cornetto , and then he sat down and began reading Montanelli’s column in the Corriere della Sera . I’ve never in my life seen a Chinese, a Moroccan, a Romanian, a Gypsy, or an Egyptian read the Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica ! The only thing the immigrants read is Porta Portese , for the want ads. (2008, pp. 92–3)

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From these episodes we can conclude that Sandro is not so much an unreliable as an ‘uninformed’ witness. Thus, to make sense of the narrative, readers must fill in the gaps by knowing what Sandro does not. In some cases, this knowledge is linguistic; in other cases it requires familiarity with Italian or Arabic cultural discourses and symbolic resonances, as with Mehrez’s notion of the ‘double’ text, and as embodied in the double name Ahmed/Amedeo. Representing the doubleness of selfhood, the protagonist’s ‘split identity’ can be said to correspond to a translation conflict: between the memory of his lost ‘original language’ and the curative potential of his adopted language (cf. Lakhous, 2009). Ahmed/Amedeo, a man in transit, in translation, is the central component required to solve the murder mystery and at the same time is the mediator, not only of the clash of cultures between the various characters, but also between their disparate views on the ‘truth’ and the reader: through his diary entries which alternate with the testimonials of all the other characters, the reader is provided with a more balanced view of events as they unfold. Ahmed/Amedeo’s voice, or rather his ululato (howl) stitches together the individual lives and the collective reality.

The Fiction of the Translator In a number of contemporary novels which focus on intercultural interactions in conflicting cultural encounters, the fictional main character is a translator, represented as a figure of mediation.11 Thus, it is not surprising to discover that Ahmed/Amedeo, as well as being the ‘cultural mediator’ par excellence , is also a professional translator and interpreter. Ahmed o Amedeo – come lo chiamate voi – lavorava alla Corte suprema di Algeri come traduttore dal francese all’arabo. Aveva comprato un appartamento a Bab Azouar per andarci a vivere con Bàgia dopo il matrimonio, ma il destino gli ha riservato un’altra via. Come vedete la storia di Ahmed Salmi è semplice, non è poi così complicata. La verità è un’altra, non è quella a cui avete creduto fino a ora. (2006, p. 164) Ahmed or Amedeo – as you call him – worked at the Supreme Court in Algiers as a translator from French into Arabic. He had bought an apartment in Bab Azouar for him and Bagia to live in after their marriage, but destiny held another life in store for him. As you see, the story of Ahmed Salmi is simple, it’s not that complicated. The truth is different, it’s not what you thought up to now. (2008, p. 115) Several scholars have commented on the growing awareness of the fundamental role of translation in the cultural exchanges that characterize the

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globalized society in which we live. This heightened awareness has led to a view of the translator as a mediator between texts, as someone who enables bridges to be built across linguistic and cultural boundaries (cf. Bassnett, 1999). In the case of transnational narratives, as exemplified by Scontro, the translator mediates not only between languages and cultures but is also the locus (or meeting place) of internalized dispositions and societal norms –‘a figure who is emblematic of the world today: someone who occupies the liminal space in between cultures, who operates from a position of plurality and who carries out a role that is charged with immense responsibility’ (Bassnett, 1999, p. 213): Tanta gente considera il proprio lavoro come una punizione quotidiana. Io, invece, amo il mio lavoro di traduttore. La traduzione è un viaggio per mare da una riva all’altra. Qualche volta mi considero un contrabbandiere: attraverso le frontiere della lingua con un bottino di parole, idee, immagini e metafore. (2006, p. 155) So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontiers of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors. (2008, p. 109) Here translation, by fostering the possibility of imagining, learning, understanding and performing other languages, is akin to the kind of dialogue that, according to Walter Benjamin, expresses the ‘reciprocal relationship between languages’, instigates a ‘transformation and a renewal of something living’ and particularly a transformation of the ‘language of the translator’ (1969, pp. 72–3). Ahmed/Amedeo thus occupies a central role in connecting two worlds, in trying to build a dialogue to create an equal interchange between cultures. This figure of the mediator who is directly involved in an interchange between two cultures seems a positive representation of a complex practice: one that opens up new interpretative perspectives.

From the Mother Tongue to the Mother of Language12 What distinguishes Ahmed/Amedeo from the other translingual characters is his relationship with the host language – Italian, considered his nuova dimora (2006, p. 157; ‘new dwelling place’, 2008, p. 110). The intertextual reference to noted translingual writer, Emil Cioran, Romanianborn but French by adoption, ‘Non abitiamo un paese ma una lingua’ (2006, p. 157; ‘We inhabit not a country but a language’ 2008, p. 110) intimates

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that for Ahmed/Amedeo ‘inhabit’ (abitare) takes on multiple connotations: to populate, traverse, learn, translate, transform. The connotation of ‘dwelling in a “new” language’ reminds us once again of the translational process undergone by the migrant. We are also reminded that such a process offers the possibility of an interlinguistic mediation, of imagining, learning, understanding and performing other languages. It follows that the function of translingual literature is not primarily a pragmatic, but an aesthetic and an ethical one. Its aim is more symbolic than realistic: it symbolizes the variety, the contact and the crossing of cultures and languages. At the centre of Lakhous’s plot is the complex task of revealing one’s own cultural world to people from different cultural contexts. The difficulties of mediating between cultures are represented by dramatizing the contact between languages, as, for example, in the Italian lessons Stefania gives to Bengali women (2006, pp. 156–57) or the interaction between the Milanese academic and the Dutch student (2006, p. 110). The translative nature of the translingual experience is also evident in the self- conscious processes of intralingual and interlingual translation ( Jakobson, 2004 [1959]) that dominate the narrative space: from the occasional humorous anecdote of linguistic incompetence (the Neapolitan concierge who thinks merci is an Albanian swearword, 2006, p. 48), to the intrusion of words and phrases of the native language into the linguistic fabric of the adopted tongue (the series of nostalgic rhetorical questions listing all the different components that epitomize the feast of Ramadan, 2006, p. 169). Language is also thematized throughout the novel in other ways. Most notably, the centrality of language in the construction of identity is unmistakable in Ahmed/Amedeo’s representation of his adopted language as a primary form of nourishment: Sono come un neonato, ho bisogno del latte tutti i giorni. L’italiano è il mio latte quotidiano. [. . .] Mi allatto della lupa insieme ai due orfanelli Romolo e Remo. Adoro la lupa, non posso fare a meno del suo latte. (2006, pp. 155, 168) I’m like a newborn. I need milk every day. Italian is my daily milk. [. . .] I suckle on the wolf with the two orphans Romulus and Remus. I adore the wolf, I can’t do without her milk. (2008, pp. 109, 118) The moment of transmission of the language and the basic knowledge required to survive is depicted as a symbolic suckling:

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Ormai conosco Roma come vi fossi nato e non l’avessi mai lasciata. Ho il diritto di chiedermi: sono un bastardo come i gemelli Romolo e Remo oppure sono un figlio adottivo? La domanda fondamentale è: come farmi allattare dalla lupa senza che mi morda? (2006, p. 142) By now I know Rome as if I had been born here and never left. I have the right to wonder: am I a bastard like the twins Romulus and Remus, or an adopted son? The basic question is: how to be suckled by the [she-]wolf without being bitten? (2008, p. 101) Ahmed/Amedeo, as the powerful embodiment of ‘living in translation’, does not abandon his identity; rather he goes beyond the identities, carrying ‘the responsibility of articulating the signifying bridge between contexts and [becoming] author of a fragmented translation that is both linguistic and cultural’ (Parati, 2005, p. 122). Through this character, Lakhous places a special emphasis on translation as an essential component of an efficient intercultural process and of a plural identity, both in the individual and in the collective domain.

Migrations, Translations, Rewriting By constructing translingual and transcultural spaces and affirming values of reciprocity in his writing, Lakhous is among many transnational writers who write new identities for themselves and encourage others to do so. His fictional translator becomes a cultural mediator who, dialoguing between cultures, carries on a transcultural interaction. As a result, ‘interstitial spaces’ can be seen as ‘translational spaces’: spaces where relationships, identities and interactions are shaped through concrete processes of cultural translation. A ‘translational’ view of an intercultural situation makes visible those all too easily forgotten elements inherent in any intercultural communication: understanding, mediating, misunderstanding, resistance and so on– it makes complexity more transparent and thus easier to handle because we can deconstruct it into component parts. Works like Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio suggest an understanding of translation that is not only something that happens after the story ends, but a crucial part of the narrative itself; one that generates plot and meaning, pointing towards a theory of translation in which it is not equivalence, but the necessary lack thereof, that reveals and delivers the actual truth value of the statement. These are texts in which nearly any statement may have a double meaning, an inside joke between author and

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reader, delivered at the character’s expense. In the thematic representation of communicative breakdown, we see language recognizing its own inevitable fiction, acknowledging how tenuous is the absolute link between symbol and referent, how easily it is obstructed. In this, and doubtless many other translingual texts, translation works inside the narrative to negotiate between different languages and cultures, between author and reader, and even between the conflicting layers of affiliation and identity that the author brings to the text.

Open Conclusions: Towards Convivenza or ‘Co-Evolution’ While Lakhous’s fiction successfully exploits his position as someone who is ambiguously located between cultures, it also exemplifies that sense of expatriation described by other intellectuals who have converted this very sense of being on the border between national cultures into a positive lifeproject. Writing in the ‘new’ language becomes an act of affirmation, as translingual narrators position themselves as active participants in the destination culture. Lakhous has stated that choosing to write in Italian is not primarily a pragmatic choice, but an aesthetic and an ethical one. If, as Graziella Parati suggests, writing becomes ‘a means to assert a migrant’s position as interpretative subject’, it follows that writing in Italian ‘also involves an act of territorial appropriation, as the result is a book that enters into the published, and therefore public, texts about a culture’ (2005, p. 15). Lakhous’s writing contests borders; it is infused with linguistic, spatial and cultural ‘elsewheres’ which destabilize Italian traditions/ conventions. His narrative is ‘out of place’ with respect to the literary canon: written in Italian but located ‘between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages’ (Said, 1994, pp. 332–33). It is in this sense that it contributes to the ‘decentring’ of the historical narrative of European metropolitan centres, which is being disrupted by people shifting among multiple locations and whose diasporic sensibilities refashion prior defi nitions of national canons, notions of citizenship and political representations. Migration to and from Europe is not a new phenomenon, but translingual narratives explore the metaphoric dimension of migration as a form of double imagination and critical awareness where borders are a fictional dimension of the mind upon which to construct new forms of belonging. As Lakhous perceptively writes:

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It appears literature knows no frontiers. With it, we build bridges; through it, civilizations and peoples meet. (2009, p. 137) Lakhous’s words resonate with current debates on ‘world literature’ and serve as a timely reminder that, in Goethe’s initial conceptualization, a general world literature is one that is open to exchanges between cultures (cf. Damrosch, 2003). In this context, transcultural narratives have the same crucial role to play as the one that Michael Cronin identifies for translation in the era of globalization, that is, to ‘bring foreign elements, extraneous ideas, fresh images into cultures without which the kick start of otherness remains stalled in an eternity of mediocrity’ (2002, p. 94). The wonder of this conceptual alterity can both give pleasure – if we use our affective imaginations to empathize (translate ourselves into the situationality of the other) – and stimulate learning – if we use our intellect to figure out the ‘fresh’ metaphors. It is, among other things, this possibility of renewal that fuels David Held’s vision of a ‘cultural cosmopolitanism’ that has at its core ‘the ability to stand outside a singular location (the location of one’s birth, land, upbringing, conversion) and to mediate traditions’ (2002, p. 58). Perhaps, as Gnisci (2007) augurs, transnational literature will contribute to a ‘coevolution’, a different (hi)story in which imagined communities can become physical rather than just literary spaces. In addition to the enjoyment derived from gaining new perspectives on ‘other’ cultures, reading transnational narratives can lead to greater cultural self-knowledge. By entering into contact with these stories and seeking to understand the ‘network of connections’13 that marks Scontro di civiltà , we become for a time transcultural, too, as we adapt our own conceptual systems and follow the shifting viewpoints from which the complexities of acts of migration turn into the complexities of constructing cultural identities. As Lakhous himself has observed, in reflecting on how translingual writing has provided him with a ‘cure for homesickness’: I have never been to Pakistan, Albania, Poland, Peru, Egypt, but I can honestly say that I know who and what Pakistanis, Albanians, Poles, Peruvians, and Egyptians are, by virtue of having shared tears, laughter, dreams, and disappointments with immigrants from all of these countries as we sought to reconcile our personal histories with our new realities. [. . .] Piazza Vittorio makes one thing clear: despite popular tradition, we are not born Italians, we become Italians. (Lakhous, 2009, p. 136)

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Notes 1. For a more detailed discussion on postcolonial translation studies, see Tymoczko (1999, 2000). 2. Much of the work in this area by translation studies scholars concentrates on the relationship between postcolonial theory and translation practices. Maria Tymoczko, for example, holds the view that ‘interlingual literary translation provides an analogue for post- colonial writing’ (1999, p. 20, emphasis in original). 3. Assia Djebar, for instance, reflects at length within her narrative upon her own relationship with the French language and what it means to be ‘writing the enemy’s language’ in Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985, pp. 213–17), but this appears as a kind of digression in the voice of the author, outside the world of the narrative (plot, characters, etc.). 4. Arjun Appadurai has been the most articulate proponent of this notion of transnationalization. See Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization , especially, ‘Global ethnoscapes: notes and queries for transnational anthropology’ (1996, pp. 48–65). 5. As Moira Inghilleri notes, it is ‘through the habitus – embodied dispositions acquired through individuals’ social and biological trajectories and continually shaped and negotiated vis- à-vis fields – that social agents establish and consolidate their positions in social space’ (2008, p. 280). 6. It is interesting to note the multilingual presentation of the author’s biography on his website. See www.amaralakhous.com 7. While Deleuze and Guattari attribute the ‘revolutionary’ value of minor literatures to a kind of collective authorship or enunciation, they also suggest that they have the capacity to reinvigorate a reified literary language, making it ‘vibrate with a new intensity’ through deterritorialization (1986, pp. 17, 18, 22). 8. ‘Il salto che si fa quando l’incontro pacifico di esseri umani di culture diverse nella stessa dimora supera la separazione del multiculturalismo e attraverso una nuova educazione interculturale reciproca arriva a creare una dimora comune imprevedibilmente nuova, va oltre e si propone come transculturale (dal latino trans-, che vuol dire “andare oltre” “andare al di là”). Una via coevolutiva che dobbiamo e possiamo percorrere tutti insieme.’ (Gnisci, 2007, online). 9. Many studies have described how the novel has historically allowed people to imagine the ‘special community’ that is the ‘nation’. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson pointed to the correspondence between ‘the “interior time of the novel” ’ and the ‘ “exterior” time of the reader’s everyday life’, which ‘gives a hypnotic confirmation of the solidity of a single community, embracing characters, author and readers, moving onward through calendrical time’ (1991, p. 27). Transnational narratives challenge the notion of a ‘single’/‘same’ community embracing characters, author and readers. 10. All subsequent quotes from Lakhous’ novel and its English translation are from these editions respectively. 11. To mention just a few written in English: Leila Aboulela, The Translator (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999); John Crowley, The Translator

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(New York: William Morrow, 2002); Ward Just, The Translator (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991); John Le Carré, The Mission Song (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006). See also Wilson (2007). 12. To borrow an expression from another transnational/translingual writer, Yoko Tawada (2006). 13. Italo Calvino in his essay on ‘Multiplicity’ introduces the theme of the contemporary novel as encyclopedia, as method of knowledge, and, above all, a ‘network of connections between the events, the things and the people of the world’ (1988, p. 105).

References Anderson, B. (1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London and New York: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Apter, E. (2001), ‘Balkan Babel: translation zones, military zones’. Public Culture , 13, (1) (special issue on ‘Translation in a Global Market’), 65–80. Bakhtin, M. (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated by C. Emerson. Minneapolis, MN: University of Michigan Press. Bassnett, S. (1999), ‘Translation 2000 – difference and diversity’. Textus, XII, 213–18. Benjamin, W. ([1923] 1969), Illuminations. Translated by H. Zohn. New York: Schocken Books. Bhabha, H. (1994), The Location of Culture . London and New York: Routledge. Calvino, I. (1988), Six Memos for the Next Millennium . Translated by P. Creagh. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Chatzidimitriou, I. (2009), ‘Self-translation as minorization process: Nancy Huston’s Limbes/Limbo’. SubStance , 38, (2) (119), 22–42. Cronin, M. (2002), ‘ “Thou shalt be One with the Birds”: Translation, connexity and the new global order’. Language and Intercultural Communication , 2, (2), 86–95. Damrosch, D. (2003), What Is World Literature? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1986), Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature . Translated by D. Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Djebar, A. (1985), Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade . Translated by D. S. Blair. London: Quartet Books. Even-Zohar, I. (1990), ‘Polysystem theory’. Poetics Today, 11, (1) (Spring), 9–26. Gnisci, A. (2007), ‘Editorial’. Kumà. Creolizzare l’Europa , 13. [Online, accessed 8 July 2009 at www.disp.let.uniroma1.it/kuma/editoriale13.html] Held, D. (2002), ‘Culture and political community: national, global and cosmopolitan’, in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, Practice . Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 48–58. Inghilleri, M. (2008), ‘Sociological approaches’, in M. Baker and G. Saldanha (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 279–82.

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Jakobson, R. (2004 [1959]), ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’, in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 138–43. Kellman, S. G. (2003), Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lakhous, A. (1999), Le cimici e il pirata . Translated by F. Leggio. Rome: Arlem. —(2005), ‘Intervista con Ubax Cristina Ali Farah’. El- ghibli , 1, (7). [Online, accessed 17 June 2009 at www.el- ghibli.provincia.bologna.it/id_1-issue_01_07section_6-index_pos_1.html] —(2006), Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio. Rome: Edizioni e/o. —(2008), Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. Translated by A. Goldstein. New York: Europa Editions. —(2009), ‘Piazza Vittorio: a cure for homesickness’. Translated by M. Reynolds. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 42, (1), 134–7. Mehrez, S. (1998), ‘Translation and the postcolonial experience: the Francophone North African text’, in L. Venuti (ed.), Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 121–38. Millán-Varela, C. (2004), ‘Hearing voices: James Joyce, narrative voice and minority translation’. Language and Literature , 13, (1), 37–54. Niranjana, T. (1992), Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism, and the Colonial Context . Berkeley: University of California Press. Parati, G. (2005), Migration Italy. The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture . Toronto: University of Toronto. Said, E. (1994), Culture and Imperialism . London and New York: Vintage. Sciascia, L. (1994) [1961], Sicily as Metaphor: Conversations Presented by Marcelle Padovani . Translated by J. Marcus. Marlboro, VT: Marlboro. Seyhan, A. (2001), Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Tawada, Y. (2006), ‘From mother tongue to linguistic mother’. Translated by R. McNichol. Manoa , 18, (1), 139–43. Tymoczko, M. (1999), ‘Post- colonial writing and literary translation’, in S. Bassnett and H. Trivedi (eds), Post- Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, pp. 19–40. —(2000), ‘Translation and political engagement: activism, social change and the role of translation in geopolitical shifts’. The Translator, 6, (1), 23–47. Wilson, R. (2007), ‘The fiction of the translator’. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 28, (4), 381–95. Wolf, M. (2000), ‘The third space in postcolonial representation’, in S. Simon and P. St- Pierre (eds), Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era . Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, pp. 127–45.

Chapter 4

Theatre Translation for Performance: Conflict of Interests, Conflict of Cultures Geraldine Brodie University College London

My friend and colleague Kate Eaton likens her task as the translator of the plays of Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera to the job of producing oven-ready chickens (Eaton, 2008, p. 60). The result is there to be cooked and served up by the director and actors to the audience, but Kate also admits to spending as much time in rehearsal as possible ‘to stand up for Piñera’.1 Divided loyalties are an occupational hazard for many translators, but when translating for performance, the incidence of a large number of interested parties can place varying pressures on the theatre translator. And what about the translator’s own artistic integrity? J. Michael Walton highlights this problem in his analysis of modern practices in the translation of Ancient Greek drama, Found in Translation: For the translator there are fundamental decisions to be made between identifying the nuances and rendering the text playable. The only real question in all this is what licence the translator may claim to nudge, tickle or just plain sabotage the original? (2006, pp. 195–96) Theatre translators, he points out, may consider themselves as ‘original artists, perhaps, but therein lies a conflict of interests’ (p. 2). This struggle for the translator to combine a perceived duty to represent the original author with the expression or suppression of the translator’s own voice is inherent in most translation, especially the translation of literary texts. However, in the field of stage translation, the specific manifestation of this conflict brings certain elements into closer focus. An examination of the translation processes for the stage highlights an idiosyncratic translator/author/audience relationship, complicated by the intervention of additional agents in the field. In particular, it is common practice in English- speaking commercial theatre to adopt a two- stage

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translation process whereby an expert speaker of the source language prepares a literal annotated translation. A non-language- specialist theatre practitioner then uses this literal translation to prepare what is generally identified as a version or adaptation for performance, generating a further forum for conflict in translation circles. There are those who believe that this two- stage, or indirect, method is limiting both to the original author and the literal translator, while others take the view that a professional theatre practitioner is more likely to create a performable work. David Johnston discusses the difficulties for the translator attempting to reconcile ‘the original author’s words as fi xed on a page’ with the creation of ‘a memorable night in the theatre’ (Johnston, 1996, p. 8), while Eva Espasa, examining the notion of ‘performability’, favours the recognition of ‘theatre ideology and power negotiation’ (Espasa, 2000, p. 58) in the factors that surround translation. Such metatextual issues, including the visual and commercial exigencies of performance investigated below, exhibit a potential for conflicts of interests which may impinge on the cultural representation of a staged translation. Two recently produced Spanish plays will serve to demonstrate the pull on translators of the differing agents and narratives arising in the transition from source text to target performance. These plays were both performed in English on the London stage between March and July 2005, and were the only Spanish plays during that period to be advertised in The Official Guide of the Society of London Theatre, a trade association that represents the producers, theatre owners and managers of the major commercial and grant- aided theatres in central London.2 While they share a common source culture, these two plays vary widely in subject matter, style, period, translation process and production. In this brief study, rather than deconstructing textual decisions, I will confine myself to examining the translations in the wider cultural context of these productions, focusing on the part played by the translators in relation to both metatextual and non-textual elements of stage performance. These translational features display a negotiation of conflict beyond what might usually be considered to be the domain of the translator. But are they peculiar to the theatre or might they also have resonance in a more general study of the terrain of cultural conflict arising in translation?

A National Production: The House of Bernarda Alba The better-known of the two plays is Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba , in a new English version by David Hare from a literal

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translation by Simon Scardifield. The production was shown on the proscenium stage of the 890- seat Lyttelton Theatre, one of three theatres in the Royal National Theatre (popularly known as ‘the National’) complex on the South Bank of the Thames in central London. The mission statement of the National, as expressed on its website, places the theatre complex, geographically and ideologically, at the centre of English theatrical culture: The National Theatre is central to the creative life of the country. [. . .] It aims constantly to re- energise the great traditions of the British stage and to expand the horizons of audiences and artists alike. It aspires to reflect in its repertoire the diversity of the nation’s culture. [. . .] Through an extensive programme [. . .] it recognises that the theatre doesn’t begin and end with the rise and fall of the curtain. And by touring, the National shares its work with audiences in the UK and abroad. (National Theatre, 2009a) In short, the National aspires to live up to its name and provide a holistic theatrical service to the nation, although the degree to which it is successful in its aspiration is a matter of debate in theatrical circles. Its public responsibility is to some extent a prerequisite of its funding: the financial accounts for the 52 weeks ended 2 April 2006 (during which period The House of Bernarda Alba was performed) show that 44 per cent of the National’s income came from Arts Council grants, compared with 30 per cent from box office receipts and touring income. A quick calculation shows that the Arts Council subsidized each paying member of the audience during this period by £26 per head.3 The Arts Council England is a quasi- governmental body whose function is to distribute government and National Lottery funds to the arts in England. That the National is the recipient of such substantial public funding inevitably provokes debate as to its duties with regard to the public it serves and the official bodies which provide sponsorship. The ambitious tone of its mission statement and the attempt to combine new and classic, diversity and tradition, reveal the conflicting criteria a commissioning director must try to satisfy. The inclusion of translated plays within these boundaries raises additional questions. The National’s translation policy, as expressed by its Literary Manager from 1994 to 2006, Jack Bradley, is to commission playwrights to prepare translations using a literal translation.4 The inclusion of this Lorca play in the National repertory conforms to the aims of the mission statement: the play is presented as a new English version by David Hare. His publishers

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repeat his designation by the Independent on Sunday as ‘one of the great post-war British playwrights’ (Faber & Faber, 2009). He is a regular contributor at the National. The Artistic Director of the National, Nicholas Hytner, in his report for the year ended 2 April 2006, claimed an ‘inherent worth’ for all the work carried out by the National, placing The House of Bernarda Alba within a group which ‘involved the re-investigation of great plays that will always be staged for the universal truths that they embody’ (National Theatre, 2006, p. 5). This gives some indication of what might have been expected in arranging a marriage between a well-known establishment playwright and an international classic. Further contextual imperatives for this translation arise in the physical theatre setting. The Lyttleton Theatre’s proscenium arch provides the most traditional stage in the National complex, embodying the ‘fourth wall’ which divides audience from performers and lending itself, in Nicholas Hytner’s words, to ‘forensically precise’ theatre (National Theatre, 2009b). The 890-person capacity of the theatre is also significant: unlike West End theatres, the National does not cancel a play if critical reviews are poor and ticket sales suffer, therefore the aim should be to fill seats every night of a pre-assigned time- scale. This, along with the formal setting, may be seen as an incentive to produce a certain type of translation; to make it accessible to a wide audience, to acknowledge the heritage and tradition of a play, while also re- energizing it and making it new. A consideration of the circumstances of place and market assists in reviewing the cultural negotiations in Hare’s version of The House of Bernarda Alba . Lorca, identified by Gunilla Anderman as approaching Ibsen and Chekhov in the group of ‘honorary British dramatists’ (2006, p. 8), merits a place in the British classic repertoire, while Hare can be expected to fill seats. This production was also supported by accompanying Platform performances of lesser-known Lorca works and screenings of Carlos Saura’s 1981 film of Lorca’s play, Blood Wedding, so that enthusiastic followers would have the opportunity to immerse themselves in Lorca’s general oeuvre. The most recent Lorca production at the National prior to this run was Blood Wedding, in a translation by Gwenda Pandolfi at the small Cottesloe theatre 13 years earlier in 1991. David Hare, on the other hand, had been represented at the National as writer or adaptor six times in the same period (including twice in 2004, the previous year). Even so, the programming of supplementary Lorca offerings makes clear the respect accorded to the original author alongside the presence of one of the most high-profile of contemporary British playwrights. There was no danger of the reviewers failing to mention the fact that this piece was an English

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version from a Spanish original, or to name the agents responsible. All clearly distinguish between Hare and Lorca, although they remain largely silent as to the third agent in the translation process, the literal translator, Simon Scardifield, who composed a detailed annotated literal translation from which Hare created the final version for performance. Scardifield is credited in the programme, albeit between the Design Associate and the Research Assistant in the smaller print of the second page, and acknowledged by Hare in his Adaptor’s Note to the published text. Any queries Hare might have had in relation to the original text when working on his own drafts would have been addressed to Scardifield in the first instance in his position as language expert. It is apparent from the annotations in the (unpublished) literal translation held in the National’s archives that the literal translator, an actor himself, was at pains to preempt such queries by providing substantial linguistic and cultural detail. Thus, the literal translator to some extent took on the role of dramaturge, as identified in Manuela Perteghella’s study of collaboration in theatre translation (Perteghella, 2004, p. 206). His translation addressed not only translational but also cultural and staging issues in the text relevant to the London audience. That this was needed is acknowledged by the fact that a new literal translation was commissioned, even though there are many translations of this play in existence, including scholarly versions. As I hinted above, the use of a literal translator is the source of heated disagreement in translation circles, one of the reasons given being the low value in which the literal is held, both financially and in terms of status. The fact that this literal was commissioned especially for this production, rather than using existing academic texts, denotes its cultural if not monetary value. Hare’s indirect translation required a tailored literal, and access to the translator. Provided with these linguistic resources, Hare was in a position to create a personalized version. One area of conflicting interests for Hare, therefore, is the extent to which he should claim authorship of this version in relation to the original playwright and the literal translator. He is unable to consult the author, but the privileged position of Lorca in the canon should make it possible for Hare to present this work as his own reading of Lorca’s play without fear of compromising the standing of the original. Not all critics agree with this approach, however, as I discuss below. Nevertheless, Hare’s personal narrative is well known at the National, to practitioners and audience alike, and his name attached to this translation would act as a pointer to the way in which the work would be presented. Hare’s identity is that of an explicitly political playwright, commenting on affairs in his own country

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and also internationally, as exemplified recently by his 2009 work for the Royal Court, Wall , ‘a searching 40-minute study of the Israel/Palestine separation barrier’ (Royal Court Theatre, 2009a). His interpretation of The House of Bernarda Alba as a ‘stunningly clear’ metaphor for the political situation of its time, still relevant today (García Lorca, 2005, p. v), enables him to absorb Lorca’s work into his curriculum vitae, adding it to Pirandello, Brecht, Chekhov and Schnitzler in his list of adaptations. Thus, Lorca and Hare experience a symbiotic relationship, each enhancing the status of the other in the canon for the British audience. The conflicts of culture and interest in this translation are consequently laid out overtly to the onlooker. Even Hare’s legal ownership of the translation is explicitly jointly held: unusually, the published play text includes a post-publication addendum stating that the copyright is held by David Hare and Herederos de Federico García Lorca (the Lorca family trust) (García Lorca, 2005). The standard position is that the copyright for an original is owned by its author, while translators may claim rights over their own translation. The shared copyright in this case suggests that the Lorca family exercises an interest in any additions to its intellectual property, and the question arises as to whether this interest extends beyond the legal to artistic decisions. This would act as a reminder to the reader of the text that Lorca is present in the translation itself and not only the original. It may also be a reminder to Hare that he has a responsibility to Lorca while working on a version which bears his own name. He has commented, in an article relating to another of his translations, that it is important to him to allow the identity of the original author to be presented (Hare, 2006). Although it is not clear how he might achieve that, particularly in situations where he does not speak the original language, it is nevertheless the case that he recognizes the position whereby he has to negotiate the conflict between his own and another voice. Hare’s view that Lorca’s play ‘is not at all some timeless, literary version of Spain’ (García Lorca, 2005, p. v) explains his approach, moving away from the usual treatment of the tyrannical mother enclosed with her five daughters in a stifling, black- clad, white-walled environment. Backed up by a set described in a review as ‘a handsome Moorish- style mansion, with gilt, lofty ceilings and stained glass’ (Hepple, 2005), and a cast dressed in colourful period costumes, the production reinterpreted the repressive elements of the play, downplaying the Andalusian pueblo surroundings and presenting the characters as women who speak and behave in a way that is recognizable to modern audiences. Bernarda, for example, is a physically fit woman in early middle age who likes to smoke and dance, her stick making

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a limited appearance as a weapon, not required as a support. While this reading broadens the application of the tensions within the play to a wider audience, echoing the ‘universal’ appeal lauded by Nicholas Hytner, it moved too far for at least one critic, who complained that it ‘seems to parachute us into the sexual morality of Cheltenham Ladies College [a traditional girls- only boarding school] as it must have been thirty years ago, rather than into the stifling aridity of conservative Spanish Catholicism at its worst’ (May, 2005).5 The Lorca scholar Gwynne Edwards similarly considers the set ‘misconceived’ and complains that ‘because the production was conceived for a southern English audience, it is likely too that, set in the 1930s, it was somewhat influenced by the bourgeois English plays of that period’ (Edwards, 2005, p. 384). While this reception reveals unwillingness on the part of some viewers to accept a retelling which is overtly for a modern audience not necessarily familiar with Spanish culture and history, it also acknowledges the cultural issues arising from translation and indicates that the audience engages with the translation debate. The intervention of Hare, his approach to writing and the cumulative effect of his earlier work is significant in its acknowledgement by the critical reviews. In spite of, or perhaps, paradoxically, because of, its overt acknowledgement of an English audience, The House of Bernarda Alba is a visible translation differentiating itself from the original, and the conflicts within its translation framework were readily identified by the audience. This can to some extent be attributed to the specific identity of the named translator and the wider theatrical context in which he was operating.

A Royal Court Production: Way to Heaven Translator identity and theatrical context display marked differences in my second case study. Juan Mayorga’s Way to Heaven , translated by David Johnston, was presented in the 85- seat Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea, a residential and commercial inner suburb of West London, about 3 miles (5 kilometres) from the National. The Royal Court’s website outlines its position as follows: The Royal Court Theatre is Britain’s leading national company dedicated to new work by innovative writers from the UK and around the world. The theatre’s pivotal role in promoting new voices is undisputed – the New York Times described it as ‘the most important theatre in Europe’.

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[. . .] The Royal Court’s success has inspired confidence in theatres across the world and, whereas new plays were once viewed as a risk, they are now at the heart of a revival of interest among artists and audiences alike. (Royal Court Theatre, 2009b) This outlook is not dissimilar to that of the National, inasmuch as it promotes a central, national role for the theatre and aims to expand its influence beyond the United Kingdom. Where it differs is in its focus on new writing: the Royal Court is quite clear in its attention to the voice of the playwright and its emphasis on its standing among artists and theatres, including its international status. As its governing Council reports: ‘It is an artistically led theatre that creates the conditions for writers, nationally and internationally, to flourish’ (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 6). The focus on the writer creates a degree of risk with regard to audience numbers, as can be surmised from an examination of the accounts. Financial information is not posted on the Royal Court’s website, but from the annual report for the year ended 31 March 2006 (during which Way to Heaven was staged), it is possible to calculate that Arts Council England grants represented 54 per cent of its total incoming resources, while a mere 19 per cent of those resources came from box office and associated income.6 More in line with the National, however, is the Arts Council subsidy per head of audience: approximately £27.7 Clearly, both institutions are dependent on the public funding allotted to them by Arts Council England and as such need to be aware that they will be monitored for ‘artistic quality, management, finance and public engagement’ (Arts Council England, 2009a), but whereas the National, a major recipient of funding (£18,715,431 in 2008/2009) (National Theatre, 2009b), undertakes a full range of theatrical activities in line with its public image, the Royal Court (£2,189,627 in 2008/2009) (Royal Court Theatre, 2009c) receives funding because it is ‘an exemplary centre for the development and production of new writing for theatre. It has strong Young Writers and International programmes and a commitment to developing theatre practice with writers at the centre’ (2009c). Its public offerings are thus differentiated by their emphasis on writing. Where writers are at the centre of theatrical strategy and there is a clear emphasis on the development of new, unknown work, the audience may be less easily identifiable. The Royal Court recognizes this problem, the Council’s report in 2006 explicitly stating in a section headed ‘Factors affecting performance’:

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The work produced by the Royal Court is often risky, challenging and experimental, which can, by its very nature, make it difficult to market [. . .] Whilst this diversity and originality is part of the Royal Court’s reputation for producing pioneering drama, it also presents a challenge to the Press, Marketing and Development departments, even more so this year when a significant amount of the repertoire would not necessarily attract mainstream audiences. (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 12) These challenges can affect translation strategies, as I discuss below. The above statement may also explain Way to Heaven’s appearance in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, a space employed for plays more suited to an intimate audience (whether for reasons of theme, experimentation or financial risk), which gives an indication of the Royal Court’s expectations for the play. In view of the prominence given to international writing, it is not surprising to learn that, in contrast to the National Theatre, the Royal Court has an International Department with its own dedicated Associate Director, Elyse Dodgson, whose stated aim is ‘to bring international plays into the core programme and present these alongside home- grown plays’ (Little and McLaughlin, 2007, p. 331). The International Department sets out its translation policy on the Royal Court website: ‘The department has pioneered the use of theatre practitioners as translators and the integral involvement of the translator in the play development and rehearsal process’ (Royal Court Theatre, 2009c). Nevertheless, the Royal Court is generally acknowledged among the translating community for commissioning source-language experts to create a direct translation for performance. As suggested, these translators tend to be drawn from a group who regularly translate for the theatre and may also be the creators of original plays in English. Thus the direct translator for this piece is David Johnston, Professor of Hispanic Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, frequent translator of Spanish-language plays for performance and original author of other performed works. Way to Heaven was presented in the published text, which also functions as a programme, as ‘part of the Royal Court’s International Playwrights series’ (Mayorga, 2005, n.p.). The series is distinct from a season , which is defined on the Royal Court website as ‘a season of international work which offers full productions of specially commissioned international plays in translation and associated performances, readings and events’

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(Royal Court Theatre, 2009c). The production of Way to Heaven was followed in the Theatre Upstairs by an Iranian play, Amid the Clouds , by Amir Reza Koohestani, but no other events or translated plays were presented as international works at that time, reflecting the Royal Court’s then objective to ‘more fully integrate the International Playwrights programme into the core work of the theatre, rather than as a separate festival’ (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 6).8 Koohestani had developed his play during a Royal Court International Residency in 2004. Juan Mayorga also participated in earlier international programmes, with some of his works given rehearsed readings in translation. However, Way to Heaven was first produced under its original title Himmelweg at the Teatro Alameda de Málaga, Spain, in 2003, and was not a direct product of a formal international programme. The inclusion of both international plays in the Royal Court repertoire for that period was probably more to do with their synchronicity with the trend towards ‘overtly political drama’ (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 12) than their national provenance. They were presented in this light rather than as explicitly international plays, which suggests that the focus of the translations might be to express ideological rather than national characteristics. David Johnston was commissioned to translate Way to Heaven for the first full professional staging of a Mayorga play in London. Mayorga’s work had been staged in Spain, Croatia, Portugal, Venezuela, Argentina and the United States (Theatre Catalyst, Philadelphia, a fringe theatre) by that time, both in the original Spanish and in translation. Even so, Johnston was effectively introducing a play and an author that were both relatively new to English audiences. Mayorga is also a new writer in the sense that he was born in 1965 (in Madrid) and his first professionally performed play was staged in 1992. He fits the Royal Court profile as an author who takes on challenging themes, as demonstrated by Way to Heaven and his other work. In 2003, he published his study, Revolución conservadora y conservación revolucionaria. Política y memoria en Walter Benjamin [Conservative revolution and revolutionary conservation. Politics and memory in Walter Benjamin], to which I shall return, which supports his dramatic output in strengthening his political and intellectual credentials in the Royal Court repertoire. He had also been awarded several prizes for his theatrical work by 2005, including the Premio Enrique Llovet for Himmelweg in 2003. In short, Mayorga had recognition and a substantial track record in Spain and elsewhere; already the author of a defined body of work, he was unknown only in the sense that his work had received very limited exposure in London and to other English- speaking audiences. The translation, therefore, had to reflect the

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fact that this was the work of a confident, established and well-regarded playwright, while acknowledging its unfamiliarity but simultaneous suitability for the Royal Court audience. The advertising material addressed this as follows: The heart of Europe. 1942. Children playing, lovers’ tiffs, a deserted train station and a ramp rising towards a hangar. This is what you can see, but what should the Red Cross representative report say? Juan Mayorga was a participant on the Royal Court’s International Residency 1997. WAY TO HEAVEN has previously been produced at the Teatro Mara [sic] Guerrero, Madrid by the Centro Dramatico Nacional. His other work has been produced in Spain and around Europe as well as in Argentina, Venezuela and USA. (Royal Court Theatre, 2009d) The biography emphasizes Mayorga’s links to the Royal Court, his status within the Spanish theatrical field and his international standing. The play is positioned in Europe (vaguely, considering the text itself specifically places the action ‘thirty kilometres north of Berlin’ in the first spoken lines of the play (Mayorga, 2005, p. 19)). The circumstances of the setting are made personal to the audience (‘This is what you can see . . .’) and the wartime context referred to only obliquely by including the date 1942. The image accompanying the advertising material, of a clock-face with shadowy figures super-imposed, is equally mysterious. The invitation extended to the prospective audience is open in its scope. Does the translation reflect the flexibility of this invitation? Way to Heaven has been described by its translator as a work of ‘extended monologues and hypertheatricality [. . .] where the monstrosity of the Holocaust is reflected through the story of the camp at Theresienstadt’ (Mayorga, 2009, p. 13). The play reflects upon the report of an unnamed Red Cross Representative who, on visiting a concentration camp, fails to notice that the apparently well-treated Jewish prisoners are following a script devised and stage-managed by the camp Commandant. The camp station clock permanently stands at six and a ramp leading from the station to a closed-up hangar is called ‘the way to heaven’. The visit is discussed and displayed from the differing perspectives of the Red Cross Representative, the Commandant and Gershom Gottfried, a prisoner. Johnston’s direct translation is from Spanish, but once in its English translation, the genesis of the play is obscured as only its original language gave any clue to its source culture.

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Mayorga has changed some of the historical details of the notorious Red Cross visit to the concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic, creating a fictional camp and characters whose motives and allegiances are of more relevance than their nationalities. As I have pointed out, the site of the play’s action is explicitly set 30 kilometres north of Berlin in 1942. There are no allusions to Spain, other than the Commandant’s inclusion of Calderón alongside Corneille and Shakespeare in his library (Mayorga, 2005, pp. 41–2), and the fact that the clock’s balances originated from an earlier clock built in Toledo (Mayorga, 2004, p. 20). The international nature and themes of the play for its Spanish audience would have been underlined by the title, a German word: Himmelweg. The first lines spoken explain that this means ‘Camino del cielo’ in the Spanish version (Mayorga, 2004, p.13), translated as ‘way to heaven’ in English. This German-language title has been retained in translations of the play into other languages such as French, Italian and Norwegian, but the Royal Court production used the English translation of the title for the reason, as I have heard informally,9 that foreign-language titles, particularly in German, are perceived to be less favourable for ticket sales in London. This anecdotal explanation is supported by the reference of the advertising material to ‘the heart of Europe’ rather than Berlin, echoing the Commandant’s enigmatic words (Mayorga, 2005, p. 48), which implicate Europe while querying German responsibility. Looking back to the Royal Court’s concern, expressed in the financial accounts as discussed above, that its work ‘presents a challenge to the Press, Marketing and Development departments’, it is possible to discern here an example of external influences imposed on the translator: commercial imperatives, in this case built on cultural assumptions, may interfere with the transmission of the author’s intention and the translator’s scope. These cultural assumptions are not necessarily shared. The official website of the off-Broadway production of David Johnston’s translation at the Teatro Círculo in New York between May and August 2009 shows Himmelweg prominently in brackets below the English title of the play (Way to Heaven The Play, 2009). The published French translation translates Himmelweg on the inside cover to Chemin du ciel , in brackets, but not on the outside front cover (Mayorga, 2006). The Spanish published text does not translate the German into Spanish other than in the course of the playtext itself (Mayorga, 2004). The English published text operates the same nontranslation approach but reversed in that Himmelweg only appears in the playtext and is not used to subtitle the play (Mayorga, 2005). Similarly, it was not used in the advertising material. The absence of this German title

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serves to blur the site- specificity of the Royal Court production and translation, at least prior to arriving at the theatre or opening the text. It offers the play as a subject for open interpretation. A review of Mayorga’s drama suggests that in this, the translation was echoing a persistent theme of his composition. Mayorga broadly adopts a pan- European approach in his work. His plays make international references to place, as in Hamelin (2005) and Love Letters to Stalin (1999), and even, perhaps in an allegory for his work as a whole, a train crossing Western Europe in the case of Blumemberg’s Translator (2000). His work also ‘draws upon, and enriches itself from, the radical philosophical tradition of Montaigne, Kant, Benjamin and Agamben’, according to Johnston (Mayorga, 2009, p. 14), thus covering a wide range of European philosophy. On the one hand, this pan-European approach is reflected in the geographical vagueness of the Royal Court’s advertising material. On the other hand, the translation of the play’s title into English, especially when compared with the strategies I discussed above, to some extent negates the otherness of the play and the fact that it deals with issues outside London boundaries. It presents theatre practitioners, including the translator, with the challenge of signalling the cultural conflict inherent in the original title to an English- speaking audience unfamiliar with Mayorga’s work. In the event, this was attempted once the audience had been drawn inside the theatre, in various ways. Johnston, as translator, retains the back-translation of Himmelweg in the first utterances of the play, and this was very clearly articulated and repeated by the actor playing the Red Cross Representative. Even before that, the props list and rehearsal notes show that each member of the audience was to be presented with a book supposedly from the Commandant’s library on entering the theatre, these books being ‘“classic European paperbacks” from several different European countries in their own language’.10 These props would serve as a reminder to the spectators of the interlingual nature of the play, but also draw them into the creative process in a gesture of inclusion. Does this inclusion process, already noted in the advertising material (‘This is what you can see . . .’), sharpen or blur the cultural confl ict inherent in the play? It might be expected that the international nature of this play’s characters and subject matter lessen the pressure on the translator to negotiate cultural difference. The play already presents a neutral canvas: the Red Cross Representative is not connected with any national allegiance. The cultural dilemma for the translator is whether to pursue the indeterminate portrayal of the character, permitting the

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viewer to impose their own back story, or to intervene in the script to clarify that the Red Cross Representative must be from a neutral country (Switzerland, in the historical event). In other words, should the translator go beyond the original text to make explicit to the English audience that this is not an English play? Johnston’s translation maintains the neutrality of the original with no furtherance of the Anglicization of the title. The effect of this can be seen from the newspaper reviews. Out of 13 reviews collected in the journal Theatre Record (2005), two specifi cally identify the Red Cross representative as British or English,11 demonstrating the extent to which the audience identifies with the character, domesticating his nationality. On the other hand, ten reviews include a reference to Spain, suggesting that the writers are clear about the provenance of the play, but not concerned with the implications of its translational status: only three reviews include the word ‘translation’ and only one critiqued it (‘lucid’, The Times (Theatre Record, 2005, p. 850)). The name of the translator is shown prominently close to that of the author in the publicity material and the programme/text, along with a reference to the International Playwrights series. The importance of the paratext in identifying and locating the translation is thus evident, but even so the receivers choose to focus on other aspects of the play from their own national perspective. Possibly, this reception of Way to Heaven demonstrates Mayorga’s intended effect. Interviewed in El Pais (Vallejo, 2008), he explained: ‘That character . . . resembles myself and many people around me, who want to help, but end up complicit in cruel or unjust actions’ (my translation). Perhaps a portrayal of the Everyman is appropriate here. Johnston has the advantage of access to Mayorga, and indeed has written in regard to his translation of Nocturnal that Mayorga works with the translator and is prepared to rewrite if necessary (Mayorga, 2009, p. 14). The subject matter of Mayorga’s plays and his detailed study of Benjamin also indicate on his part an interest in the theory and practice of translation. Way to Heaven itself reflects upon translation and the relationship between author and translator. Specifically, the Commandant appoints Gottfried as his psychological translator to pass on his directions to the other prisoners: ‘You will find the right words’ (Mayorga, 2005, p. 47). This demonstrates the importance of the translator’s role and the significance of collaboration in translation for performance. The evidence suggests that Johnston is able to consult Mayorga when approaching a translation, producing a result acceptable to both parties, and Mayorga, with his understanding of the role of the translator, is prepared to act as dramaturge for his own

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plays, if necessary, customizing and possibly deforeignizing them for a particular audience. The potential of this relationship between the author and translator may allow a rapprochement between the text and the audience, which can reduce the level of conflict for the translator. However, the broader theatrical context, such as funding and marketing requirements, also intervenes in the translational status of the eventual cultural production.

Concluding Remarks Analysis of the circumstances surrounding the translations of these two plays demonstrates the effect of extra-textual theatrical phenomena on cultural transference in the translation of plays for performance. Although very different plays, they are linked by more than just their original language. Both theatres, the National and the Royal Court, by advertising under the banner of the Society of London Theatre, place themselves among mainstream London venues. However, as I have suggested, they each operate under a different mandate and would not necessarily expect a similar audience demographic. Although both are substantially funded by public money via the Arts Council, these theatres have to fulfil their funding requirements in markedly dissimilar ways. The National makes the general public its priority; the Royal Court privileges the writer. Accordingly, the two plays, already positioned apart in the Spanish-language canon, were presented very differently to their English- speaking audiences: The House of Bernarda Alba to large numbers in a theatre which emphasizes the national heritage, and Way to Heaven in a small studio space associated with the new and risky. Nevertheless, in both cases, consideration of context not only suggests reasons for which certain translational decisions were made, but also reveals the strategic importance of non-textual factors in directing the textual form of a translation. My preceding reviews of theatrical site, financial and marketing imperatives, and the possibilities for interaction between original author, literal translator and translator (as affected by copyright obligations) show the complexities beyond the text which have to be negotiated by the translator in the portrayal of another culture to an English- speaking audience. They also promote factors affecting translation as intersemiotic activity which have an application beyond the theatre. Thus, the contextual study of theatre translation can furnish particularly visible examples of socio- cultural pressures on translation, as I have shown.

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Similarly, while non- textual factors may affect the content of a translated text, where a text is to be performed, translational issues may become visible and communicate themselves through non- textual means. Because theatre is a multi- agency medium, the external factors imposed on the translator, and the conflicting interests I have discussed, can appear more overt, such as in the translation of Himmelweg (the title) and the splendour of the atypical scenery for The House of Bernarda Alba . Publicity materials, programmes and reviews, set design, costumes and direction may all supplement or even replace the text for the target audience, in the same way that the translated text supplements the original, as Sirkku Aaltonen suggests.12 The translator within a team of theatre practitioners has to address these issues. In 1982, André Lefevere reviewed successive translations into English of Brecht’s Mother Courage between 1941 and 1972 and declared that ‘the degree to which the foreign writer is accepted into the native system will [. . .] be determined by the need that native system has of him in a certain phase of its evolution’ (Lefevere, 2004, p. 243). My case studies of these productions in 2005 show that even for a sophisticated internationally inclined audience, such as at the Royal Court, a rapprochement to the target culture is still perceived as needed to bring the audience to the play. Thus, the translator’s negotiation of culture may be influenced by many external factors, not limited to a relationship with the original text but also affected by the theatrical translation policy, the expectation of the audience and the marketing and funding requirements. As I have shown, the counter-intuitive result can be that a play like Way to Heaven , whose original lends itself to translation and which might therefore be hailed and analysed as such, is absorbed into the English- speaking repertoire, while an extensively domesticated The House of Bernarda Alba foregrounds translation. The translator performs a paradoxical role, both highlighting and suppressing cultural difference. The conflicts remain.

Notes 1. In private conversation at Pieces of Piñera , Arcola Theatre, London, 4 October 2009. 2. Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding in a version by Tanya Ronder was also shown during this period at the Almeida Theatre in north London, but the Almeida does not advertise through the Society of London Theatre. 3. Based on Arts Council grants of £17,261,000 divided by total paid attendances of 663,000 (National Theatre, 2006, pp. 41–2). For comparison purposes,

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tickets for the David Hare play The Power of Yes on Saturday 12 December 2009 at 7:30 p.m. were selling for between £10 and £35. 4. My own notes taken from Jack Bradley’s talk, ‘Not . . . lost in translation’ at the conference ‘Staging Translated Plays: Adaptation, Translation and Multimediality’, University of East Anglia, 30 June 2007. 5. Hare’s move away from a stereotypical Andalusian flavour echoes the approach taken by the fi rst director of La casa de Bernarda Alba in Madrid in 1964, Juan- Antonio Bardem, who was concerned to distance his production from the zarzuelero of Spanish lyric- dramatic opera (García Lorca, 1964, p. 119). 6. Calculations obtained by comparing Arts Council of England revenue grant: £2,000,000 (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 24, note 3) and box office and associated income: £681,998 (p. 25, note 5) to total incoming resources: £3,661,111 (p. 19). 7. Based on Arts Council grants of £2,000,000 (Royal Court Theatre, 2006, p. 24, note 3) divided by the total attendance for the year of 74,185 (p. 7). Top price tickets during the period were reduced to £25 (p. 10). 8. There was, in fact, an additional translated production running in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from 12 May to 18 June 2005, The Woman Before , written by Roland Schimmelpfennig and translated by David Tushingham, but this was not included in the International Playwrights Programme. 9. From David Johnston in an answer to a question at the conference, ‘Translation: Process and Performance’, Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, 24 November 2007. 10. My own notes from the Royal Court prompt book for Way to Heaven, viewed 15 April 2009. 11. Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard and Paul Taylor in the Independent. 12. In her lecture ‘Translations as supplements in the theatrical practice of drama’ at ‘Translation: Process and Performance’, Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, 24 November 2007.

References Anderman, G. M. (2006), Europe on Stage: Translation and Theatre . London: Oberon Books. Arts Council England (2009a), ‘Regular funding for organisations’. [Online, accessed 11 November 2009 at www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/regularfunding- organisations/] — (2009b), ‘The Royal National Theatre’. [Online, accessed 21 October 2009 at www.artscouncil.org.uk/rfo/royal-national-theatre/] — (2009c), ‘Royal Court Theatre’. [Online, accessed 21 October 2009 at www.artscouncil.org.uk/rfo/english- stage- company-royal- court-theatre/] Eaton, K. (2008), ‘You always forget something: can practice make theory?’. New Voices in Translation Studies, 4, 53–61. Edwards, G. (2005), ‘Lorca on the London stage: problems of translation and adaptation’. New Theatre Quarterly, 21, 382–94.

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Espasa, E. (2000), ‘Performability in translation: Speakability? Playability? Or just saleability?’ in C.- A. Upton (ed.), Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation . Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 49–62. Faber & Faber (2009), ‘David Hare Plays 1’. [Online, accessed 11 May 2009 at www. faber.co.uk/work/david-hare-plays-1/9780571177417/] García Lorca, F. (1964), La Casa de Bernarda Alba . Barcelona: Aymá. — (2005), The House of Bernarda Alba . Translated by D. Hare. London: Faber and Faber. Hare, D. (2006), ‘Gorky’s play for today’. [Online, accessed 29 July 2010 at www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/3652029/Gorkys-play-for-today.html] Hepple, P. (2005), ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’. [Online, accessed 25 February 2008 at www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/6984/the-house- of-bernardaalba] Johnston, D. (1996), ‘Introduction’, in D. Johnston (ed.), Stages of Translation . Bath: Absolute Classics, pp. 5–12. Lefevere, A. (2004), ‘Mother Courage’s cucumbers: text, system and refraction in a theory of literature’, in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 238–55. Little, R., and McLaughlin, E. (2007), The Royal Court Theatre Inside Out . London: Oberon Books. May, S. (2005), ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’. [Online, accessed 25 February 2008 at www.onlinereviewlondon.com/reviews/Bernarda.html] Mayorga, J. (2004), Himmelweg. Malaga: Diputación de Málaga, Área de Cultura y Educación. — (2005), Way to Heaven . Translated by D. Johnston. London: Oberon Books. — (2006), Himmelweg. Translated by Y. Lebeau. Besançon: Les Solitaires Intempestifs. — (2009), Nocturnal . Translated by D. Johnston. London: Oberon Books. National Theatre (2006), Annual Report and Financial Statements for the 52 weeks ended 2 April 2006 . London: Royal National Theatre. — (2009a), ‘Artistic aims: National Theatre mission statement’. [Online, accessed 11 May 2009 at www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/1419/faqs/artistic- aims.html] — (2009b), ‘Lyttleton Theatre overview’. [Online, accessed 21 October 2009 at www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38352/lyttelton/lyttelton-theatre- overview.html] Perteghella, M. (2004), ‘A Descriptive Framework for Collaboration in Theatre Translation’. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Royal Court Theatre (2006), Annual Report for the Year Ended 31 March 2006 . London: The English Stage Company Limited. — (2009a), ‘What’s on: Wall’. [Online, accessed 14 May 2009 at www.royalcourttheatre.com/archive_detail.asp?play=549] — (2009b), ‘About us’. [Online, accessed 13 May 2009 at www.royalcourttheatre. com/about.asp?ArticleID=14] — (2009c), ‘International’. [Online, accessed 28 October 2009 at www.royalcourttheatre.com/international.asp] — (2009d), ‘Way to Heaven’. [Online, accessed 3 July 2009 at www.royalcourttheatre.com/archive_detail.asp?play=396] Theatre Record (2005), XXV, 13, 849–52.

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Vallejo, J. (2008), ‘El triunfo del autor’. [Online, accessed 5 June 2009 at www. elpais.com/articulo/arte/triunfo/autor/elpepuculbab/20080426elpbabart_1 3/Tes]. Walton, J. M. (2006), Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Way to Heaven The Play (2009), ‘Way to Heaven’. [Online, accessed 29 October 2009 at www.waytoheaventheplay.com]

Chapter 5

The Gull: Intercultural Noh as Webwork Beverley Curran Aichi Shukutoku University

Introduction Eminent translator Arthur Waley described the Noh play, ‘at its simplest, [as] a dance preceded by a dialogue which explains the significance of the dance or introduces circumstances which lead naturally to the dancing of it’ (1957, p. 17), but much about Noh, its stylized performance, and circulation in translation, is decidedly complex. Amid the modernization of the Meiji period (1863–1912), traditional Japanese arts such as Noh were devalued, while in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they aroused keen interest in the West, with more than 40 Noh plays translated into English, French, and German. Literary figures such as William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound were excited by Noh’s potential to inspire new ideas about performance and poetry. At the same time, the Fenollosa- Pound translations of Japan’s ‘noble’ plays celebrated the ancient, unchanging quality of Noh; Ernest Fenollosa described the art form as an extant ‘form of drama, as primitive, as intense, and almost as beautiful as the ancient Greek drama at Athens, [which] still exists in the world’ (Pound and Fenollosa, 1959, p. 59). Further, Pound approached the ‘finishing’ of Fenollosa’s translations with a Modernist sensibility which demonstrated ‘the extent to which formal knowledge of the source language no longer constituted a requirement for the practice of translation’ (Yao, 2002, pp. 10–11). Partly as a result of translations into Western languages, there was renewed critical interest in Noh among Japanese intellectuals in the 1930s, associating the traditional art with ‘the myth of a “natural” nation that had no history but was timeless and composed of individuals connected through natural bonds’ (Tansman, 2009, p. 3). Theatre critic Uchino Tadashi suggests that theatre culture within Japan has continued to release Noh from its historical context in order to operate as a confirmation of Japan’s ‘uninterrupted

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continuity and [. . .] endless present’ (Uchino, 2009, p. 85), reinforcing Japan’s past as myth rather than history. Among those who published articles and books on Noh and translation during the 1930s was Nogami Toyoichirô, a Noh specialist and scholar and translator of English literature, who saw translation as one of the international movements of that turbulent period. In the preface to his 1938 discussion of the theory and practice of translation, Nogami uses the intimate idea of a reading circle (dokusho sa- kuru) to describe the circulation of ideologies and cultural productions in translation that overrides national boundaries (1938, pp. 1–4). As part of that circle, Japan has access to the works of Homer, Socrates, Dante, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Molière, Tolstoy and others, while making available such works as Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji ) and Noh plays. In his multifaceted considerations of how successfully Noh can be translated into Western languages, Nogami singles out the difficulty of the density of the classical literary allusions embedded in the repertoire of this art form that dates back at least to the fourteenth century. While considering the potential of intercultural collaborative translation to help bring attention to Noh’s ‘universal’ appeal, Nogami’s position is still representative of many Noh scholars and practitioners, who see Noh as an intrinsically Japanese cultural production whose complex structures are just further complicated or obfuscated by translation; the idea of a Noh play’s creation in another language or its translation into Japanese is never broached. But what happens to such stubborn ideas about translation and timeless, uniquely Japanese Noh if a play is written in English about the Japanese diaspora on the WestCoast of Canada and then translated into Japanese for bilingual performance? This chapter will consider the implications of just such a cultural production, namely The Gull , a contemporary Noh play written by Canadian writer Daphne Marlatt, which grounds the Japanese dance drama in Canadian history, specifically the uprooting and internment of Japanese Canadians following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, but harnesses the emotional and somatic intensity of the stylized Noh movement and music to renew the story through performance. The Gull was written mainly in English, and then translated by Toyoshi Yoshihara into Japanese for the play’s bilingual intercultural performance by a Noh master and Canadian cast. Using the Japanese language and art to redress the cultural loss through assimilation that was accelerated by the internment and dispersal of the Japanese Canadian community also repositions Noh as a collaborative intercultural performance that foregrounds change. In its inscription of the poetry of Roy Kiyooka, Joy

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Kogawa, and Roy Miki, The Gull both extends the allusive system of Noh to include Japanese Canadian writers and introduces Noh as a viable form of Canadian cultural production. This chapter will approach The Gull as an intercultural Noh play whose linguistic, cultural and semiotic translations reveal its extensive ‘webwork’, a term Marlatt has used to describe both the ‘connective tissue’ of etymology, which has been an ongoing part of her writing praxis, and our links to the environment: [I]t seems to me that the various ways in which words connect, from semantic links to the variety of musical links that poetry has always worked with – that these links form a verbal analogue for the ecological webwork we actually live within. Just as we tend to be unconscious about the extent of the connective tissue between words because we are so intent on getting our immediate meaning across, so we tend to be unconscious about the vast extent of the ecological webwork that supports us, and we loot it, exploit it, for our immediate needs. (2009a, p. 28) Marlatt’s interest in etymology, as well as the connection between language and environment, was shared by Fenollosa, who saw Chinese characters as a script where ‘the etymology is constantly visible’ (Fenollosa and Pound, 2008, p. 97). As he explained in his controversial The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, edited and published by Pound in 1919, the character was ‘a vivid shorthand picture of the operations of nature’, that spoke ‘at once with the vividness of painting, and with the mobility of sounds’ (p. 45). Pound took the mistaken idea of the written character as ideogram and ran with it in the direction of a new universal language ‘more basic than Ogden’s Basic English and more reliable’ (Saussy, 2008, p. 7), whereas Fenollosa, informed by Buddhist thought, saw it as part of the web of interpenetrations that grounded language in nature. As both a Buddhist and a contemporary poet, Marlatt understands webwork as a fundamental aspect of Noh: Noh Theatre is not about plot or character in a realist sense, although it is very much about human emotions such as jealousy or longing. In fact, the principal roles are less individualized characters than figures in a net of relationships torn apart by some traumatic event. In a Noh script, they are indicated simply by their generic names, Shite , or principal performer, and Waki and Wakitsure , secondary performers, and there is the Ji or chorus. (2009a, p. 48)

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In other words, character and plot development are not the focus of a Noh play, at all; what are important are the relationships that resonate in performance. Marlatt’s notion of a webwork of association and chance is also found in her ideas about translation. In describing her own approach to writing and to translation as a creative literary mode, Marlatt has foregrounded the gaps in the webwork where the work of the writer and translator are inflected or diverted by unintentional differences (1998, pp. 69–70). The web of sound and meaning in The Gull is enriched by its bilingual mix of English and Japanese in performance and the multi- sensory intercultural weave of words, images, voices and bodies that tell a story of the Japanese diaspora on the West Coast. At the same time, an awareness of this webwork draws attention to ‘the ways that the movements of groups always necessarily intersect, leading to exchange, assimilation, expropriation, coalition, or dissension’ (Edwards, 2006, p. 92) and the multiple and contradictory roles that translation can play in all these interactions. This suggests that webwork is not just about deliberate connections being made, but also those that emerge by chance in the mesh of contingencies. This chapter will examine some of the layers of translation that create and comprise part of the complex and mutable webwork of The Gull as collaborative intercultural theatre.

Translating Steveston Migrations In November 2002, Heidi Specht, the Artistic Director of Vancouver- based Pangaea Arts, an intercultural theatre group, approached Marlatt about the possibility of writing a contemporary Noh play about Steveston, a fishing village located at the mouth of the Fraser River on the Pacific coast of British Columbia. According to Specht, she had been deeply moved by ‘Unearthing the Silence’, an archaeological dig which had uncovered artifacts from the Japanese Canadian community there prior to the Second World War: ‘Once a thriving fishing community, Steveston seemed to be the perfect setting for a Ghost Noh, common in the Noh play repertoire’ (Specht, 2006, p. 7). She also wanted the play to make an historical link between Steveston and Mio, a small fishing community on the coast of Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. In the 1880s, villagers from Mio had begun emigrating to Steveston to fish the waters teeming with salmon and work in the cannery, which for a time was the busiest on the West Coast. Before the Second World War, Steveston was the second-largest Japanese Canadian community, with the majority tracing their roots back to Mio.

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From the outset, however, the Japanese residents in Steveston faced racist discrimination within and outside the fishing industry. In 1893, the white and First Nations fishermen went out on strike to demand a reduction in the number of fishing licences issued to Japanese fishermen; until the 1920s, it was illegal for them to use motorized fishing boats. Things got much worse, however, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Canada immediately declared war on Japan, and under the War Measures Act, Canadian citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry found themselves officially translated into enemy aliens. On the West Coast, houses, fishing boats, cars and other property were seized, Japanese language schools closed, and Japanese Canadians forcibly removed from their homes and legally restricted from venturing within 100 miles of the coast. By the end of 1942, more than 12,000 Japanese Canadians were living in internment camps in the interior of British Columbia, and the government sold their property to pay for their incarceration. When the war ended in 1945, they were encouraged to ‘repatriate’ to Japan, regardless of whether they had been born in Canada, spoke only English or had never seen Japan before. Travel restrictions were not lifted on Japanese Canadians until 1949, when 28 fishermen were allowed to return to Steveston to work after negotiations with the fishermen’s union (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 16), with more following in 1950. Initially, Specht had asked Joy Kogawa about writing a Noh play about Steveston; Kogawa’s novel Obasan (1994 [1981]) had been the first fictional treatment of the internment by a Japanese Canadian writer. Kogawa declined but suggested Marlatt because of the latter writer’s literary engagement with the town over several decades. In the early 1970s, Marlatt had been hired as the editor of a small oral history project, and along with photographers Robert Minden and Rex Weyler, had gone to Steveston with Maya Koizumi, who was interviewing retired Japanese Canadian fishermen in Steveston to gather a history of the community. The uprooting and internment came as a shock to Marlatt as she listened to the first-hand accounts: ‘[I]n 1972, the internment and all the suffering it entailed was still a suppressed episode of Canadian history, not taught in the public school system and barely written about’ (Marlatt, 2009a, p. 30). Koizumi translated the interviews she conducted in Japanese and in 1975 Steveston Recollected: A Japanese Canadian History, edited by Marlatt, was published by the Oral History Division of the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. As Marlatt explains, ‘Because my introduction to Steveston was through oral history, voices have been an important part of my work there’ (2009a, p. 30), although later works creatively grounded in Steveston have added

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‘textual voices’ to the vocal interweaving (p. 45) and insisted on being told in more than one medium. The oral history of Steveston began as taped interviews in Japanese that were translated into English and edited, and supported by photographs taken during the project as well as historic photographs from the provincial archives. In Steveston (Marlatt and Minden, 1974), a poem cycle paired with photographs by Robert Minden, Marlatt tried to write the ‘motion of fluid space’ (Kamboureli, 1991, p. 118) and locate the voices of the community in the context of the eco- system of river, ocean and the migratory cycles of salmon and people. Steveston has been published twice since then by two different publishers, with poems and photographs rearranged, essays added and even a new poem written for the 2000 edition. In her collection Salvage (Marlatt, 1991), in which she rewrote selected Steveston poems, Marlatt turned to the language of photography to describe the poetic process of a first and second ‘take’ on poems written in two different decades. Rewriting earlier poems by viewing them through a feminist lens allowed Marlatt to foreground the background and make present what had been absent or overlooked. In The Gull , as will be shown, the words move towards music and performance to ‘sound some of the deeper emotional layers’ (Downey, 2006, online) of the traumatic removal of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast, their internment and delayed return. Noh’s formal difference helps expose still hidden aspects of the story that go beyond a dark historical incident that has been officially redressed and laid to rest. Marlatt has called her returns to Steveston over the past several decades ‘writing migrations’ (2009a, p. 26), but a sense of mutability and cyclical return is characteristic of all her work. When The Gull: The Steveston Noh Project was staged on 10–14 May 2006, it was performed inside a large tent, pitched in front of the Richmond City Hall, a larger municipality adjacent to Steveston that has absorbed the fishing community. The temporary nature of the tent spoke not only to the voluntary and enforced movement that had marked so many Japanese Canadian lives, but also to the fleeting nature of performance. Steveston, as Marlatt observes, ‘now exists only in people’s memories’ (2009a, p. 26), but the words, images, exhibits and performances, such as The Gull , extend its afterlife.

Noh Play, Replay and Interplay For Marlatt, the proposal to write a contemporary Noh play linked her long- term literary engagement with Steveston with her interest in Noh,

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which had begun in the early 1960s with a course in Japanese literature in translation taught by Dr Kato Shuichi at the University of British Columbia; she was fascinated by Noh’s mix of poetry, music and dance, and the ‘otherworldly personages’ and their poignancy (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 16). Nevertheless, there was much she needed to learn in order to write a Noh play, so Specht introduced her to Richard Emmert, a Tokyobased American deeply engaged in Noh as a certified instructor and performer of traditional Noh, artistic director of Theatre Nohgaku (a company of English- speaking Noh performers) and composer and musician. To prepare for the project, Marlatt read and analysed Noh plays in English translation and visited Japan to watch performances in Japanese and access Emmert’s personal Noh library in Tokyo. Her research also took her to Mio in Wakayama Prefecture and the small museum there dedicated to the emigrants who went to live on the West Coast of Canada. In Wakayama City, she also met Matsui Akira, a renowned Noh actor of the Kita School, who would agree to direct, choreograph and play the role of the shite (doer) in The Gull . Matsui’s lifelong commitment to traditional Noh has not made him uneasy about innovative performances. He has written scripts and choreographed productions, and, with Emmert, co- directed three English-language Noh productions: Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well and Allan Marrett’s Eliza at the University of Sydney in 1984 and 1989, respectively; and Arthur Little’s St. Francis, at Earlham College in Indiana in 1988. Emmert collaborated with Marlatt as her dramaturge and was the composer and music director of The Gull . According to Emmert, thinking of Noh in terms of ‘theatre’ or ‘play’ is misleading: ‘Noh is a dance drama where elements of highly stylized modes of music, song and dance are prominent and even dialogue is a stylized rendering which is more akin to singing than speaking’ (2009, p.10). Further, the physicality of the performer and the relationship of movement, text and music are primary to the art form: ‘[I]t is the physical aspects and their creation of a level of energy that builds and subsides but is always maintained that makes nô nô’ (Emmert, 1997, p. 25). Workshops on chant and movement led by Emmert acquainted participants, including Marlatt, with the musical structure of Noh. His thorough knowledge of Noh and ability to explain it in Japanese and English made him an essential liaison between the Noh musicians from Japan who played the traditional instruments – the nôkan (Noh flute), kotsuzumi (shoulder drum), ôtsuzumi (hip drum), and taiko (flat drum) – and the Canadian chorus singing in English.

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Marlatt worked with Emmert to adapt the (mainly) English words of the script to the waka style of alternating seven- and five- syllable lines set to eight bars of music: As we sounded the syllables of each line, adding one or two here, cutting one or two there, finding alternate words for those that would be difficult to enunciate clearly in chant, I learned the difference between poetry to be read and poetry to be sung. [. . .] I learned that I had to condense what was being said, rely on images to carry verbal associations, and rely on the music of the words in rhyme, off-rhyme and alliteration. (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 26) The English script then had to be translated into Japanese for the purposes of rehearsal and performance. Although he speaks English, Matsui preferred to use Japanese in his performance of the shite . In terms of the story, this seemed apt as he plays the spirit of a Mio- born mother who speaks little English (Emmert, 2009, pp. 5–6). The task of script translation was given to Yoshihara Toyoshi, an experienced theatre translator responsible for the Japanese translations of most of the Canadian plays that have been performed in Japan. After completing the fi rst draft, Yoshihara found collaboration with Matsui necessary to ensure the translation was rhythmically compatible with the dance and music of Noh. This cycle of collaborative learning about Noh was repeated at every stage in the development of The Gull in workshops, training sessions and rehearsals. It extended to the public, who received information about Noh through open workshops and exhibits, such as the Noh Mask exhibit and lecture demonstration on making a Noh mask held at the Richmond Museum, to display the work and share the expertise of Hakuzan Kubo, the Wakayama artist and Noh mask maker who carved special masks for The Gull . In short, before a Noh play could tell a Canadian story, there was a need for actors, musicians and viewers to understand at least some of the history of the art and the principles on which its stylized structure is based. Yet in the development and performance of The Gull , the historical context of the West Coast was always present, too, whether in the staging of two public readings of The Gull at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site and National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre and inviting critical feedback from the audiences, or in the multicultural background of the people involved.

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Translation and the Traditional The repertory of traditional Noh plays consists mostly of plays from the Muromachi period (1336–1573), with most of these written by Kannami and his son Zeami. The language is archaic but the stories are familiar to Japanese audiences. The plays are usually classified into six groups: god pieces (kami mono); battle pieces (shura mono); wig or woman pieces (katsura mono); mad pieces (kuruimono) and revenge pieces (onryômono); earthly pieces (genzaimono) and last pieces (kirinohmono). The types of plays in each group are further classified in terms of dance or story. Plays in the first group usually, but not necessarily, appear first in a formal programme, with plays from the other groups following in order. According to Nogami, there are many ways to build a programme, but the fundamental principle that governs the order of the plays in a programme is that of jo (initial part), ha (middle part), and kyû (final part), which is related to the tempo and tension of music, movement and voice during performance: ‘The initial part is to be represented solemnly and powerfully; the middle part finely and delicately; the final part briefly and rapidly. The middle part is the substance of the programme and the longest’ (Nogami, 1934, p. 41). Between the plays, it is customary to relieve the emotional intensity with a comic interlude of kyôgen , performed by actors trained in this separate art. A Noh play is more focused on the visual and the auditory than on plot and character development. In ‘How The Gull / Kamome Took Flight’, her introduction to the Talonbooks edition of her play (a bilingual edition which includes Yoshihara’s Japanese translation), Marlatt mentions Karen Brazell’s term for the style of many Noh plays as ‘stream- of-imagery’: Because the text is conveyed in images, a Noh play can powerfully translate psychological conflict into a series of repeating images that verbally re- enact the obsessive nature of this conflict. Noh re- enacts attachment to lovers who are transient, to enmities long-played- out, to bodies that have withered and died, to places that have become nearly unrecognizable over the years, and it conveys the emotional truth of how this attachment amounts to a haunting that is a form of intense suffering. The play in its unfolding works as a ritual release from that suffering. (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 31) Working with levels of association, a Noh play weaves phrases and images from classical Japanese poetry and other plays into its texture; these are

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‘replayed over and over from play to play, and each time they accrue a slightly different meaning’ (Marlatt, 2008). In The Gull , there was ‘a kind of space’ Marlatt was trying to reach through words, as Noh’s highly metaphorical and symbolic nature and a ‘zen feeling’, allowed her to approach ‘a large view of life and death’ (2008) in the telling of a story of a suffering spirit ‘that revolves around contested notions of what constitutes home as that place where one belongs’ (2009a, p. 49). In performance, The Gull was not presented as part of a multiple-play programme; instead, like a traditional play, it was presented in two acts, the maeba and nochiba , simply called Act I and Act II in the performance programme. Between the two acts was a prose interlude, which borrowed the comic aspects from kyôgen but was ‘both longer and more conversational’ (Marlatt, Programme, p. 5), and an integral part of the play. Before a Noh performance begins, the musicians enter, carrying their instruments. The order of entry is fi xed: the nôkan player is first, followed by the drummers with their respective kotsuzumi , ôtsuzumi , and taiko, who take their positions at the back of the stage in the hayashi- za , or musician’s place, with the flute player and taiko player seated on the floor of the stage and the other two drummers sitting on small stools. The chorus ( ji ) then enters and sits in rows on the right side of the stage, with the chorus leader sitting in the back row. (The chorus is usually comprised of six to ten men, but The Gull used five, with Emmert as the leader.) Then it is time for the entry of the actors, which is usually accompanied by music, called shidai . The waki usually appears first, accompanied by one or more wakitsure and recites his opening song. When he is finished, the chorus chants the lines. Next is the namori , where the waki identifies himself by name and gives the reason for his appearance. If he is a traveler, as the waki is in The Gull , making his way up the coast with his brother, the waki sings a michiyuki song, which traces his progress and when finished, signals arrival at his destination. The Gull conforms to the order of a Noh play described above, but tradition is translated when the waki and wakitsure begin their entrance song in English: ‘in late spring’s drenching sea-mist we return at last . . .” (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 41), a familiar language in an unfamiliar style for most in the audience. Although the waki is usually the first to appear, the focus of a Noh play is on the shite, or doer. The waki and wakitsure , who witness the action of the shite, are strictly secondary actors. The shite, usually in a different kimono and mask in each act of the play, is visually the most important presence on the stage: ‘On stage the waki is relegated to an inferior place in relation to the shite, clad in a drab costume, back to the audience and

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half hidden by the [downstage left] waki pillar’ (Brandon, 1997, p.13). In The Gull , the relationship between the shite and waki / wakitsure is played out in provocative ways that involve language, sound and image. As mentioned, the shite is a Japanese- speaking woman from Mio, while the waki and wakitsure are two Japanese- Canadian brothers, born in Canada and English- speaking. As ‘Nisei fishermen heading up the coast from Steveston’ (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 42), they identify themselves as the Canadian-born children of the Issei generation, who emigrated from Japan. Many of the Nisei as well as third- generation Sansei experienced internment and felt inferior and ancillary to both cultures. In Canada, they were estranged from their Japanese heritage through the process of assimilation that was accelerated by endemic racism and the trauma of internment. They spoke English but were racially marked. In Japan, where the population had little knowledge of or interest in the foreign-born Nikkei and their experiences elsewhere, the Japanese Canadian was visually inconspicuous but culturally and linguistically different. In Canada, they were considered Japanese; in Japan, foreigners. The Gull does not blur the formal distinctions between shite and waki , and closely follows the structure and stylized sequencing of Noh, but by giving the waki and wakitsure greater prominence, and a distinct voice, it not only nudges Noh conventions but politicizes the performance.

The Gull as Webwork The creation of a Noh play by a West Coast Anglophone author and local performers in collaboration with professional Noh artists from Japan not only offers an innovative approach to Noh, but also initiates its recognition as an art form that can tell Canadian stories. Growing up on the West Coast, Specht feels that Asian elements are integral to the narratives of all who live there, regardless of their ancestry (2008). The multicultural makeup of the West Coast was apparent in the casting. There were four Japanese Canadians, including the waki , Simon Hayama, whose hometown is Steveston, and David Fujino, who plays the role of an older Japaneseborn fisherman in the comic kyôgen interlude, who was born in an internment camp. The wakitsure Alvin Catacutan was born in the Philippines and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Specht felt the lead characters should be played by actors of Asian ancestry to ‘really get at the underlying racism against the [. . .] Asian population in a white dominated society’ (2008), which is a part of West Coast history embedded in the specific historical themes of the play.

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The story takes place on the West Coast of British Columbia in the summer of 1950. In the first act, two Japanese Canadian brothers (the waki and wakitsure) have returned to the coast to resume fishing now that the restrictions on their movement have been lifted. Their parents died during internment, and their father’s boat was seized, but as they head up the coast in a rented fishing boat, the two brothers enjoy resuming their lives and livelihood. When it looks like a storm is coming, the brothers seek shelter at the coastal village of China Hat (Klemtu). As the brothers tie up to wait out the storm, a creature (the shite, wearing the mask of a young woman/gull) appears. To the waki , it seems to be a young woman, ‘hiding her face in the fold of her sleeve’; the wakitsure sees a gull, ‘tucking its head under a wing’. As the shite sings in Japanese of Mio, her lost home, and pities the brothers as Mio birds the waki listens: ‘Listening to her is like listening to our mother – I understand only part of her Nihongo [the Japanese language]’ (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 47). Still, he must translate for the wakitsure , who as the younger brother has even less Japanese. The chorus sings a song of the young woman arriving in Steveston as a picture bride, expecting a better life and a younger husband, but finding she has been deceived. The initial disappointments and hardships of her life on the West Coast are followed by the internment. In the kyôgen interlude, an older fisherman (the aikyôgen) visits the brothers on their boat. As they drink and talk together, the aikyôgen asks after the boys’ parents, and learns that their mother died of tuberculosis in New Denver shortly after the end of the war. He remembers her fondly: ‘[S]he was quite a woman. She had that old Wakayama spirit. What a catch!’ (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 59). As they talk about the mother and the seagull on the wharf, the boat rocks, but when they look outside there is no sign of a real storm. The aikyôgen suggests that the young woman/gull they saw on the wharf might be a ghost. ‘There are stories about China Hat, you know. Some men have seen ghosts on their boats’ (p. 59). As the second act begins, the nochijite (or shite of the second act), wearing the mask of a middle-aged woman, appears again before the groggy brothers dozing on the wharf. This time they recognize their mother, who speaks of her sense of abandonment in Canada and tells them to go home, back to Wakayama. The waki asks for forgiveness, but resists his mother’s order (the English script says the shite speaks in English ‘home – you must go!’ but this line is actually rendered in Japanese, except for the word ‘home’) with his answer, ‘what was home to you / Mother, is not home to us’ (p. 71), revealing within the bilingual dialogue of the play the linguistic and cultural drift that has taken place between the generations. The shite

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then does a powerful dance of ‘grief, anger and confusion’ (Downey, 2006, online), but, as the chorus sings of her understanding of the ocean as connection, of ‘ joining here and there’ (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 73), the spirit is released from its suffering and ‘quick as a bird’ (p. 74) she disappears. The production of The Gull localized the Noh stage, costumes and masks. Set designer Phillip Tidd used Noh stage-building specifications (Knutson, 2008, p. 8) but replaced the traditional painting of a pine tree usually found on the backdrop of the Noh stage with a photograph of the island and harbour of Klemtu, foregrounding the background of the story with this image of the distinctive coastal landform that had given China Hat one of its names. The hashigakari , or bridge, which is used to enter or exit the Noh stage, was draped with fishing nets to resemble a wharf, with wooden pilings marking the four performance pillars of the stage. Margaret McKea, the costume designer, dressed the waki , wakitsure and the aikyôgen in clothing actually worn by fishermen in the 1950s, and the waki and wakitsure make their entrance carrying lantern, gaff and net. Even the shite, clad in the mask and kimono associated with traditional Noh, had to adapt to conditions on the West Coast: the mask worn in the first act is framed by fishing net and the shite wears a kimono and a grey rain cape. The waki wears a Cowichan sweater, an iconic symbol of the West Coast associated with the First Nations. This visually serves to not only locate the story but also to overlap the identity of the Steveston-born waki , who calls the West Coast home, with the First Nations who called the West Coast home prior to colonization and immigration, and are a fundamental but silent part of the story unfolding on the Noh stage.

The Webwork of Languages Marlatt calls the title of her play The Gull a ‘tragic pun’ based on the idea of being a ‘gull’ or gulled, and the image of sea bird/woman, who feels she has been deceived. The writer felt, however, that she did not play nearly enough with language. Just as Nogami saw the dense intertextual construction of the classic works of Noh as an obstacle to translation, Marlatt found it an obstacle to writing Noh because she could find nothing in the ‘classic’ Canadian canon that matched the wealth of allusion inscribed in Japanese Noh plays nor a local geography of place-names imbued with symbolic association. There was a longstanding and rich oral tradition among the First Nations of the coast, but like much on the colonized coast, what did not exist in English did not exist at all:

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The West Coast and particular places along it have a rich and lengthy oral history in the myths of the First Nations peoples who have lived here for thousands of years. But because of the federal government’s long attempt to deculturate the indigenous peoples, these are not generally known within the context of Canadian culture at large. In our literature there is little that has been written about the village of Klemtu or the village of Steveston. Neither name registers on the Canadian literary map. [. . .] Setting the play on a boat tied up at Klemtu/China Hat is a small bow towards that long oral tradition. (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 25) The lack of foundational literary texts and allusions marks gap and absence as an integral part of the history of the West Coast in general, and of Japanese Canadians in particular. In fact, part of the ‘accumulating weight of histories, memoirs, novels, photo exhibits, historic sites’ (Marlatt, 2009b, p. 24) and poetry by Nikkei writers comes from the stones of silence that are necessarily part of the story. Within The Gull , it is the spare but strategic use of a Japanese word, such as Nisei or Nihongo in the English text, as well as the terms of Noh themselves, which operate as stones thrown in the ‘fluent drifts of culture’ (Marlatt, 1998, p. 71), creating ripples that may redirect ideas in different directions and towards an awareness of all the languages operating unofficially in bilingual Canada. The Gull draws on a selective but suggestive constellation of texts to create its own network of literary allusions, including the Noh play Sumidagawa and poems by Joy Kogawa, Roy Miki and Roy Kiyooka, Canadian writers with frayed relationships to both Japanese and English, whose works nevertheless are filled with word play. Yoshihara’s Japanese translation of some of these poetic fragments embedded in The Gull does not quite come to grips with the sense of linguistic estrangement which has marked the Nikkei experience in Canada, which has included both the loss of Japanese through assimilation accelerated by internment and a troubled relationship with English, which is the language they use, but also the language which was used against them to stifle their Japanese identity. For example, Marlatt uses lines from ‘Sansei Poem’ by Miki (1991), who was born on a sugar beet farm in Francophone Manitoba where his Nisei parents had been forcibly resettled. The poem recalls images of the West Coast prior to the uprooting, but it is not just the words but the gaps between them that are crucial to the impact of the poem: the sea like marigolds

the sun our children our boats

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Yoshihara’s translation fills in the gaps of the poem in English, linking the children and ocean and sun [kodomoto umito taiyô]. The lines in translation no longer contain the absences that allow the poem to operate within the play to impart a sense of the emotional silences and linguistic blockage that are such a profound part of the history of Japanese Canadians. The work of artist Roy Kiyooka also forms part of the literary webwork of The Gull . Kiyooka, who was raised in Calgary, developed his own language, which he called ‘inglish’, a language visually and semantically distinguishing itself from English and ‘inflected by the memory of speaking his mother tongue’ (Miki, 1998, p. 50), his mother’s Japanese. The apparent slippage in terms of spelling and grammar in the quotation below is wholly deliberate; Kiyooka was trying to create a language out of English that could express the particulars of a life marked by the experience of growing up within a racist pecking order, and the emotional loss involved in linguistic assimilation: [E]verytime I have tried to express, it must be, affections, it comes out sounding halt, which thot proposes, that every unspecified emotion I’ve felt was enfolden in an unspoken Japanese dialect, one which my childhood ears alone, remember. (Kiyooka, 1990, p. 116) The war interrupted Kiyooka’s formal education at grade seven; the rest was all self-learning. As Marlatt recalls, ‘His Japanese had stopped developing in childhood, and as soon as he was in Calgary, English “thickenings” began to happen all the time but the Japanese ones didn’t’ (2008). There were many lines from Kiyooka’s poems that Marlatt could have used in the play but she ‘kept going back to those about the distance and the sea’ (2008), looking for one to link to an image of the ocean that separates rather than estranges the shores of Wakayama and the West Coast; that ‘washes against and joins both there and here’ (2009b, p. 54). Marlatt finally chose a passage from Kiyooka’s ‘Wheels’, which sounded for her ‘a sense of incredible longing and distance and separation’, to be chanted by the chorus just before the shite dances in the second act, giving voice to ‘the fragmented heart of generational difference shaped by both settlement and the historic unsettling of the community’ (2009a, p. 54): ‘nothing but a mouthful of syllables / to posit an ocean’s breath, the poet wrote / nothing but brine and a little bit of air – ’ (p. 72). This is reiterated by the shite ’s dance, which articulates the anger and dismay of a community that was both afraid and ashamed to express anger at the injustice of their unsettling and dispersal, but also performs its resolution. As Yoshihara commented, ‘Noh is the best

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way to express quiet anger, which is why I [was] interested in this particular project. The style and subject perfectly match’ (Abell, 2007, online).

The Gull as Translation and Performance The last line of The Gull is sung by the chorus, a unity of voices chanting in English of the ‘unbroken sea’ that unites rather than separates. This idea is strikingly similar to Marlatt’s fluid notion of translation, which she describes in her essay ‘Translating MAUVE’, about the creative potential of translation to rework linguistic constructions of women’s identities into another field of associations. Marlatt writes of her sense of the reciprocity of the process of her creative English translation of ‘Mauve’, a poem by Quebec writer Nicole Brossard, and Brossard’s French translation of Marlatt’s ‘Character’: There is the horizon line of language which represents the edge thought comes to, and then there is the leap beyond that borderline of words, beyond the edge of the page, which I came to see as a leap beyond the separateness of two languages, two minds. [. . .] [T]his erotic transgression of borders, corporeal, cultural, and linguistic, where meaning seeps through the poem from one mind to another [. . .] is a fiction, yes, but it carries an element of truth, like my etymological shift from malva (mallow) to maiwa (gull or mew riding that horizon line between two elements). (1998, pp. 72–3) This idea of translation operating in a Noh play of the Canadian West Coast adds a further contour to The Gull ’s important acknowledgement of the different trajectories and diverse stories of citizens that go so often unseen and unheard. That is, it suggests that instead of being a process that privileges a text or a traditional practice or a target language – having a subject and an object – translation is a process with two reciprocating subjects. In a world marked by migration and ocean crossings, translation is a necessary operation not just for the migrant but for the ‘in-place citizen’ who also has ‘a responsibility to learn new ways of hearing and seeing the issues’ (Hunter, 2006, p. 158) and must recognize that silence and absence must be given their due weight, as well. The Gull as successful intercultural theatre – it won the prestigious Uchimura Naoya Prize in 2008 – was a complex collaborative performance of linguistic, cultural and semiotic translation. Noh as a ‘traditional’ form

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of Japanese theatre offered a new way to tell a Canadian story; the story of the West Coast repositioned Noh as a style of performance that was neither ‘essentially’ Japanese nor outside history. In the process, it drew attention to Japanese, and more broadly Asian languages and cultural practices and productions, which have shaped and been shaped by the history of the West Coast; it also showed how a cultural practice such as Noh, which uses stylistic rigour, sound and the intensity of a thoroughly trained body to move beyond language, draws attention to the way that translation operates in multi- sensory productions. The vocal and somatic iterations and elaborations of what is said in two languages render The Gull exemplary of how the ‘same’ narrative can be framed in very different ways and be embedded in larger narratives (Baker, 2010, p. 119), and provides a model for collaborative translation, especially where partial cultural and linguistic knowledge must be pooled.

References Abell, T. (2007), ‘Noh Plays about Steveston?’ The Richmond Review. [Online, accessed 12 September 2010 at www.pangaea- arts.com/press/richmond-review. htm] Baker, M. (2010), ‘Reframing conflict in translation’, in M. Baker (ed.), Critical Readings in Translation Studies . London: Routledge, pp. 113–29. Brandon, J. R. (1997), ‘Introduction’, in J. R. Brandon (ed.), Nô and Kyôgen in the Contemporary World . Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, pp. 3–15. Downey, J.M. (2006), ‘Healing Japanese Canadian diasporan history – multicultural Noh play The Gull’. Kyoto Journal 68. [Online, accessed 15 August 2010 at www.kyotojournal.org/10,000things/043.html] Edwards, B. H. (2006), ‘The futures of diaspora’. Kokusai Heiwa Kenkyû Hôkoku, 24, 91–109. Emmert, R. (1997), ‘Expanding Nô’ s horizons: considerations for a new Nô perspective’, in J. R. Brandon (ed.), Nô and Kyôgen in the Contemporary World . Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, pp. 19–35. — (2009), ‘Reflections on The Gull and English Noh’, in D. Marlatt (ed.), The Gull . Vancouver: Talonbooks, pp. 9–14. Fenollosa, E., and Pound, E. (2008), The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. Edited by H. Saussy, J. Stalling and L. Klein. New York: Fordham University Press. Hunter, L. (2006), ‘Daphne Marlatt’s poetics: particulars and public participation’. Open Letter, 12, (8), 156–83. Kamboureli, S. (1991), On the Edge of Genre: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Kiyooka, R. (1990), ‘We Asian North Americanos: an unhistorical “take” on growing up yellow in a white world’. West Coast Line , 3, 116–18.

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— (1997), various works, in R. Miki (ed.), Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy Kiyooka . Vancouver: Talonbooks. Kogawa, J. (1994 [1981]), Obasan. New York: Doubleday. Knutson, S. (2008), ‘Through pain to release: Japanese and Canadian artists collaborate on a British Columbian ghost Noh drama’. alt.theatre , 6, (1), 8–17. Marlatt, D. (1991), Salvage . Red Deer: Red Deer College Press. — (1998), ‘Translating MAUVE’, in D. Marlatt (ed.), Readings from the Labyrinth . Edmonton: NeWest, pp. 69–73. — (2008), Personal interview. Vancouver, 25 February. — (2009a), At the River’s Mouth: Writing Migrations . Nanaimo: Institute for Coastal Research. — (2009b), The Gull . With Japanese translation by Y. Toyoshi. Vancouver: Talonbooks. Marlatt, D., and Robert Minden (1974), Steveston . Vancouver: Talonbooks. Miki, R. (1991), Saving Face: Poems Selected 1976–1988. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press. — (1998), ‘Inter-face: Roy Kiyooka’s writing, a commentary/interview’, in R. Miki (ed.), Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing. Toronto: The Mercury Press, pp. 54–76. Nogami T. (1934), Japanese Noh Plays: How to See Them . Tokyo: Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways. — (1938), Honyakuron: honyakuno rironto jissai. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Pound, E., and Fenollosa, E. (1959), The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan . New York: New Directions. Saussy, H. (2008), ‘Fenollosa compounded: a discrimination’, in H. Saussy, J. Stalling and L. Klein (eds), The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 1–40. Specht, H. (2006), ‘Notes from Heidi Specht, producer’, The Gull Programme, 7. — (2008), Personal interview. Vancouver, 25 February. Tansman, A. (2009), The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism . Berkeley: University of California Press. Uchino, T. (2009), Crucible Bodies: Postwar Japanese Performance from Brecht to the New Millennium . Calcutta: Seagull Books. Waley, A. (1957), The Nô Plays of Japan . New York: Grove Press. Yao, S. G. (2002), Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 6

The Journalist, the Translator, the Player and His Agent: Games of (Mis)Representation and (Mis)Translation in British Media Reports about Non-Anglophone Football Players1 Roger Baines University of East Anglia

English language news reports relating to first language interviews given by non-Anglophone football players or managers working in England often appear to have been skewed or misrepresented when filtered back from their source language context. Searching for ‘mistranslation’ and ‘football’ or a similar combination of words with an internet search engine provides many examples of players defending themselves from comments that the UK press claim they have made in interviews in their own language. This interpretative essay considers examples of mistranslation and/or misrepresentation in the interlinguistic mediation of sports news relating to non-Anglophone footballers in the context of the English Premiership. Globalization is the overarching context which creates the interlingual news events in the reporting of the football industry in the United Kingdom. However, there are also local factors which influence the mediation of this news: the hypothesis is that both the tabloid press and players and agents use spin to capitalize on the potential for misrepresentation that interlinguistic transfer brings. This hypothesis is explored through three case studies. First-hand interview data are difficult to obtain, not least because of the highly protective barriers placed around expensive players by their multimillion-pound clubs,2 and this makes an empirical approach unrealistic. Accordingly, examples for analysis were collected via a search on the internet and in the written press for incidents of UK press news information relating to non- Anglophone Premiership footballers which included reference to mistranslation or misrepresentation. The data was then narrowed down to examples which provided evidence of the processes under enquiry

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and for which I had the resources to analyse text in both source and target languages. Globalization and news translation theory are discussed first as background. This is followed by description and analysis of three examples and the concept of resemiotization/recontextualization is then taken up in the final discussion.

Globalization and News Translation The forces and effects of globalization are apparent both in the sports and translation industries. My case studies show ways in which interlinguistic mediation events demonstrate the effects of familiar elements of globalization – both in the nature of the events themselves and in their interlinguistic mediation in sports news. However, I also suggest that there may be factors which influence the mediation other than those forces commonly identified in existing analyses of the process of global news translation. These commonly identified forces tend to be time pressure created by a highly competitive global market for the commodity that is ‘news’, space restrictions and news relevance for the target audience. It is generally argued that these forces contribute to practices which include rewriting (often from more than one source), summarizing, deleting, synthesizing, reordering, the addition of background information for a different readership and acculturation.3 In academic terms, in line with the expansion of the sports and media industries, news translation, sport, and sport and the media have all become significant areas of research activity – see, for example, Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) on news translation and Bernstein and Blain (2002) on sport and the media. Sport has a vast international audience. It is big business and, consequently, big news. Sports news is, therefore, subject to a great deal of interlinguistic mediation. Globalization is significant in both fields. Bielsa and Bassnett describe its main features as follows: Two fundamental features of globalization are the substantial overcoming of spatial barriers and the centrality of knowledge and information, resulting in the increased mobility of people and objects and a heightened contact between different linguistic communities. Thus, globality is manifested not only in the creation of supraterritorial spaces for finance and banking, commodity production [. . .] and global markets, but also in the increased significance of travel and international movements of people [. . .], and the consolidation of a global communications system

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which distributes images and texts to virtually any place in the world. (2009, p. 18) There is evidence of features of globalization in the football industry in general, in the English Premiership in particular and in news reporting on that industry. In terms of increased mobility of people and heightened contact between different linguistic communities, much has changed in the UK football industry since McGovern’s research on the internationalization of the English League between 1946 and 1995, in which he concluded that the influx of foreign players came from cultures which most resembled local sources in terms of climate, culture, language and style of football (McGovern, 2002). Since then, there has been enormous migration of footballers into the Premiership from a very wide range of cultures for two main reasons. Firstly, the establishment of the Premiership in 1992 progressively brought with it huge player contracts, enabled by the injection of television money. Secondly, the 1995 EU Bosman ruling removed restrictions on the movement of professional football players between clubs in the European Union and made illegal restrictions on the number of foreigners permitted to play for clubs. This encouraged non-EU players to seek naturalization in the EU and allowed a boom in the international transfer market. For example, in the 2008–2009 season, there were 330 non-UK players in the Premiership from more than 60 countries (Stokeld, 2008), compared to 116 from a much smaller range of countries in 1999 (Lowrey et al., 2002). This makes the Premiership a rich site for interlinguistic and intercultural exchange, and interlinguistic and intercultural conflict. The global communications system to which Bielsa and Bassnett refer, which distributes images and texts to virtually any place in the world, is also significant in the context under discussion. The system enables the interlinguistic mediation events under investigation but has also facilitated the growth of the market within which the reporting of such events, across a multiplicity of modes, occurs. Football has become a huge global commercial industry.4 Bielsa and Bassnett point out how globalization studies has ‘obscured the complexities involved in overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers and made the role of translation in global communications invisible’ (2009, p. 18). The study of sport and the media, and translation studies, have both questioned the local versus global dichotomy that is often the basis of generalized descriptions of globalization and have highlighted the problems inherent in understanding globalization as a homogenizing process (see, for example, Bernstein and Blain, 2002; Cronin, 2003). There is now

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a considerable amount of work in both these fields, as well as in globalization studies, which underlines how the forces of globalization have in fact created a tension between differentiation and homogenization, ‘glocalization’ and globalization, and this is a significant element in the analysis of the data in this essay.

Case Study 1 In 2009, the Danish Arsenal player Nicklas Bendtner used the UK Press Complaints Commission to force an apology from the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror for a story which, using a Bendtner interview with Danish publication B.T. as a source, made inaccurate claims about the player’s attitude to whether he should be in the Arsenal team or not. The relevant extract of the original B.T. piece read: Jeg mener stadig, at når jeg spiller op til mit bedste, så skal jeg spille fra start ligegyldigt, hvem der er klar eller skadet. Jeg går ind hver gang med den samme tro og indstilling, og hver gang forsøger jeg at vise, at jeg skal spille fra start. (Josevski, 2009) [I still think that, when I am playing at my best, I should play from the start, regardless of who is ready or injured. I always have the same belief and attitude, and every time I try to show that I should play from the start.] The Daily Mirror quoted this, under the headline ‘Big ’Ead Bendtner’, as: ‘I should start every game, I should be playing every minute of every match and always be in the team’ (Cross, 2009a, p. 66). Even in this short extract, the summarizing and deleting practices of global news translation can be identified. The quotation inaccurately summarizes Bendtner’s words by deleting the qualification about his fitness and form and the tempering of his self- confidence via the phrase ‘try to show’. Bendtner is consequently misrepresented as having made an arrogant claim. Although it can be argued that this is evidence of the overarching forces of globalization, there are more obvious local factors involved. It is useful first to examine what the mediation process may have been and some evidence of this comes from the journalist, John Cross. Following an initial complaint from the player, Cross claims in a separate article that the quotes he used were offered directly by a Danish paper to him and a colleague on a broadsheet newspaper (Cross, 2009b). The website ‘Sport

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Without Spin’, which investigates misleading information in sports stories, pointed out that the news agency The Press Association had disseminated the news about the original Danish interview on 10 February under the less dramatic headline ‘Bendtner keen to stake claim’, but then later repeated the story that the Daily Mirror ran on 15 February under a less restrained headline, ‘Bendtner backs himself as top Gunner’ (Sport Without Spin, 2009). News agencies aspire to be impartial and accurate and follow stringent double- checking procedures.5 However, these two accounts suggest that the news story did not come to the Daily Mirror from a news agency, where the translation would have been subject to standard double- checking, but that there was direct contact between national media outlets. The translation could accordingly have been provided by a journalist-translator from B.T., possibly by machine translation as a cheap and rapid way of managing the highly competitive global market for the commodity of news, or even by a journalist-translator at the Daily Mirror. There is no evidence for where in the process the translation occurred. However, it appears that someone in either the translation process or the journalistic process (or both) elected to practise what Baker (2006, p. 114) calls ‘selective appropriation of textual material’ for a better story. It seems possible that this particular news translation process may have been influenced by what the particular paper saw as being a story that would sell papers. Such manipulation is not unheard of when there are no linguistic barriers. For example, Poulton’s account (2005) of the way in which British hooliganism was reported during the 2004 European Championships in Holland and Belgium provides conclusive evidence of the British tabloid press chasing and even managing the situations in which supporters found themselves in order to produce the kinds of violent events that would feed the story and, consequently, sell more newspapers. In the Bendtner case, the mistranslation/misrepresentation is due to manipulation of information by the Daily Mirror for profit via increased sales. Although there is no available evidence of the misrepresentation being explicitly due to mistranslation, it is probable that the linguistic barrier enhanced the opportunity for profitable misrepresentation. That there was misrepresentation is undisputed because Bendtner complained to the Press Complaints Commission, which required the following published apology from the newspaper: On 15 February, under the headline ‘Big ’Ead Bendtner’, we quoted Nicklas Bendtner, from an interview given to a Danish newspaper, as saying ‘I should start every game, I should be playing every minute

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of every match and always be in the team’. Nicklas Bendtner actually said, ‘I constantly believe that when I am in my best playing form then I should play from the start, whoever is ready or injured’. We are happy to make this clear and regret any misunderstanding. (Press Complaints Commission, 2009) The process of globalization is apparent in the Bendtner news story because his participation in the Premiership is an example of labour migration and the global media interest in him reflects the commercial commodity that football and its players have become. The motives behind the misrepresentation, however, operate on a more local level than the macro level forces of globalization. As Baker points out, sensationalizing in order to improve circulation is common in the tabloid press in most countries (2006, p. 119). It is particularly marked in the British tabloid press (see Conboy, 2006, p. 13) and the Bendtner example suggests that sensationalizing/spinning is a local factor which, in conjunction with globalization and because of the opportunity afforded by linguistic barriers, affects the exchange and translation of information in the football industry in the United Kingdom.

Case Study 2 My second example involves an instance in which misrepresentation in the UK media is described as being explicitly due to mistranslation. Unlike in the Bendtner case, analysis of the texts involved provides no evidence of inaccurate transfer that could be due to translation, but the subjects of the news stories, their representatives and journalists use mistranslation prominently to explain the divergences which emerge when the stories are mediated in the UK press. There is evidence of the kind of sensationalist reporting examined in the Bendtner example above, but also evidence of the subjects of the interlinguistically mediated stories using spin from behind the shield of claimed mistranslation to try to influence what is reported in a way that benefits them, regardless of factual or translational accuracy. The Bendtner example illustrates a news story about a non- Anglophone football player in the Premiership. However, news stories about such players are most prevalent when there is potential transfer activity surrounding a player, and this is when questions of translation are most prominent. For example, the following players were involved in transfer news stories between 2007 and 2010: the Gabonese Daniel Cousin (then Glasgow

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Rangers, now Hull City, December 2007); the Belarusian Alexander Hleb (then Arsenal, now Stuttgart, July 2008); the Ivorian Didier Drogba (Chelsea, January 2009); the Paraguyan Roque Santa Cruz, (then Blackburn Rovers, now Manchester City, May 2009); the Spaniard Cesc Fabregas (Arsenal, June 2009); the Russians Roman Pavlyuchenko (Tottenham Hotspur, August 2009) and Andrei Arshavin (Arsenal, April 2010). There are many more, but what all these particular news stories relating to the English Premiership have in common is that at some point, the agent or player claims that words attributed to the players in the UK press have been misrepresented through mistranslation or because they were taken out of context.6 This can happen to British players in the United Kingdom but it is much less frequent: the absence of linguistic barriers means the material is less susceptible to the kind of gaps in communication that journalists can exploit for sensationalist reporting. Such reporting provides the news material that can create potentially beneficial transfer rumours/news stories for players and their agents. In the first case study, the motivation of UK tabloids to create sensationalist stories to improve circulation was identified as an additional factor affecting the exchange and translation of information in the football industry in the United Kingdom, in conjunction with the conditions created by globalization. A further factor may be the influence of the agent, as suggested in the following report by Setanta of a press conference by the Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger. This is his response in April 2010 to news speculation that Andrei Arshavin wanted to leave the club, following UK reporting of an interview Arshavin had done in Russian: I just put one question mark behind the things that come back translated. Usually you have direct access to him, you can ask him where that comes from. I don’t forbid you to talk to him, but I take with a little bit of distance what comes back translated sometimes with the help of some agents who want to move the players. (Setanta, 2010) The Argentinean player Carlos Tévez (now of English Premiership club Manchester City) signed for Manchester United in the summer of 2007 on a two-year deal where he was effectively on loan and the club had an option to buy him outright after two years. On 5 January 2009, Tévez conducted a radio interview in Spanish with the Argentine radio station Radio del Plata which was not authorized by his club. English Premiership players are usually very strictly controlled by club press offices in terms of what they can and cannot say to the press – a consequence of the huge amounts of money

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involved in the football industry, particularly in the United Kingdom.7 In the interview, Tévez was ostensibly specifically contradicting reports which suggested that he had been made an offer to stay at the club and was not happy with this offer. However, the press reports in the United Kingdom of the interview presented a different story. On 6 January, The Independent quoted the Radio del Plata interview accurately under the headline ‘Tevez fires contract volley at Ferguson’ (Wallace, 2009). The Mirror, however, presented it differently. It is not the quotes in the article but rather the headline – ‘Carlos Tevez could sign for Manchester City or Real Madrid after contract row’ (Nixon, 2009) – which stretches what was said and speculates on the information rather than reporting it. In neither article is there evidence of any inaccurate information which could be explained by mistranslation. However, the news story swiftly developed beyond Tévez expressing his dissatisfaction with the way Manchester United had treated him. An additional specific comment that he would like to move to Real Madrid in Spain is reported inaccurately as having been made in the radio interview on the website Clubcall later the same day. The text indicates that Tévez made the comment about wanting to play for Madrid in the Radio del Plata interview: [. . .] The Argentinean striker voiced his frustration to a radio station over comments made by Sir Alex Ferguson that Tevez had rejected a permanent deal to stay at the club. The 24-year- old also confirmed that he would be interested in joining Real Madrid should he fail to agree a long term contract with Man Utd. [. . .] Going on to speak about Real Madrid Tevez had nothing but praise to lavish on the Spanish giants. ‘Like Manchester, they are one of the best clubs in the world and it would be a pleasure to play for them,’ Tevez added. (Clubcall, 2009) The Clubcall text is evidence of the practice of news translation rewriting from more than one source, but rewriting from more than one source in a way that produces a significant misrepresentation. The extracts relating to Real Madrid from the original Radio del Plata interview show that Tévez does mention Real Madrid, but at no point does he say what he is quoted as saying by the Clubcall website (and, subsequently, many other news outlets): Fernando Niembro (FN): Cuando uno lee en los diarios españoles, dicen: «Tévez está muy cerca del Real Madrid» ¿Hay algo de cierto de en eso?

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Carlos Tévez (CT): No, todavía ni yo sé mi futuro, ¿no? Pero como te decía, seguro que ahora están todos igual de condiciones para poder arreglar el contrato, ¿no? Un contrato con el Madrid o con cualquier club; yo creo hoy están todos en esa posición porque, digamos que hoy puedo, hoy puedo arreglar mi contrato con cualquier club, ¿no? FN: Pero Carlos, ¿te quedarías ahí en el Manchester, o te vas a ir del Manchester? CT: Sí, me quedaría, pero no, ellos tampoco hicieron una oferta para que yo me quede. (Tévez, 2009) [Fernando Niembro (FN): When you read the Spanish newspapers, they’re saying: “Tévez is very close to Real Madrid”. Is there any truth in that? Carlos Tévez (CT): No, I still don’t know what my future holds . . . no? But as I was saying to you, I’m sure everyone’s just as capable of arranging a contract now, no? A contract with Madrid or whatever club; I reckon everyone’s in that position now ’cause, let’s put it this way: right now, I could sign with any club, no? FN: But Carlos, would you like to stay with Man U, or are you looking to leave? CT: Yeah, I’d stay, but they haven’t made me an offer to make me stay.] So, if mistranslation can be ruled out, what did happen? According to The Sun , the Radio del Plata interview was followed up by a phone call from Tévez to the UK tabloid on the same day as the radio interview (see Custis, 2009). The next day, under the headline ‘Tevez: I’d love to play for Real Madrid’, The Sun journalist Shaun Custis makes no mention of the radio interview but does make a new claim ‘Tevez admitted in a Spanish magazine: “Who wouldn’t want to play for Real Madrid? Like Manchester, they are one of the best clubs in the world – and it would be a pleasure to play for them.” ’ (Custis, 2009). This is arguably the source for the additional claim. The consequence for the consumer of news is that the latter, more newsworthy story takes over and there is evidence of this inaccurate, conflated story being repeated on websites and in newspapers and various other media outlets, too. In the wake of these press stories, it was suggested by Tévez’s agent/representative, Kia Joorabchian, that the comment reported by The Sun and subsequently conflated with the Radio del Plata material ‘had been made in a Spanish magazine interview a few months earlier and was in fact a

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comment on the possibility of then team mate Ronaldo moving to Real Madrid’ (see Herbert, 2009). So, while the Clubcall article is evidence of journalism using more than one source to create a new story, it is also evidence of sensationalist reporting based on inaccurate information, journalistic spin regardless of factual accuracy, what Joorabchian called in a BBC interview ‘mischievous reporting’ (BBC Sport , 2009). The cause of the misrepresentation has nothing explicitly to do with interlinguistic transfer but the response of Joorabchian to the misrepresentation is an example of spin. Players seeking to move clubs without their employer’s agreement can make themselves unpopular as doing so can alienate colleagues and fans. It can also be costly to the player, as he forgoes certain economic rights if the initiative does not come from the club. Joorabchian’s media briefings provided the defence that the additional quote came not from the radio interview but from a different and dated source. However, he also commented, as reported by The Guardian , that there had been ‘something lost in translation from his original interview’ (Taylor, 2009), even though there is no evidence for this. This strategy is not unusual.

Case Study 3 Evidence of similar spin can be found in the reporting of a press conference held in Seville by the Spanish manager of Spanish club Sevilla, Juande Ramos, in August 2007 in which he said that he had been made a ‘dizzying’ (mareante) offer to join Tottenham Hotspur. Once this was reported in the United Kingdom, denials came from Ramos and Tottenham to explain what had become an uncomfortable situation, because Tottenham had a manager and had made no formal approach to Sevilla about their manager. The UK reports of the press conference focused on the word ‘dizzying’. The Tottenham Hotspur website claimed no job offer had been made and suggested there had been some mistranslation (see Lowe, 2007), while Ramos, according to the Eurosport website, claimed ‘translation problems caused his words to be misconstrued’ (Chick, 2007), and in an interview with The Times he claimed to have been misrepresented: ‘When I described a possible offer as “dizzying”, I only meant the kind of money English clubs can pay at the moment makes any possible offer dizzying. People have put words in my mouth’ (Balague, 2007). As with the Bendtner example, we can only speculate on where in the process the actual translation occurred – it might have been done by journalist-translators at the press conference, or by journalist-translators working for news agencies or for particular UK

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media outlets. However, an examination of the text of Ramos’ press conference reveals unequivocally that there was no ambiguity, no mistranslation and no misrepresentation in the UK reporting: A mi, me trasladan una oferta muy buena, excelente, mareante, si queréis, lo que vosotros queráis pero yo tengo un contrato con el Sevilla hasta junio de 2008, y lo normal es que lo cumpla. (Canal Sevilla, 2007) [They’re making me a very good offer, an excellent offer, dizzying, if you want, however you want to put it, but I’ve got a contract with Seville until June 2008, and the normal thing would be for me to fulfil it.] This does not, however, prevent Ramos, Tottenham Hotspur and journalists from claiming misrepresentation and mistranslation, as we have seen. Once again, in the interlinguistic mediation of information in the context of football, blaming the emergence of undesired information on a ‘bad’ translation is perceived as appropriate, even when there is no evidence to support such a claim. Mistranslation is a handy scapegoat; in fact, the journalists could have looked more closely at the translation and taken Ramos to task for his duplicitous disavowal, for his own misrepresentation of what he said. As with the Tévez case, nothing was lost in translation, but the responses of Ramos and Tottenham Hotspur again demonstrate spin for the target text context of the United Kingdom where Ramos would shortly arrive to work, spin which is designed to protect economic interests.

Discussion The first case study was an instance of mistranslation/misrepresentation by journalists within which mistranslation may have played a part, the second case study one of misrepresentation by journalists through conflation, not through mistranslation, even though translation is called into question, as it is in the third case study where the claimed misrepresentation is unfairly blamed on mistranslation by both a club and journalists. The scapegoating of translation in the Tévez and Ramos cases suggests that there is an awareness of the potential usefulness of the interlingual communication gaps that interviews in a foreign language can create when mediated into English, and agents can exploit this. Whether the misrepresentation was as unwelcome for Tévez and his representative as it was for Bendtner and Ramos, for example, is debatable. When the inaccurate story about Tévez is disseminated widely, it clearly signals the potential availability of the

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player without the player having to take the unpopular, and potentially costly, step of asking for a transfer and can lead to a transfer or to an improved contract; either way, the effect is generally one of improved economic circumstances. The migrant non- Anglophone footballer and/or his agent operating in the wealthy globalized football industry may knowingly use linguistic difference to help enhance his career prospects, aware that the fact of a foreign-language interview mediated into English can protect both player and agent from responsibility for the information. One journalist-translator who works in the football industry suggests that this is common practice: I think there are clearly cases where the foreign press are utilized deliberately to issue broadsides at the player’s club, especially at times of contract negotiations. Agents certainly know all about using this as a tactic. And the player always has the ultimate get- out clause by playing the ‘lostin-translation’ card, if the comments come back on him. (Anonymous, pers. comm., 27 May 2009) There is research evidence of news being adjusted in translation in order to serve ideological ends, for example in the contrastingly domesticated and foreignized translations of Saddam Hussein’s trial in the Iraq warsupportive The Daily Telegraph and the Iraq war- critical The Independent , respectively (see Bassnett, 2005). Ideology, though, does not appear to be what is at stake here. The common thread for all the misrepresenting participants in the examples above is that they seek to present a version which is to their advantage because of the economic gain this can bring – the Daily Mirror in the Bendtner case, various news outlets in the Tévez case via improved sales and Ramos via the desire to protect his reputation but also not to jeopardize the ‘dizzying’ deal that did in the end take him to Tottenham. For Tévez and his representative, any misrepresentation is ostensibly accidental but potentially very lucrative. This is in line with examples of cases in which agents of social power can influence the translation process more than translators; these include ‘monied clients, principled or unprincipled editors, potential contractors, and other agents wielding rather more social power than do those who merely translate’ (Pym, 1992, p. 176). Once economics constitute a factor, power becomes significant. The interlinguistic processes under investigation involve an examination of a global business but while the subjects of these processes, the players, may be migrants, they are far from being locked in the kind of power asymmetry

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debated by post- colonial translation theorists such as Niranjana (1992) and Spivak (2004), because they have considerable economic power, especially when there is a potential transfer/contract renegotiation from which they and an agent can gain. In the context of literary translation, Venuti (1998) has argued that the dominant players/agents in the Anglo-American publishing industry exert power via a homogenizing influence on the type of literary texts which are translated into English, and he has demonstrated the acculturating strategies of such ethnocentric translations. It has been shown by Bassnett (2005) and Bielsa and Bassnett (2009), among others, that the requirement for news translation to produce acculturated texts produces a similar homogenizing effect because the objective is to bring a message to the target reader in a clear, concise and wholly comprehensible way. The patronage here, like the patronage of the Anglo- American publishing industry, comes from the power of the worldwide news outlets, which demand acculturation. These conclusions are general ones, based on sizeable data. The examples of the interlinguistic mediation of foreign language interviews by non- Anglophone footballers (and a manager) in the English Premiership that I have examined are necessarily a restricted pool of data. Nonetheless, my examples do suggest that the mediation into the UK press of foreign language interviews given by non-Anglophone players (and a manager) is not an acculturating process in which difference is eradicated. In all three examples, linguistic difference, or the expectation of linguistic difference, is central to the mediation of the news stories. Linguistic difference gives journalists and editors the opportunity to spin stories, to edit in a way which misrepresents in order to sell papers (Bendtner), and to exert economic power. Linguistic difference or the expectation of the problems this may cause gives the subjects of the news stories the power to misrepresent themselves (Ramos). Although the power dynamic in the Tévez case study is not as explicit as in the other two examples, in my view, considerable power lies with the player’s agent or representative. Their economic capital enables them to dominate the foreign culture and manipulate it to their ends. In arranging foreign language interviews, agents have the power to take advantage of the potential for interlingual mediation to broaden gaps, a process which enables them to safely diffuse the information they want to diffuse, but which also provides them with a screen behind which they can hide. The Tévez example is not an isolated occurrence, as demonstrated by the list of examples above of non-Anglophone players who, personally or via their agents, denied transfer rumours which had emerged following a foreign language interview mediated into English.

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The complications of interlingual mediation create an environment which is ripe for exploitation. This is enhanced by the dissemination across a wide range of modes creating a complex network of unregulated dissemination which broadens gaps, potentially providing room for agents to create productive tension. The media through which the Bendtner and Tévez news stories are disseminated present a distinctly multimodal aspect in that the stories appear in the printed press, on radio, on television and on websites where various channels of information operate simultaneously. However, multimodality is not the main factor in the power dynamics under consideration. It is the wide variety of modes of dissemination through which the information passes sequentially which greatly enhances the effect of the news stories. The huge effect of the internet on the speed of dissemination of information enables misleading stories about players to affect huge numbers of news consumers, thus enhancing the power of the message. Because different modes present information differently, ‘translate’ information differently, what occurs to any interlingually mediated information that is disseminated in different modes is what could be termed resemiotization, defined by Iedema as ‘how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next’ (2003, p. 41). All that is being dealt with here is a kind of recontextualizing shift from context to context. In the cases where the mode changes, there is a shift in code, in signs with which the information is relayed, from radio to written press, or television to internet, for example. Resemiotization can thus be said to be occurring across contexts between Tévez’s radio interview and paper and digital press reports, for example, where it has been identified that an inaccurate story emerges due to source conflation, and between Ramos’s press conference and written press reports. In both the Ramos and Tévez cases, it is the subjects of the news stories who appear to actively seek to use resemiotization/recontextualization as a shield when those who do not have access to the source language context question the information that has been mediated. In an essay entitled ‘Inter- semiotic translation and cultural representation within the space of the multi-modal text’, Desjardins (2008) demonstrates how the aural or verbal texts in Québecois newscasts about reasonable accommodation and immigration are accompanied by images of a cultural stereotype of ‘otherness’, of headscarves, YMCA pools and sugar shacks. She comments that: Because inter- semiotic translation creates cultural artefacts, it is a part of the overall process of cultural translation, in which we (as in the

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collective ‘we’) try to understand and negotiate our identities in relation to identities that are ‘Other’ to us. In so doing, inter- semiotic translation needs to mobilize some of the insights provided by other disciplines such as postcolonial thought and ethics in order to revert some of the power imbalances we are currently faced with. (Desjardins, 2008, p. 54) As already stated, it is not multimodality but rather the sequentiality of multiple modes which are in evidence in the examples in this essay. However, in contrast to Desjardins’s illustration, what is striking about what I am suggesting is how the balance of power differs. In the Ramos and Tévez cases, it can be argued that much of the power in the interlinguistic exchanges mediated through textual translation is in the hands of the ‘other’, of the migrants. This is because, within the framework of a very wealthy business that is the football industry, non- Anglophone players and their agents are extremely powerful economically. Not only are the players very wealthy, the agents command huge fees; in the 2008–2009 season, £70.7m was spent on agents by Premiership clubs in a 12-month period (see Smith, 2009). This indicates the financial importance of agents in the industry and, consequently, indicates the economic motivation behind the work of agents seeking transfers for their Premiership clients. Being ‘other’ gives the players, and by extension their agents, a shield to hide behind if necessary, but it does not give the players a weak position like the postcolonial ‘other’ – quite the opposite.

Conclusion In terms of globalization, Miller et al.’s comment that ‘the move towards a global sports complex is as much about commodification and alienation as it is to do with utopian internationalism’ is apposite (2001, p. 4). The players/managers are commodities in the sense that they can be bought and sold and the English Premiership is necessarily a site of linguistic conflict, with the potential for alienation because of the enormous hybridity of its workforce. There is no levelling out of difference that utopian internationalism implies, far from it. The material that has been analysed supports the argument that the globalization process which has transformed the football industry into a highly marketable global commodity with near- global media coverage, strong evidence of a mobile migrant workforce and consequently heightened contact between different linguistic communities has not created a homogenized area of activity. Globalization has created an

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industry where linguistic barriers provide evidence of significant differentiation, and of the tension between differentiation and homogenization. Non-Anglophone footballers in the English Premiership create communication gaps and the potential for meaning-making shifts. Foreign language interviews may well be a subtle weapon in the armoury of these footballers and their agents. It provides them with the potential to have an impact to their own advantage on transfer activity, and enables them to be absolved of responsibility for that impact, an impact which is enhanced by the multiple modes of fast dissemination of information available. The material examined appears to uncover processes that have not yet been explored in detail and raises some questions. If linguistic differentiation is used by editors, journalists and participants in news stories in sports journalism to aid spin, to present news in a way that is advantageous to them, is it likely that differentiation plays a similar role in the process of news reporting in other areas of journalism where economics and power are similarly at stake, such as international business and politics? Or does the fact that sports news reporting is particularly transient and therefore not subject to the same kind of rigorous scrutiny as business and political journalism make sports journalism prone to mistranslation and misrepresentation for economic gain? An examination of spin in interlinguistically mediated texts in business and politics, as well as more empirically based enquiries into the mediation of sports news across linguistic and cultural boundaries are potentially fruitful areas for further research.

Notes 1. Thanks to Ben Engel, Bjorn Lofgren, Mari Webber and Leticia Yulita for their help with obtaining, translating and transcribing material, and to the editors of this volume, the anonymous referees and Marie-Noëlle Guillot for invaluable advice on drafts of this essay. 2. For example, one interpreter who worked for a Premiership club refused to be interviewed commenting on the club as follows: ‘[I]t is their strict business policy not to take part in any research studies because even if the project itself is 100% above-board there are people who could use the information contained in such a project to their own advantage and against certain clients and businesses.’ (Anonymous, pers. comm., 27 June 2009). 3. See, for example, Bani (2006), Bassnett (2005), Bielsa (2005), Bielsa and Bassnett (2009), Hursti (2001) and Orengo (2005). 4. The transfer fees paid in the summer of 2009, in the midst of a global recession, help to illustrate this: the Brazilian Kaka moved from AC Milan to Real Madrid for £56.5m and the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Manchester

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United to Real Madrid for £80m, one surpassing the other in a matter of weeks as a world record transfer fee. It is estimated that the English Premiership alone will earn, in the 2010–2011 season, well over £3 billion in television revenue (Gibson, 2010, p. 5). 5. See, for example, the description of the practices of the AFP agency in Translation in Global News (Bielsa and Bassnett, 2009, p. 88). 6. The field of enquiry for the purposes of this essay is the English Premiership but such stories are, of course, not confined to the interlingual mediation of interviews by players working in the English Premiership. 7. There are indeed PR companies who offer players specific training in dealing with the media. For example, Media Mentor have a ‘Lost in Translation’ section on their website, which presents their radio training courses as a way of avoiding ‘mishaps like Mr. Tevez’s’ referring to this specific interview (Media Mentor, n.d.).

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Cronin, M. (2003), Globalization and Translation. London and New York: Routledge. Cross, J. (2009a), ‘Big ’ead Bendtner’. The Daily Mirror, 15 February, 66. — (2009b), ‘Why it is better if Nicklas Bendtner DOES believe he should play every minute’. The Daily Mirror, 19 February. [Online, accessed 19 February 2009 at www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/john- cross/Why- it- is- betterif- Nicklas- Bendtner- DOES- believe- he- should- play- every- minute- article32574. html] Custis, S. (2009), ‘Tevez: I’d love to play for Real Madrid’. The Sun , 6 January. [Online, accessed 6 January 2009 at www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/ football/article2098889.ece] Desjardins, R. (2008), ‘Inter- semiotic translation and cultural representation within the space of the multi-modal text’. TranscUlturAl, 1, (1), 48–58. Gibson, O.(2010), ‘Sky’s power struggle heads for extra time’. The Guardian (Sport), 26 March, 5. Herbert, I. (2009), ‘Tevez voices frustration over season in the cold’. The Independent , 7 January. [Online, accessed 7 January 2009 at www.independent.co.uk/sport/ football/premier- league/tevez- voices- frustration- over- season- in- the- cold1229829.html] Hursti, K. (2001), ‘An insider’s view on transformation and transfer in international news communication: an English–Finnish perspective’. [Online, accessed 14 October 2008 at www.eng.helsinki.fi/hes/Translation/insiders_view1.htm] Iedema, R. (2003), ‘Multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi- semiotic practice’. Visual Communication , 2, (1), 29–57. Josevski, A. (2009), ‘Bendtner vil ha’ startplads’, 9 February. [Online, accessed 2 April 2009 at www.sporten.dk/fodbold/Bendtner%20vil%20ha%27%20startplads%20-%20Sporten_dk%20-%20Danmarks%20Sportssite.htm] Lowe, S. (2007), ‘Spurs red-faced after Ramos reveals “dizzying” offer’. The Guardian , 23 August. [Online, accessed 23 August 2007 at www.guardian.co.uk/ football/2007/aug/23/newsstory.europeanfootball2] Lowrey, J., Neatrour, S., and Williams, J. (2002), ‘Fact sheet 16: the Bosman ruling, football transfers and foreign footballers’. [Online, accessed 10 April 2010 at www.le.ac.uk/so/css/resources/factsheets/fs16.html] McGovern, P. (2002), ‘Globalization or internationalization? Foreign footballers in the English league, 1946–95’. Sociology, 36, 23–42. Media Mentor (n.d.), ‘Lost in translation’. [Online, accessed 10 January 2009 at www.media-mentor.co.uk/news/media-training-news/lost-in-translation/] Miller, T., Lawrence, G., Mckay, J., and Rowe, D. (2001), Globalization and Sport . London: Sage Publications. Niranjana, T. (1992), Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism, and the Colonial Context . Berkeley: University of California Press. Nixon, A. (2009), ‘Carlos Tevez could sign for Manchester City or Real Madrid after contract row’. Daily Mirror, 6 January. [Online, accessed 8 January 2009 at www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Carlos-Tevez- could- sign- for- Manchester- Cityor- Real-Madrid- after- contract-row- article31230.html] Orengo, A. (2005), ‘Localising news: translation and the “global-national” dichotomy’. Language and Intercultural Communication , 5, (2), 168–87.

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Poulton, E. (2005), ‘English media representation of football-related disorder: “Brutal, short-hand and simplifying”?’ Sport in Society, 8, (1), 27–47. Press Complaints Commission (2009), ‘Report 79’. [Online, accessed 15 July 2009 at www.pcc.org.uk/case/resolved.html?article=NTcxMQ] Pym, A. (1992), ‘The relations between translation and material text transfer’. Target , 4, (2), 171–89. Setanta (2010), ‘Boss’ Arshavin Shock’, 30 April. [Online, accessed 1 May 2010 at www.setanta.com/ie/Articles/2010/04/30/Boss- Arshavin- shock/gnid67633/] Smith, J. (2009), ‘If agents are a waste of money, why do clubs still happily pay us millions?’. The Times, 2 December. [Online, accessed 2 December 2009 at www. timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article6939848.ece] Spivak, G. (2004), ‘The politics of translation’, in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 369–88. Sport Without Spin (2009), ‘How the media spins Bendtner’s arrogance’, 16 February [Online, accessed 2 April 2009 at www.sportwithoutspin.com/football090216bendtnerspin.htm] Stokeld, N. (2008), ‘Football’s credit crunch’. New Statesman , 11 December. [Online, accessed 11 December 2008 at www.newstatesman.com/society/2008/12/ wenger- arsenal-football-league] Taylor, D. (2009), ‘Team Tevez go on charm offensive as Ferguson fumes’. The Guardian , 7 January. [Online, accessed 7 January 2009 at www.guardian.co.uk/ football/2009/jan/07/manchester-united- sir- alex-ferguson] Tévez, C. (2009), Interview on Radio del Plata. Interviewed by Fernando Niembro, Buenos Aires: Radio del Plata, 5 January. Venuti, L. (1998), The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge. Vuorinen, E. (1995), ‘News translation as gatekeeping’, in M. Snell-Hornby, Z. Jettmarová and K. Kaindl (eds), Translation as Intercultural Communication. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 161–72. Wallace, S. (2009), ‘Tevez fires contract volley at Ferguson’. The Independent , 6 January. [Online, accessed 7 January 2009 at www.independent.co.uk/sport/ football/premier-league/tevez- fires- contract-volley- at-ferguson-1228350.html]

Chapter 7

Drawing Blood: Translation, Mediation and Conflict in Joe Sacco’s Comics Journalism Brigid Maher La Trobe University

Through a case study of the comics journalism of Joe Sacco, this essay explores visual representations of the all-too-often invisible act of translation between languages. The processes whereby meaning is transformed through translation can often be difficult to detect since translation generally involves replacement, as the source text is elided by its new target language version. Some multimodal texts constitute a partial exception to this; because they operate through more than one interpretative channel at a time, multimodal texts have the potential to help make translation seen and heard. In subtitled films, for example, source and target texts are simultaneously present, reminding us of the linguistic and cultural transfer taking place, regardless of whether we are able to understand both or only one of the linguistic texts in question. Even if we rely on subtitles to understand a film, we still hear and interpret elements of the audio track; if we understand the source language, on the other hand, it can nevertheless be near impossible to ignore the subtitles. Through the juxtaposition and interaction of words and images in his comics about war and international conflict, Sacco, too, finds ways of ways of highlighting cultural and linguistic difference, though not through the creation of a bilingual text. Rather, he uses a range of semiotic and narrative techniques to highlight the place of translation and interpreting in his own news-gathering and reportage.

Comics and Journalism Sacco is a Maltese-born American who trained as a journalist. His reportage from conflict zones takes comic book form; black and white drawings and narration are interwoven with commentary, dialogue, background

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information, interviews, maps, and excerpts from newspaper reports or press conferences. He combines many of the processes of journalism, including the use of eyewitness input, research and careful fact-checking, with the creative and artistic power of visual images in a composition that uses techniques similar to, yet also distinct from, those of cinematic or literary creation, including storytelling, the control of dramatic tension, directing the reader’s visual field and perspective, and the use of irony. Dragana Obradović describes Sacco’s work as ‘hybrid and liminal’ in the way he presents recognizable and well-documented events in a nontraditional form that requires very different reading strategies from most journalism (2007, pp. 93–4). The use of comics to create a journalistic account is, of course, unusual and the general unfamiliarity with this type of journalistic-artistic production is evident in the range of labels scholars have used to describe Sacco’s work, including ‘documentary comic’ (Obradović, 2007), ‘graphic travelogue’ or ‘graphic reportage’ (Walker, 2010). I use ‘comics journalism’ in order to highlight both the artistic debt Sacco’s work owes to comics in a range of genres, as well as his scrupulous journalistic methods. Although comics have been very important in the global diffusion and exchange of popular culture throughout the twentieth century and beyond, they have been the subject of relatively little academic investigation. Recently, there has been an increasing appreciation of the artistic and literary potential of comics and graphic novels (see Eisner, 2008, pp. 148–49 on the concept of the graphic novel), especially as more and more high-quality, well-produced texts have appeared. It is now widely acknowledged that comics can treat a range of topics and themes, well beyond the ephemeral light entertainment for children or the poorly educated that had previously been associated with the medium and had resulted in its stigmatization. In fact, the pluri-semiotic nature of comics means they can be very complex indeed, and their conventions and expressive possibilities require quite particular reading techniques in order to be fully appreciated and interpreted. Sacco’s work demonstrates both the semiotic potential of comics, and their effectiveness in exploring serious and highly emotive topics in world affairs. Sacco’s best-known works are about the conflicts in Palestine and in Bosnia; he has also produced some short pieces on Iraq (Sacco, 2005b, 2006b, 2007b). In the present essay, I focus on three book-length comics. The first, Palestine (Sacco, 2007a), originally appeared in serial form between 1993 and 2001, but has since been collected as a single volume of some 280 pages recounting Sacco’s visits to a number of different parts

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of Palestine and Israel.1 Safe Area Gorazde (2006a, first published 2000) is about the war in Goražde, Eastern Bosnia. Surrounded by Serb forces, the town was declared a United Nations ‘Safe Area’ during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco visited after the worst of the fighting in Goražde was over, but at a time when travel was still restricted and the local population was traumatized and uncertain about the town’s future. The Fixer (Sacco, 2003) also focuses on the war in Bosnia, and in particular on a man called Neven, who worked for Sacco as an interpreter, guide and all-round fixer during his visits to Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, and whom he meets again in 2001.2 In interviews about his work (Cooper and Kim, 2007; Farah, 2003; Khalifa, 2008), Sacco has explained that he sees himself as telling stories he feels usually do not get told or do not get enough attention, particularly in the United States, where different ‘public narratives’ (Baker, 2006, p. 33) dominate the news media. He tends to stay longer in a place than many journalists would, and his interviewees are not generally the big decisionmakers, military men, politicians or bureaucrats, but ordinary people trying to survive in a conflict situation.3 In both Palestine and Bosnia, Sacco uses local contacts to find his subjects, and he frequently uses translators, interpreters and fi xers to overcome linguistic and logistical barriers. In conflict zones where there is strong international media interest, translators and interpreters can be in high demand. Journalists do not necessarily have the luxury of drawing on the skills of a trained and experienced professional; sometimes they may simply have to make do with someone who has adequate skills in the target language and hope for the best. At the same time, the skills required of translators and interpreters in such situations often go well beyond the task of transfer between two languages, as they may be required not only to provide linguistic and cultural expertise, but also to find talent for interviews, organize transport, make bookings, check facts and much more (Witchel, 2004; Working, 2004, p. 12). In other words, the kinds of qualities that are most sought after are not only translation skills but also journalistic and networking skills (Goldscheider, 2004). As Catherine Baker observes with reference to interpreters working with peacekeepers in the region, for many locals the job was a stop-gap or sideline rather than a career choice (2010, p. 73). Given their varied backgrounds and the stressful conditions in which they work, translators, interpreters and fi xers in a conflict zone are not always entirely impartial, a point Sacco himself makes in The Fixer, yet he concedes that ‘ journalists are dependent on these people, for good or bad’ (McKenna, 2004, n.p.).

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What makes Sacco’s comics journalism unusual from the perspective of translation studies, is that he quite often makes the process of translation visible in his work. This is in contrast to typical practice in more traditional forms of journalism, in which translation and interpreting tend to be invisible. Much international news-gathering involves negotiating a mix of languages and cultural identities but traces of these are rarely to be found in news texts. In newspapers, radio and television, questions of translation are generally considered peripheral, and an easy, invisible writing style is preferred. The speed imperative is central, and relates both to the speed with which translations are completed, and the speed with which news reports are consumed (Bani, 2006, p. 37). Thus, a newspaper article, for example, could have involved an interpreter during face-to-face interviews in the field, or in-house translation of press releases, background material or whole articles (Bani, 2006, p. 35; Bielsa and Bassnett, 2009), yet this largely takes place behind the scenes and readers are likely to remain entirely unaware of it. In general, there is the perception that audiences prefer not to have to think about the multiple agents behind a news story; the focus is rather on getting the news across in the most succinct, effective and speedy way practicable. Indeed, in an interview, the academic and former journalist Barbie Zelizer says: It’s not in journalism’s best interest for the public to realize how dependent the story is on an interpreter. [. . .] It’s kind of like the maid. You want your house to be clean; you want it to look like it always looks clean. But you don’t want anybody seeing the maid coming in and that you’re paying dirt-cheap wages. (Goldscheider, 2004, n.p.) Bielsa and Bassnett point out the gulf between the prestige and glamour attached to the globe-trotting foreign correspondent and the low status (not to mention poor pay and conditions) afforded their local interpreters (2009, p. 60), and this low status is reflected in Zelizer’s ironic comparison with maids. The task of translators and interpreters in news production is multifaceted and often involves the blurring of boundaries between journalist, interviewee, local expert and translator/interpreter, as well as, potentially, a range of ethical complications. The loyalties of a local native-speaker interpreter may be divided; Catherine Baker documents concerns about this with interpreters for peacekeeping forces in Bosnia (2010, p. 166). Interpreters and translators generally live in the community to which they

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belong, but their employment by an outsider sets them apart somewhat and, as noted above, they often lack formal training. Where they have provided input for a news item, the extent of their contribution to the finished product often goes unacknowledged, although there are exceptions, as some print outlets are now beginning to acknowledge in the byline the role of local contributors in the production of news stories (Goldscheider, 2004; Witchel, 2004). In situations that already involve significant conflict, where time is of the essence and immediate facts and objectivity are highly valued, the introduction of an extra level of complexity in the form of an acknowledgement of translation and linguistic difference can sometimes be seen as muddying the waters excessively. The widespread assumption elucidated by Zelizer is that just as we would not be interested in hearing how our friends’ floors got so shiny, we would not care to know how an interviewee was found, how their eyewitness account got put into English, what risks a translator takes by working for a journalist, or other such details of the cultural and linguistic exchange that lies at the heart of much international news. Given the widespread phenomenon of the invisibility of the translator in other domains (cf. Venuti, 1995), the invisibility of translation in news is hardly surprising then, especially given the very practical concerns that underlie it. Sacco’s work, because of its different medium, production and audience, provides something of a corrective to this. He draws attention to the presence of interpreters in his interactions, acknowledging and elucidating their crucial role, thus reminding readers of the mediated nature of much journalism. Sacco uses many of the news-gathering methods of traditional journalism but the way he presents his reportage is quite different and allows him the space and time to shed light on aspects that more conventional journalistic texts often have to elide or ignore. Less constrained by the demands of time-sensitive news dissemination, he fully exploits the multimodal nature of comics to make his interpreters seen and heard.

Multimodality and Meaning-Making As a freelance journalist working in an unusual subgenre, comics journalism, Sacco has a degree of independence with regard to expectations compared to someone seeking to publish in the traditional news media. Not only are time pressures reduced, his works have a longer life than regular journalism, especially now that they have appeared in bound collections. This distinguishes them from more transient forms of news production,

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such as reports in daily newspapers or in television bulletins. Furthermore, reader input is likely to be considerable, because while the word count may be low, attention to detail is required in processing the semiotically complex messages of these comics, particularly the painstaking drawings. For these reasons, as well as the fact that he does not rely on the patronage of a major news outlet, Sacco’s journalism can be more personal and can include a range of perspectives and considerations, including questions of linguistic and cultural difference. Sacco’s medium shapes not only the kind of news and analysis he produces for his readers, but also his news-gathering and interviewing style. To reach the final stage where the printed comic recounts a story verbally and visually, prior stages of translation and interpreting have taken place. Interviews are interpreted and documents translated thanks to the efforts of Sameh, Edin, Emira, Neven and others whose work as Sacco’s guides and interpreters is depicted in his comics; moreover, these linguistic mediators render day-to-day life in Bosnia or Palestine comprehensible and liveable for Sacco, an outsider, by providing him with the kind of practical and cultural information he needs to understand his new environment. In addition, after Sacco’s interlocutors put their experiences into words via the English of his interpreters, Sacco, in turn, performs a kind of ‘intersemiotic’ translation by recreating these words and descriptions as comics. Sacco has described this process – the transformation from spoken word into visual representation – in prefaces and interviews (e.g. Sacco, 2007a, pp. xxii–xxiii; see also Groth, 2002, pp. 61–3). He asks his interviewees for detailed visual descriptions, and in some cases even sketches, to aid in his depiction of flashback scenes. In order to faithfully recall details of his own experiences, he takes photographs and keeps a journal. His work is characterized by a combination of the non-realistic features of comics art, and detailed, at times almost documentary-like, drawings of landscapes, buildings, clothing and weapons. These include details of everyday life that help give his work added authenticity and ask the reader to focus not only on war but also on people’s day-to-day survival; such details are not usually found in more conventional journalism (Obradović, 2007, p. 98). Sacco explains that he tries to seek a balance between the factual detail essential to journalism, and the power of the image uncluttered by words. Multimodal texts like comics can provide a refreshing perspective on language, by virtue of the very fact that they often eliminate or move beyond language. One extreme example of the replacement of words with meaningful images is Shaun Tan’s picture book The Arrival (2006), which tells

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a story of migration and exile without using any written language at all. By completely defamiliarizing all language and communication, Tan recreates his protagonists’ sense of isolation and incomprehension, focusing our response on the story’s emotional content rather than details of time or place. It appears that at a basic level Sacco’s work, too, can transcend language barriers. He says, My guide had a copy of Palestine on my last trip to Gaza. He’d bring it out and show people what I was trying to do. That usually went over pretty well [. . .] they were able to look at it and say, ‘Oh, this is me, this is much like the refugee camp I’m living in.’ (Gilson, 2005, n.p.) By showing people the kind of work he does, Sacco can win trust and encourage collaboration even without a shared language. While images are by no means culture-free, and are no less at risk of manipulation than language, a recognizable drawing can be an important reassurance for people who might otherwise feel somewhat uneasy about foreign languages and the prospect of being translated. When an interviewee’s story is interpreted into English, they may have no way of knowing what message will come across, whereas if they can see the finished product in pictures, they can at least recognize the places or people depicted. This can be particularly important for groups that feel vulnerable, victimized, misrepresented or misunderstood.

Making Translation Visible Because of the visual nature of comics, we know what Sacco’s interpreters look like – he includes them in some of his panels and does not try to create the illusion that he works entirely single-handed. In one scene in Palestine , for example, Sacco meets and interviews Ammar; his friend Larry, an American expatriate, interprets for them and this mediating role is depicted quite clearly. One panel includes a tearful Ammar on the left, Larry on the right and Sacco in the middle, facing Larry, whose six speech bubbles translate Ammar’s story: He says he hasn’t worked in two years. He tried to start a business repairing refrigerators but it never got off the ground. He says there’s no work in Gaza. [. . .] He wants to know if it’s possible for him to get work in the west . . . (Sacco, 2007a, p. 158)

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Instead of just using a first-person translation as an outright replacement of the original (‘I haven’t worked in two years’ etc.), Sacco’s inclusion of Larry and his ‘he says’-reformulations draws our attention to the fact that this is translated discourse, that a third figure is present, enabling the interaction to occur. Without this framing device, the reader might unquestioningly consider the translation to be a straightforward substitute for the original utterance, or even forget altogether that Ammar’s remarks were in Arabic and reached Sacco through an interpreter’s mediation. It should also be observed that a further ‘translation’ from oral to written discourse has taken place here, as the original bilingual conversation is ‘reshaped’ to fit into the spatial and rhythmic constraints of the speech bubble. In addition to depicting interpreters relaying information, Sacco also makes translation visible by exploiting a key element of the semiotic repertoire of comics, the speech bubble. Although he never includes foreignlanguage dialogue, the double-voiced nature of translation is ingeniously depicted by varying the placement of the speech bubble, showing that both the interviewee and the interpreter are speaking in a given interaction, building the final meaning between the two of them. Escorted by Sameh, a resident who acts as his interpreter and guide, Sacco visits an elderly woman in Jabalia refugee camp; in one scene of the interview, the speech bubble comes from the woman’s mouth, but Sameh is also pictured and appears to be speaking (Sacco, 2007a, p. 235). Several pages later, the woman finishes relating her tragic story: ‘Seven months after Ahmed died, my husband died . . . He had a heart problem . . . They didn’t give him permission to go to Egypt to be treated until the end . . . He died on the road . . .’ (2007a, p. 241). In the final panel of the sequence, the speech bubble containing this last utterance, ‘He died on the road’, is attached to Sameh, rather than the interviewee (see Figure 7.1). By depicting the same story coming from both speakers, we get a sense of the way both contribute to its enunciation. Sameh’s pained expression at this dramatic moment tells us that translating the woman’s trauma is emotionally difficult for him. He has, in a sense, taken on her story as his own, hence his appropriation of a speech bubble that had previously been hers. Rendering translation visible in this way, Sacco also shows the traumatic effect the translation of conflict can have on the individuals involved, particularly interpreters working for someone like him, who needs a great deal of detail and ‘vivid descriptions’ because of the visual nature of his medium and his journalist’s desire to represent his interviewees’

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Figure 7.1 Joe Sacco, Palestine , p. 241

experiences faithfully (Sacco, 2007a, p. 219). Reflecting on Sameh’s role as mediator, Sacco writes, How many soldiers? How did they beat you? Then what happened? He helps me wring it out of the people I interview . . . And he’s heard every blow and humiliation described twice, once by the person telling me, and again when it’s come out of his mouth in translation . . . (Sacco, 2007a, p. 219, emphasis in original) Mona Baker makes a similar point about the traumatic effect of interpreting in child abuse cases or in the Truth and Reconciliation trials in South Africa (2006, p. 32). She suggests that ‘ontological narratives’ – which she defines as ‘personal stories that we tell ourselves about our place in the world and our own personal history’ (2006, p. 28) – may be the most difficult to translate or interpret, as they require the translator to take on another person’s story, all too often a painful one. Sacco’s panels certainly seem to corroborate this, as he depicts the personal toll the translation of trauma can take. Speaking another’s story, as Sameh does in the example discussed above, means living that story, at least for a time. The shifting speech bubble expresses this shared identity in a visual way, reminding readers that the interpreter does not simply parrot or ventriloquize but is actually part of the collective narrative into which each interviewee’s individual (or ‘ontological’) narrative fits. The comics medium allows Sacco to draw his readers’ attention to the position of the interpreter, as he shows that as an intercultural expert, the interpreter is simultaneously one of ‘us’ (speaking our language) and one of ‘them’ (a member of a community whose culture, language and collective experience differ greatly from our own). At the end of their conversation,

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Figure 7.2 Joe Sacco, Palestine , p. 242

the woman interviewed in Jabalia expresses her cynicism about journalists and questions what can really be achieved by yet another one observing and commenting upon her people’s misery. As Sacco prepares to leave she fires a barrage of questions at him, through his interpreter: She asks, what good is it to talk to you? [. . .] She wants to know how talking to you is going to help her [. . .] Aren’t we people too? She says [people in Germany support us] with words only. [. . .] She says she wants to see action. (Sacco, 2007a, pp. 242–3, see also Figure 7.2) Sacco makes some attempts to justify his presence and convey the West’s goodwill, but the woman is unmoved. We share his discomfort as ultimately he seems to concede he has no answer to her question: ‘Well . . . Tell her I don’t know what to say to her. Where’s my shoes?’ (p. 243). Relayed through Sameh, the woman’s speech becomes more powerful because we get a sense of two voices relentlessly asking these questions on behalf of a whole community of people. The faces crowded into some of the panels further add to this impression of a collective challenge issued in two languages, even

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though the text on the page is all in English. The depiction of Sameh’s active participation in the exchange means we see him not simply as a mouthpiece but as a fully-fledged member of this community.

Irony and the Task of the Journalist Humour often plays an important part in comics. While some are characterized by non-critical humour that serves largely as ‘a hidden reinforcement of the dominant myths and values’ (Eco, 1994, p. 38), others use humour to reflect upon and critique complex situations. Because of their multimodal nature, comics have considerable ironic potential, as the superimposition of modes permits the simultaneous expression of more than one perspective. For example, in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel (2006) at times uses captions as an expression of inner voices and feelings, creating a contrast between the commentary by the text’s autobiographical narrator and the scene depicted on the page. Sacco, too, exploits the interplay between words and images to achieve ironic distance from traumatic or frightening situations and to reflect in critical and humorously self- deprecating ways on his own role as journalist. So while he gives a sense of the potential for translation – and journalism – to create a space for cultural exchange and understanding, as I discuss below, he also displays a cautious irony towards his own desire to find voices of harmony or optimism (see, for example, Sacco, 2007a, pp. 76, 131). Expressing both hope in humanity and awareness of the complications of long-term conflict, his ironic and self-deprecating tone echoes that found often in contemporary travel writing which, in a globalized and postcolonial era, begins to turn to irony and irreverence to express the de-centred position of the present-day traveller and international commentator (Polezzi, 2006, pp. 180–1).4 Perhaps the central feature of Sacco’s irony is his cartoon-like depiction of himself as unusually small and weedy with exaggerated facial features. Most importantly, we never see his eyes behind his glasses. He has commented that this might be a way of protecting himself and concealing his own emotional response to his interviewees’ trauma (Cooper and Kim, 2007). Obradović suggests it can be seen as representing either the purity of his gaze, or the blindness of an outsider (2007, p. 101), whereas for Walker it serves as a ‘screen’ for the projection of the interviewees’ trauma (2010, p. 76). It also means that Sacco often comes across as rather naïve and lost, and he is certainly very open about the fear he feels at times in the conflict zones he visits, especially Palestine (e.g. Sacco, 2007a, p. 118).

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Sacco’s self-mockery is evident when he first arrives in Palestine. He declares: ‘I will alert the world to your suffering! Watch your local comic book store . . .’ (2007a, p. 27). In ironic contrast to his hopes of achieving great things through his journalistic intervention, the cartoon Sacco reminds us of his – and our own – sense of powerlessness in the face of war. His self-representation is a far cry from the ‘streak of machismo’ that Ulf Hannerz finds in the autobiographical writings of many foreign correspondents (1996, p. 123). While many of Goražde’s residents get excited about the presence of an American journalist in their midst, ‘One old man took one look at me and abandoned all hope that the U.S. military could rescue Bosnia. “Americans are short and wearing glasses,” he noted to Edin [the translator]’ (Sacco, 2006a, p. 190, original emphasis). Irony serves as a sure-fire way of preventing Sacco’s fogged-up glasses – and the reader’s – from becoming rose-coloured at the prospect of the utopian potential of international journalism. Self-directed irony has been said to contribute to a sense of community (Mizzau, 1989, pp. 105–6). Moreover, cartoon-like figures (as opposed to more detailed, realistic depictions) are generally believed to facilitate reader involvement and be easier for readers to identify with (McCloud, 1994, pp. 27–59, 204; Groth, 2002, p. 61). Thus, Sacco’s multimodal depiction of his own moments of apparent self-importance in ironic contrast with a decidedly unprepossessing cartoon image of himself as bespectacled and at times befuddled, enables us to put ourselves in his shoes as cultural outsiders trying to make sense of complicated conflicts. Sacco’s frequent deployment of irony emphasizes his occasional discomfort with his role, as well as the unequal power dynamic in which the foreign journalist functions. Sacco is totally dependent on his local contacts, but he also knows he can leave at any time and return to the comforts of home. I discussed above the distressing effect on Sameh of having to translate accounts of personal trauma in Palestine. Further to this, Sacco learns that Sameh’s job is at risk and he might be demoted, possibly because he has been working for Sacco. He writes: ‘It’s an office politics thing [. . .] But my presence has been the catalyst . . . Well think about how I feel . . .’ (2007a, p. 220, original emphasis). The pair of them walk despondently through the squalor of Jabalia, but in the first panel of the next page, we see that Sacco’s inner journalist never rests: ‘That’d make a good picture . . .’ is his thought as they pass by some goats nosing around in the rubbish (p. 221). The irony here comes from the juxtaposition of Sacco’s empathy for Sameh with his journalistic tendency to be always on the lookout for a good story or image, even as someone else’s life might be falling apart.5 While he gives readers what they want (realistic, heart-rending depictions of suffering), his

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self-referential irony draws attention to his own intervention as mediator and interpreter of this environment.

Mediating Agendas Sacco’s depiction of his interpreters and their work emphasizes not only the transfer of words and meanings but also the transmission of culture and experience, the sharing of stories, and the importance of building relationships and trust. This interpersonal aspect means that his work has some overlaps with travel writing, but at the same time his journalistic training and method show through and his comics offer revealing insights into the news-gathering process. Sacco highlights the journalist’s reliance on people’s generosity: sharing their stories, homes, and often-scarce food (see, for example, Sacco, 2007a, pp. 43, 75, 164, 174; 2006a, p. 35). In what could seen as a reciprocal exchange, Sacco mediates the stories of his interpreters – particularly those of Neven in The Fixer and Edin in Safe Area Gorazde – by relating them to us, his audience. In this way, they become subjects in their own right, as Sacco depicts some of the other roles they have in life – soldier, teacher, student, brother, girlfriend – and reminds us that they have their own personal struggles to relate, and an identity beyond the work they perform for him. Sacco’s interpreters are generally locals, and when they tell him about their own experiences, he retains some of their non-native or not-quiteidiomatic constructions, giving the sense that they really are speaking in their own voice. This effect is enhanced by the medium, which requires utterances to be short and simple, or broken up into several speech bubbles. Examples of some unusual turns of phrase include the following: I’m not looking for such a home . . . I want some money only to make a proper floor, not sand (2007a, p. 169) We were thirsty the whole time walking (2006a, p. 137) We were greeting each other on the street occasionally (2003, p. 38). Michael Cronin (2000, p. 42) discusses some similar examples of travel writers using non-native English forms to convey the idea that their interlocutors are speaking a foreign language. However, Sacco’s interpreters’ language is marked by non-native features only when they are talking about themselves in English, not when they are translating other people’s stories.6

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In this way, Sacco avoids giving the impression that everyone he speaks to is somehow ‘foreign’; rather, the emphasis is on the fact that in these conversations his friends are translating themselves for his (and our) benefit. The technique seems somehow to make the reading experience more authentic or documentary, as well as more personal.7 Thus, Sacco’s painstaking artistic depictions of Gaza, Goražde, Sarajevo and elsewhere are backed up by linguistic cues confirming the sense of place and of identity. In Sarajevo, the charismatic Neven, fixer extraordinaire, offers comfort and reassurance to Sacco, who feels like a fish out of water among the tough guys he encounters (Sacco, 2003, p. 24). Guiltily indebted to Neven, Sacco finds himself constantly buying him drinks, but at the same time, as a budget-conscious freelancer, he is alarmed at the way when Neven is around, ‘my wallet [. . .] eases out of my trousers and starts spewing money!’ (Sacco, 2003, p. 59). His account of his relationship with Neven constantly reminds us of the power of money in a conflict zone. In her short piece ‘10 things journalists should know about fi xers’, Kathlyn Clore includes as number two, ‘The motivations of a good fi xer should be transparent. Is he in it for love or for money?’and she seems to prefer the idea that a fi xer will be ‘passionate’ about their work (Clore, 2009, n.p.). However it seems rather naïve and even unfair to hope that in a conflict zone a fi xer would not be motivated at least partly by the prospect of earning some money; certainly, Neven wants to exploit his skills in any way possible to get ahead during a time of hardship, in which people have little to live off apart from their own initiative and imagination. And at the same time, Sacco reminds us that the journalist has quite a bit in common with their interpreter – both make a living out of conflict and pain and, in a sense, the greater the pain, the better the living to be made: ‘ “When massacres happened”, Neven [tells him], “those were the best times. Journalists from all over the world were coming here” ’ (Sacco, 2003, p. 49). As Francis Jones has observed, translators (and interpreters) are ‘individuals with relationships, loyalties and political/social ideologies of their own’ (2004, p. 712), and in a conflict situation, such as Bosnia in the 1990s or Palestine, they cannot possibly be expected to pretend otherwise. Sacco is initially rather naïve and wide-eyed when it comes to Neven’s transition from fixer to interviewee. However, he comes to learn that while Neven may be a well-connected fi xer and genial companion, he is not always a reliable informant and is wont to exaggerate his own heroic participation in the war (Sacco, 2003, p. 61). Yet in a sense, this is just a more extreme manifestation of the ambiguity that can stem from the complex combination of agents involved in translating, interpreting and news-gathering. As

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Milton and Bandia note, in exploring the translator’s role as an agent enabling intercultural exchange and shaping our knowledge of the other, we should not fall into the trap of assuming that all translators are benevolent and trustworthy (2009, pp. 14–16). Even when not relating their personal stories for journalists, translators, interpreters and fi xers play a key role in shaping international news reports, through the directions in which they guide their overseas charges (McKenna, 2004). Sacco’s work brings this complexity to the forefront by depicting his reliance on such people, who contribute to his knowledge about their country and its conflict, and indirectly help him put together his story.

Media Attention and Cultural Exchange If locals provide enormous emotional, material and logistical support to Sacco, as outlined above, we also see that he and his fellow journalists bring something highly valued to the conflict zones they visit – the capacity to transmit people’s stories to an international public, as well as a much-needed breath of fresh air in a stifling atmosphere of conflict and frustration. For example, in the isolated Safe Area of Goražde, the arrival of the press is greeted with excitement by people who have felt neglected because of all the attention focused on ‘media darling Sarajevo’. Sacco himself is ‘movement’ by virtue of his ability to come and go via the ‘Blue Road’ with UN convoys (Sacco, 2006a, pp. 6, 65). Sacco documents some of the outside influences that conflict, and the media interest in it, can bring into a place. In Bosnia, his English-speaking friends love his idiomatic expressions – figure out , nothing to write home about and you’re full of shit – and use them at every opportunity (Sacco, 2006a, p. 101). There is also a shared cultural baggage of American popular music and cinema that brings Sacco and his new friends together. He writes down the lyrics to American pop songs for his friend Riki (2006a, p. 151), and he and his Goražde friends watch Hollywood action movies on video – ‘ “American Ninja II” or whatever other video [Edin’s] brother had dug up’ – as long as the homemade generator on the river Drina holds out (2006a, p. 49).8 Neven describes a highly dramatic moment in his colourful (and possibly partly apocryphal) career as a soldier as ‘like in the Doc Holiday [sic] movies’ (Sacco, 2003, p. 43). Films shape Sacco’s Bosnian friends’ perceptions of the United States, and it is interesting to note the way Neven uses the familiar genre of the Western to ‘translate’ his own war-time experience for Sacco and his

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readers. However, Westerns – for all their dramatic shootouts – cannot be as graphic and confronting as the actual experience of war, as Sacco knows from more than once being invited to sit through what he calls ‘Gorazde’s Own Most Horrifying Home Videos’, gruesome amateur footage of wartime attacks, injuries and surgery (2006a, p. 120). The shared global heritage of the Hollywood movie serves as a way of bringing to life the tension and excitement of war, yet at the same time, for the reader safely ensconced in a peaceful country, this scene underscores just how difficult it is for most people to comprehend the unsanitized, unglamorous violence of real-life war. As Sacco’s work shows, war does not take a conventional narrative shape with a beginning, middle and foreseeable end, and it comprises a punishing daily grind to survive as much as moments of adrenaline-fuelled action.

Concluding Remarks International conflict is a site of cultural exchange in which the role of language, translation and interpreting is often ignored. Although it is not the main focus of his production, Sacco’s work often touches upon the complex interaction of agents and agendas in international news- gathering as, through a mixture of visual techniques and metatranslative reflection, he reminds us that the communication that takes place during his journalistic research in Palestine and Bosnia is by no means monolingual. For this reason – above and beyond their artistic and documentary value as investigations into the effects of international conflict on daily life in Bosnia and Palestine – his comics provide an interesting contrast to more conventional forms of news reporting, which tend to gloss over their reliance on translation. Sacco gives readers an insight into the role of interpersonal and intercultural relationships – including friendships, generosity and obligations – in news-gathering, and introduces some of the individuals mediating, both culturally and linguistically, between journalists and the casualties of international conflict. These are figures that are often invisible and inaudible to consumers of world news, yet Sacco reminds readers that his interpreters have stories and identities of their own, and that these are inextricably mixed up in the very conflicts that give them their living. Their stories provide readers with a rare insight into the skills, motivations, opinions and personal lives of people who, whether by circumstance or by vocation, find themselves interpreting for foreign correspondents, helping not only

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to convey but also to shape news content. This is an under-researched topic both within journalism and within translation studies, and something consumers of news are rarely required to reflect upon. Thanks to this willingness to engage – often through the prism of irony – with the complexity of both his own task and that of the interpreter, Sacco is able to introduce readers to the positive exchanges enabled by translation as well as to the ethical challenges and ambiguities that can be associated with the translation of conflict, including the personal sacrifice or inconvenience it may entail for the interpreter. This sensitivity to questions of language and culture mirrors Sacco’s emphasis on the effects of conflict on people’s daily lives and on their sense of identity. As mediation becomes personalized, we see that its purpose is not purely instrumental, that of facilitating communication, it also shapes relationships and narratives. At the same time, Sacco’s emphasis on his local interpreters gives him a degree of distance from his subjects. It helps him avoid speaking for his interviewees, allowing them instead to speak for themselves, and through English-speaking members of their own community.9 The different stages of mediation from interview to published comic are made visible through Sacco’s deployment of a range of semiotic, stylistic and narrative techniques offered by his medium. He uses space and framing, speech bubbles, accents and ironic self-reflexivity in order to depict cultural and linguistic exchange, as well as his own intersemiotic mediation, as he takes the content of his interviews and his own experiences and research, and reformulates them as comics. Through this interaction between medium and method, his work provides an example of how multimodal texts can explore questions of language and translation in ways that set them apart from other media.

Notes 1. More recently, Sacco has returned to Palestine for his book, Footnotes in Gaza (2009), but this later work is not examined here. 2. Another multimodal depiction of the war in Sarajevo is Joe Kubert’s (1996) comic Fax from Sarajevo. Kubert’s panels are supplemented by photographs and faxes sent by his Bosnian friend during the early years of the siege. 3. One exception to this is his fleeting encounter with Radovan Karadžić (Sacco, 2005a). Frustrated at his own inability to reconcile the rather ordinary-looking man before him with the crimes for which he is indicted, with self-irony and black humour Sacco focuses largely on the antics of his fellow journalists. At the end, we see scenes of destruction in Sarajevo, including a family home damaged

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6.

7.

8.

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by shelling, perhaps indicating that for Sacco, the most meaningful understanding of war comes from reflecting upon its effects on ordinary people. Walker (2010), too, notes the affinity between Sacco’s work and travel writing. One is reminded here of the title of Edward Behr’s book on his career as a foreign correspondent, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? (1982), another blackly ironic assessment of the journalist’s craft. Behr overheard a British television reporter asking this question of refugees from the former Belgian Congo. Tom Stoppard’s (2006) play Rock ’n’ Roll uses a similar technique. The play is entirely in English; when the protagonist Jan is in his native Czechoslovakia, his language is unaccented (since in Czech, the language he is ‘really’ speaking, he has no accent), whereas when he is in England, he has a Czech accent. See also Baccolini and Zanettin (2008) on the use of broken English to express trauma in Spiegelman’s Maus comics (2003), in which the English of Holocaust survivor Vladek bears traces of the anguish he has suffered. In his portrait of Zalmai Yawar, a young Afghan man who worked as a translator and fixer for a number of foreign correspondents in Kabul from 2001–2003, Eric Goldscheider writes that Yawar ‘formed a rapport with the reporters, in part through his knowledge of American culture and colloquialisms gained from novels, history books, and movies. He’s a big Clint Eastwood fan’ (2004, n.p.). See Polezzi, 2006, pp. 179–80 on the reluctance of contemporary travel writers to ‘speak for’ their subjects.

References Baccolini, R., and Zanettin, F. (2008), ‘The language of trauma: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and its translations’, in F. Zanettin (ed.), Comics in Translation . Manchester: St. Jerome, pp. 99–132. Baker, C. (2010), ‘The care and feeding of linguists: the working environment of interpreters, translators, and linguists during peacekeeping in BosniaHerzegovina’. War & Society, 29, (2), 154–75. Baker, M. (2006), Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account . London: Routledge. Bani, S. (2006), ‘An analysis of press translation process’, in K. Conway and S. Bassnett (eds), Translation in Global News: Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Warwick 23 June 2006 . Coventry: University of Warwick Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, pp. 35–45. [Online, accessed 17 June 2009 at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ctccs/research/tgn/events/ tgn/translation-in-global-news-proceedings.pdf] Bechdel, A. (2006), Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Behr, E. (1982), Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? A Foreign Correspondent’s Life Behind the Lines. London: New English Library. Bielsa, E., and Bassnett, B. (2009), Translation in Global News . London: Routledge. Clore, K. (2009), ‘10 things journalists should know about fixers: covering minorities’. European Journalism Centre, 4 February. [Online, accessed 17 June 2009 at www.ejc.

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net/magazine/article/10_things_journalists_should_know_abouat_fixers_in_ europe/] Cooper, D., and Kim, A. (2007), ‘Joe Sacco’s “Palestine”’. American Public Media , 15 December. [Online, accessed 19 June 2009 at http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/12/12/sacco/] Cronin, M. (2000), Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation . Cork: Cork University Press. Eco, U. (1994), ‘The world of Charlie Brown’, William Weaver (trans.), in Apocalyspe Postponed . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 36–44. Eisner, W. (2008), Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist . New York: W.W. Norton. Farah, C. (2003), ‘Safe area America’. Salon , 5 December. [Online, accessed 19 June 2009 at http://dir.salon.com/story/books/int/2003/12/05/sacco/print. html] Gilson, D. (2005), ‘The art of war’. Mother Jones, July/August. [Online, accessed 19 August 2008 at www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2005/07/joe_sacco.html] Goldscheider, E. (2004), Found in translation. Boston Globe Magazine , 24 October. [Online, accessed on 4 June 2009 at www.eric-goldscheider.com/id20.html] Groth, G. (2002), ‘Joe Sacco, frontline journalist: why Sacco went to Gorazde’. Comics Journal , Winter, 55–72. Hannerz, U. (1996), Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Jones, F. R. (2004), ‘Ethics, aesthetics and décision: literary translating in the wars of the Yugoslav succession’. Meta , 49, (4), 711–28. Khalifa, O. (2008), ‘Joe Sacco on Palestine’. Al Jazeera , 19 July. [Online, accessed 19 June 2009 at http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/11/20085251 85042679346.html] Kubert, J. (1996), Fax from Sarajevo: A Story of Survival . Milwaukie, Oregon: Dark Horse Comics. McCloud, S. (1994), Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art . New York: HarperPerennial. McKenna, K. (2004), ‘Brueghel in Bosnia’. L.A. Weekly, 1 January. [Online, accessed on 19 August 2008 at www.laweekly.com/2004-01-01/news/brueghelin-bosnia/] Milton, J., and Bandia, P. (2009), ‘Introduction: agents of translation and translation studies’, in J. Milton and P. Bandia (eds), Agents of Translation . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1–18. Mizzau, M. (1989), L’ironia: la contraddizione consentita . Milan: Feltrinelli. Obradović, D. (2007), ‘The aesthetics of documentary war reportage: Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde ’, in C. Baker, C. J. Gerry, B. Madaj, L. Mellish and J. Nahadilovà (eds), Nation in Formation: Inclusion and Exclusion in Central and Eastern Europe. London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, pp. 93–103. Polezzi, L. (2006), ‘Translation, travel, migration’. The Translator, 12, (2), 169–88. Sacco, J. (2003), The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly. — (2005a), War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995–96 . Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly.

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— (2005b), ‘Complacency kills’. The Guardian Weekend , 26 February, 16–24. [Online, accessed 22 June 2009 at http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/ documents/2005/02/25/sacco1.pdf] — (2006a), Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992–95. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books. — (2006b), ‘Trauma on loan’. The Guardian Weekend , 20 January. [Online, accessed 22 June 2009 at http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/ documents/2006/01/20/fullsacco1.pdf] — (2007a), Palestine . Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books. — (2007b), ‘Down! Up!’ Harper’s Magazine , April, 47–62. — (2009), Footnotes in Gaza . London: Jonathan Cape. Spiegelman, A. (2003), Maus: A Survivor’s Tale . 2 vols. New York: Pantheon. Stoppard, T. (2006), Rock ’n’ Roll . London: Faber and Faber. Tan, S. (2006), The Arrival . Sydney: Lothian. Venuti, L. (1995), The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation . London: Routledge. Walker, T. (2010), ‘Graphic wounds: the comics journalism of Joe Sacco’. Journeys, 11, (1), 69–88. Witchel, E. (2004), ‘The fi xers’. Committee to Protect Journalists , 13 October. [Online, accessed 16 June 2009 at http://cpj.org/reports/2004/10/fi xers.php] Working, R. (2004), ‘Speaking in tongues: you’re only as good as your translator’. Columbia Journalism Review, January/February, 12–13.

Chapter 8

Silenced Images: The Case of Viva Zapatero! Federico M. Federici Durham University

Introducing an Issue of Audiovisual Translation The Italian docu-film Viva Zapatero! (2005) [lit. ‘Long Live Zapatero!’] was written, directed and co- edited by Italian actress, comedienne and filmdirector Sabina Guzzanti. The film documents, from Guzzanti’s point of view, the events leading to the banning of her satirical television programme RaiOt. In 2003, RaiOt, directed and performed by Guzzanti, commissioned by RAI, the Italian State- owned national television network, and scheduled for a late night slot, was taken off air after the first episode, as Silvio Berlusconi’s media corporation Mediaset filed a suit for defamation against the programme. Despite an extremely successful debut in terms of audience share, Guzzanti’s show was axed while its production still continued; the show was censored following a sketch in which Guzzanti gave financial details of Berlusconi’s business affairs. The legal suit was dismissed in 2004 and Guzzanti was completely acquitted of the accusation of defamation. The title Viva Zapatero! is an intertextual reference to Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata! (1952), while, at the same time, paying homage to Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero for his legislative initiative to prevent political power from managing state television and thus invading and controlling public information. Guzzanti’s docu-film aims to describe the conflict of interest arising from retaining control of both public and private television networks and executive political power, to show the effects of legally imposed censorship (filing a suit for 20 million euros), and to experiment with film editing so as to produce a memorable narrative. Co- editing the film with the digital editor Clelio Benevento, Guzzanti intended to adopt innovative techniques to narrate the events surrounding the censorship of RaiOt. Renowned in Italy as the female impersonator of Berlusconi, Sabina Guzzanti released Viva Zapatero! with English subtitles for the 2005 Venice Film Festival, where it was met with a 12-minute applause. Italian audiences

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are familiar with Guzzanti as a theatre actress, impersonator and satirical television performer; following on from her 1985 graduation from the acting academy Silvio D’Amico in Rome, her popularity came through her participation in the talented and experimental group of performers and writers who created the RAI broadcast La TV delle ragazze (‘The Girls’ TV’, 1988). In the 1990s, her career took an even sharper satirical turn and led to her famous impersonations of left-wing politician Massimo D’Alema (Italian Prime Minister at the time of the 1998 Kosovo War) and of rightwing Prime Minister Berlusconi, among many others. Guzzanti’s third film, Viva Zapatero! presents both satirical and aesthetic challenges for the viewer. From its anchoring sequence, the docu-film positions itself within the European context of satirical programmes: Guzzanti impersonates Berlusconi in a sketch in English together with British satirist Rory Bremner, who impersonates Tony Blair. Thus, the docu-film initiates Guzzanti’s discourse from the perspective of a foreign audience. Guzzantias-Berlusconi meets Bremner- as-Blair, and after a short sketch on how to run effective press conferences with friendly journalists, Bremner and Guzzanti take off their masks to introduce the story of Guzzanti’s ban to the real journalists attending their sketch. After this preamble, the opening soundtrack is followed by a voice- over introducing Guzzanti as a buffoon. The chronology of how she was barred from performing on public television quickly unfolds in the first five minutes as she recounts the convoluted way in which she was taken off the RAI schedule altogether following the RaiOt case. To reconstruct the event, she reads newspaper headlines that appear in the frame, links television footage with old sketches and planned and impromptu interviews, and edits private recordings into the docu-film so as to finish her narrative with clips showing thousands of people coming to the theatre to attend her most recent (post- RAI ban) satirical stand-up comedy performance. Guzzanti constructs her narrative by assembling interviews, first with Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, two investigative journalists also banned from broadcasting on RAI after discussing the financial situation of Berlusconi’s corporations, and then with the board members of RAI who made the decision to axe RaiOt . Her journey continues with interviews attempting to define satire with comedians (Daniele Luttazzi, Dario Fo) and discussing satire and censorship with intellectuals (Luciano Canfora), as well as with politicians belonging to both ruling and opposition parties. People’s voices often cut to shots of Italian newspapers read by the Italian voice- over, and the opinions of the Italian press are contrasted with foreign newspapers and journalists reporting on Italy. Guzzanti uses several

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filming techniques for the interviews that are sometimes shot on a set, often outdoors, most of them impromptu. The shots are often medium close-up zooming in, the close-ups are followed by quick panning scenes, with welltimed cuts, and, for emphasis, individual shots are digitalized in jigsaws of minuscule mirror images. Juxtaposed with the interviews, Guzzanti edits in material from her television broadcasts, her stand-up in theatre and clips extracted from other Italian comedians’ shows and from French, British and Dutch broadcasts. Her subjective narrative voice ‘Sono un buffone ’ [I am a buffoon] allows her to play the satirist role in the Italian theatrical tradition of commedia dell’arte and to colour the register of narration. The narrative of Viva Zapatero! is not multilingual, although the 80-minute film does include sequences in English, French, Dutch and Danish. In the rendering of all of these components into English, the subtitles appear in different colours – not always to distinguish different speakers – and appear in different positions on the screen, so the viewer has to look for them at the top or bottom of the screen. To illustrate this complexity, the shot in Figure 8.1 is emblematic. The Anglophone audience is presented with a shot of an Italian newspaper with the English subtitles in white; at the same time as reading the subtitles, words in the Italian newspaper are being highlighted, thus drawing the eye towards the Italian text. In addition to the multiple visual signs, the narrator’s voice in Italian is paraphrasing the text being highlighted and there is a circus- style musical score.

Figure 8.1 Shot from chapter 3, 21’ 05” of Viva Zapatero!

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Viva Zapatero! narrates Guzzanti’s own story, which is, in turn, merged into a complex text with the use of material from different sources, such as shots picturing original newspaper headlines, steadicam videos, 35mm films, television recordings, parliamentary recordings, recordings of theatrical performances, soundtracks and voice- overs. If we follow Baldry and Thibault in defining modality as a semiotic resource – that is, something ‘used for the purposes of making meaning’ (2006, p. 18) – then this docufilm can be described as a multimodal text embedded in Italian culture, working as it does with an overabundance of resources to construct its meaning. The composite texture of Viva Zapatero! renders it a multimodal text whose codes refer to many means of expression, and whose modalities have different functions in the construction of meaning – that is, newspapers create the socio-historical context, the interviews give authenticity and so on. Adopting a Hallidayan functional linguistic perspective, the components can be said to include scripts and unplanned spoken messages, visual elements, elements of timing, gestures, sartorial elements and casual background noises; and in each of these, every form of meaning making is analysed as part of the multimodal text (see also Díaz Cintas and Ramael, 2007, pp. 45–55). Thus, audiovisual materials such as Viva Zapatero! are complex multimodal texts whose language and ‘Extralinguistic Cultural References’ or ECR (Pedersen, 2008, p. 102) represent a cultural and translational challenge, especially when the author translates the multimodal complexity into a different language by integrating an additional code, the subtitles. This essay first looks at Viva Zapatero! as a docu-film in relation to the translation challenges of the genre. I then outline my methodology of analysis, which draws upon current research in Audiovisual Translation (AVT) so as to discuss one significant and emblematic example. From this microanalysis, the paper broadens into the issue of censorship to reach a definition of oblique censorship.

A Question of Genre and Translation The docu-film’s mix of scripted dialogues, real interviews and written documents on screen creates what Maria Pavesi succinctly terms a ‘multimodal setting’, referring to film dialogue in which ‘spoken language typically takes place in a shared context in which verbal signs co- occur with non-verbal signs’ (2008, p. 88). The multimodal complexity of Viva Zapatero! increases the translational constraints, raising the issue of whether multimodal

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texts are doomed to self- censorship in translation, as the present essay seeks to show. This very same complexity is part of the docu- film genre and of the authorial voice. In Viva Zapatero!, author and translator may be referred to by adopting Norman Fairclough’s definition of ‘text producers’ (2003) because the final scriptwriting of the docu-film is indeed polyphonic. Guzzanti’s perception of cinema focuses on its message and draws upon traditional notions of directors as authors, thus leaving her views quite remote from the international shifting trends of audiovisual consumption: Ho pensato al cinema perché ero convinta che fosse una storia forte, pensavo che fosse abbastanza potente, pur essendo un documentario, da andare nelle sale cinematografiche. Anche vederlo in tanti è importante. (Bandirali, 2005, p. 5) [I thought of cinema because I was persuaded that, although a documentary, it was an effective story; I thought that it was powerful enough to be projected in cinemas. It is also important that many people watch it]. In the technological era of multi- support releases of fi lms (Blu-ray, DVD, streamed, satellite, internet television, etc.), Guzzanti’s notion of cinema appears to be romanticized, but her international aspirations do indeed need mediation into a widely used language. Just as she sees English subtitles as the mode of international circulation, she also sees cinema from an almost activist perspective, which values the multimodal fi lmic text and its effects beyond the viewers’ immediate consumption. An experienced and observant writer and performer in theatre and television, her view is not born out of naivety. Courageously fighting against the dominant powers in cinematic production and distribution in Italy (cf. Freedom of Press Reports, 2006 to 2010), Guzzanti wants the physical experience of cinema- going to become part of her denunciation, a way of reclaiming the public space (as shown by the clips of the audience attending her live performance). Her notion of cinema refers to the Italian tradition of director-auteur, as defined by André Bazin. For Bazin, Italian directors were text producers more than ‘clever technicians’ and they were ‘true auteur[s]’ who gave shape to the scripts (Bazin, 1967, p. 63). Guzzanti’s experimental editing of mixed material aims to create a memorable docu- fi lm held together by the director’s cut and her voiceover. This perspective makes it easier to understand why Guzzanti relies on cinema as a creative setting within which the choice of a subjective

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narrative voice is a fundamental choice (una scelta fondamentale). She explains that La cosa che avevo chiara da subito, o meglio da quando avevo stabilito che l’inizio sarebbe stato ‘Io sono un buffone’, era che non potesse essere una voce giornalistica, oggettiva, ma che dovesse essere compatibile con il buffone, il narratore della storia. (Bandirali, 2005, p. 10) [What was clear in my mind from the beginning, or rather, from the moment when I decided that the beginning would be ‘I am a buffoon’, was that it could not be a journalistic voice, an objective voice, it had to be compatible with the buffoon, with the narrator of the story]. Thus, the choice of her own voice as the narrative voice is rooted and explained in her perception of cinematography. This authorial perspective is crucial to understanding the aesthetic values underlying the assembling of her film as well as the form of creative translation that the subtitles try to achieve. This authorial perspective is important in current products of the genre. As a genre, the docu-film is hybrid. Jack Ellis and Betsy McLane define its main features as (1) its subject, a ‘focus on something other than the human condition involving individual human feelings, relationships, and actions: the province of narrative fiction and drama’; (2) its purpose: ‘what filmmakers are trying to say about the subjects of their films’; (3) its form, ‘documentary filmmakers limit themselves to extracting and arranging from what already exists rather than making up content’; and (4) its methods and techniques of production: ‘the use of nonactors’, ‘shooting on location’. ‘[M]anipulation of images and sounds is largely confined to what is required to make the recording of them possible, or to make the result seem closer to the actual than inadequate techniques might’ (2005, pp. 2–3). The particular qualities of Viva Zapatero! necessitate definitions of ‘author’ and ‘translator’ that take into account the complexity of the artefact. Its combination of different modalities of expression contributes to creating the filmic text . Guzzanti experimented with editing – the sequence after 20’ 22”, for instance, illustrates allegorical use of technology to integrate real material with the narrative voice: by multiplying the close-up shot of a single person until it fills the screen with hundreds of miniatures of the original shot, she satirizes the person’s claim of speaking on behalf of the Italian population. The processes involved in deploying the different modalities to produce a composite and coherent text are at the same time the director’s aesthetic challenges and characteristics of the genre.

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Prior to looking at a specific example of the use of subtitles in the docufilm, it must be clarified that attempting to render such an intricate multimodal text would lead any expert subtitler to face critical issues. Some of these translation issues are linked to spotting (also known as cuing or timing), which refers to deciding the exact time when a subtitle appears and disappears from the screen (cf. Díaz Cintas and Ramael, 2007, pp. 30–8; Perego, 2008, pp. 212–13). In Guzzanti’s film, the blend of different forms of discourse – newspapers, interviews and television clips – affects the aesthetic product, as the film already uses captions at the bottom of the screen to introduce speakers, giving their name and their occupation. The captions in Italian appear to have been burnt onto the master copy and cannot be digitally substituted by other captions in English (cf. Díaz Cintas and Ramael, 2007, pp. 22–3). Additionally the captions, which, along with written material, often occupy the bottom of the shot, must coexist with the English subtitles that render all the other informative components (voiceover, different speakers, written texts and so on). Timing the subtitles to the pace of the voice- over while navigating through Guzzanti’s experimental editing would not have been easy. The question of genre, from a translation perspective, becomes a question of timing, of translation cohesion, of cultural references. The meaning-making process is hampered because the discourse is a dialogical exchange between the voice- over narrative and the written documents filling the visual space, and because the docufilm relies on ‘Extralinguistic Culture-bound References’ (Pedersen, 2008, p. 102). To illustrate these points, I draw upon a specific framework of analysis, presented in the next section, to examine the renderings of the multimodal text and to argue that the translation choices constitute forms of oblique censorship.

Multimodal Analysis: Visual Grammar and Analysable Units This essay presents research that was carried out by adopting the analytical framework of Anthony Baldry and Paul Thibault, who devised a flexible tool for multimodal transcription (2006). Their framework of analysis draws upon notions of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, such as the notion of meaning created by the message and the context of creation, which they expand to the codes of multimodal writing – where verbal and non-verbal codes work together, as happens in films, websites and so on. The framework can be adjusted in order to carry out investigations into

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the ways in which translated multimodal texts drive their readers towards the construction of meaning. Previously used for the analysis of subtitles by Christopher Taylor (2003), this framework offers a versatile way of looking at meaning-making units for multimodal texts such as film, television adverts, newspaper adverts and every combined message in which codes mix. Parsing complex meaning into recognizable units with a functional and systemic notion of grammar, the model makes the process of analysis more effective, as it permits the investigation of verbal and extra-verbal issues such as those embedded in the genre of Viva Zapatero! and in the film itself that have an impact on the construction of meaning. The docu-film’s semiotic signs integrate the narrative of the voice- over, with the visual prompts that remain in Italian (contained in the newspaper articles and headings). English subtitles that include content from the voice- over as well as text from the Italian newspapers, used as evidence in several sequences of Guzzanti’s work, represent what Gottlieb labels an ‘intersemiotic translation’, defined as a translation in which ‘the one or more channels of communication used in the translated text differ(s) from the channel(s) used in the original text’ (2005, p. 3). The Baldry-Thibault framework allows us to compile a visual corpus of blackouts in the transfer of meaning. The microanalysis presented below offers an idea of the crucial, macroscopic limitations in the transfer of meaning, through subtitles which may be considered an obsolete translation technique in dealing with multilayered and multimodal products such as Viva Zapatero!. Sequences of the docu-film were carefully parsed to scrutinize their visual grammar ; in other words, an examination was carried out of the individual simpler communicative components that combine to bring forward the nuances of meaning in audiovisual texts. These nuances are provided by the multisemiotic composition of the message, but also by the multimodal use of them in the meaning-making process (see Baldry and Thibault, 2006). The elements to consider are the visual frame, the visual image, the kinesic action in the frame, the soundtrack details and, for the purposes of this study, the position and content of subtitles. All the elements in the docu-film message are from different semiotic systems mainly referring to the original language, Italian and its main context of use, Italy; interlingual transfer of these diverse elements with a sole translation mode, subtitling, is at the best of times an enormous challenge that Viva Zapatero! makes even more difficult. The Baldry-Thibault model considers communication a multimodal combination of the individual elements. Each element acts in exactly the same way as a grammatical item functions for a language: providing atomic

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information that constructs more complex relations of meaning with its context. These relations are constructed in combinations that establish the field, tone, register and mode of the communication. I have simplified the explanation of this model, due to space constraints, but the simplification also aims to attest to the strong correlation between notions of visual grammar and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar. This inherent correlation makes crucial the link with Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (discussed in the next section), whereby cohesion and coherence in multimodal texts are achieved through their visual grammar and its discursive syntactical combinations. A wealth of examples might have been used in the following section, but the selection fell on a key sequence to illustrate the crucial limitations of the chosen translation mode. Samples 1 and 2: Anchoring the Content Using Christiane Nord’s functionalist definition, docu-film subtitling could be considered a documentary translation because it ‘serves as a document of a source culture communication between the author and the source text recipient’ (1991, p. 72). Guzzanti uses experimental techniques to organize her discourse and endeavours to anchor the Italian context in which her satirical show was taken off air as one underscored by the political arrogance of Silvio Berlusconi’s party (at the time called Forza Italia). The particular context is as follows: after their success at the 2001 Administrative Elections, Berlusconi and his coalition (at the time called Casa delle Libertà) decided to regulate media discourse more strictly to favour a pro- government press. At a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, Berlusconi announced that well-known journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, together with satirist Daniele Luttazzi, had been de facto ostracized from RAI channels because their shows had attacked democracy by criticizing the government; in actual fact, their investigative reports had focused on Berlusconi’s financial and political dealings. Guzzanti’s first episode of RaiOt reported factual information concerning Berlusconi’s businesses, yet the media corporation Mediaset filed a suit for defamation for an amount of compensation that apparently persuaded the board of RAI to pre- empt the economic risk by axing the show. The complete acquittal of Guzzanti was apparently not a good enough reason to reinstate her shows, either. In the case of Santoro, his Sciuscià programme had conducted enquiries into the new laws in favour of the prime minister, and soon after comparing Berlusconi to Mussolini his show was taken off air. Biagi’s journalistic investigations had looked into the affairs of Berlusconi’s corporations and

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holdings. Guzzanti uses interviews with both banned journalists and clips from their shows to contextualize the wider picture surrounding the narrative of her own ban. The shots in Figures 8.2 and 8.3 are key indicators of the multimodal complexity of the film. The sequence shows a politician from Berlusconi’s party who is strongly arguing that nobody has the right to compare Berlusconi to Mussolini on RAI programmes. The context is explained to an Italian audience with captions yet these are not translated in the subtitled version, thus excluding international audiences from even a verbal understanding of some of the ECR. Guzzanti’s attempt to emphasize that it is not just satire but also investigative journalism which is censored is undermined for the Anglophone audience by the translation mode. This example also shows technical slips in subtitling, where the spotting, which is undeniably complicated (cf. Díaz Cintas, 2001, pp. 204–7), goes wrong. Drawing on Gottlieb’s recent semiotic taxonomy of multidimensional translation (2005), these shots show what happens when four different signifying codes (speech, image, subtitles, toptitles) operate at the same time: the source text is too complex for one single mode of translation and the multimodal message is thus only partially conveyed – as will be seen later when looking at the Anglophone reviews of the film. The Baldry-Thibault framework allows researchers to make contrastive comparisons of shots in tabular form, which are not presented here as the focus is on a specific tool of this framework: namely, multimodal transcription which has been used here for a deeper analysis of single shots in this film so as to emphasize emblematic constraints of the translation mode chosen (subtitles). In the following shots the Italian audience is provided with a visual shot of a television show with an irate speaker against the background of a silenced studio. This is led in and out of the docu-film by Guzzanti’s voice- over, and the caption ‘Ultima puntata di Sciuscià di Michele Santoro’ [‘Last broadcast of Sciuscià , Michele Santoro’s talk show’]. The politician from Berlusconi’s party says, ‘We believe it’s a matter of freedom to not [sic] have to hear someone compare us to the Mafia, or Berlusconi to Mussolini on public TV’. The sentence takes three seconds to say and three single frame shots. Anglophone viewers need to decode the non-linguistic signs that provide context at the same time as reading the subtitles that integrate both the speaker and voice- over content. In addition to this extra level of attention demanded of the Anglophone audience, the caption that Guzzanti felt necessary for the Italian audience is not translated, depriving the Anglophone audience of the immediate visual reminder that after this studio discussion, Sciuscià was axed. However, the presence of this caption forces the subtitles from their standard position at the bottom of

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Figure 8.2 Shot from chapter 1, 5’ 54” of Viva Zapatero! showing a clip from Michele Santoro’s current affairs talk show Sciuscià

Figure 8.3 Shot from chapter 1, 5’ 55” of Viva Zapatero! showing a clip from Michele Santoro’s current affairs talk show Sciuscià

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the screen in Figure 8.2 to toptitles in Figure 8.3. The sheer number of semiotic resources the Anglophone audience is presented with in a single shot creates an information overload, sometimes compounded by linguistic issues and the movement of the subtitles to a toptitle position, but at the same time diminishes the information and thus the crucial message that Guzzanti aims to convey. The information overflow from one shot to the other, and the lack of contextualization caused by omitting a translation of the caption, increases the multimodal complexity of the sequence. Furthermore, the semiotic resources here are constructing a very complex meaning with all the ECRs that are giving clues to the Italian viewers, but are less effective for the Anglophone viewers. The Anglophone audience must absorb them while simultaneously reading subtitles to decode the Italian in what is, in several cases such as Figure 8.2 and Figure 8.3, a question of two seconds. The intercultural mediation does not take place in the subtitles; as a direct result of the inadequacy of subtitles to fully and comprehensively render the multimodal original, context and content are reduced. The issues illustrated in these shots are emblematic of the subtitling throughout the film.

Censored Satire or Censored Translation Tools? In this section the reflections focus on three hypotheses which are extrapolated from the micro-analysis: (1) that circulation difficulties may be tied in with the docu-film genre; (2) that subtitling as a translation mode led to some serious misinterpretation of Guzzanti’s message; (3) that the choice of subtitling as translation mode can be discussed in the context of censoring the message. Just two examples of spotting show that the translation mode adopted fails Guzzanti’s aim of effective international circulation of her docu-film. With Viva Zapatero! Guzzanti wanted to achieve international circulation and collaborated on the subtitles, but an alternative translation mode to subtitling was needed to avoid what is to all intents and purposes a ‘censored translation mode’. As discussed below, problems with distribution may be blamed for the low numbers for cinema attendance in Europe, yet do not explain the wider context. The wider context leads one to believe that the translation mode may have hampered the transfer of the cultural context, which does need explaining because the visual message is dense. To illustrate the level of impediment, the following review from a professional critic, who misunderstands essential information, is emblematic:

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Guzzanti clearly understands the ramifications of her argument: Italian democracy is sick, and unless drastic reforms are carried out soon, its problems will only get worse. Through the government’s control of RAI, Berlusconi was able to force off the air two of Italy’s most respected journalists because they compared him with Mussolini. As the docu shows, the comparison was all too accurate. (Weissberg, 2005, p. 59) Weissberg misread the anchoring sequence and an important though not crucial detail stuck with him: he identifies Biagi’s case with Santoro’s dismissal, so the comparison with Mussolini is foregrounded over the broader issue of freedom of speech. The comparison to Mussolini, albeit an important point, is not exactly the only reason for Santoro’s fate, and certainly not for Biagi’s. A similar misreading is found in Popham who, writing for The Independent , feels that such is the cultural distance in political behaviour that an explanation is required for a British audience: One has to translate what happened in November 2003 to British shores to get a feeling for how weird it was. It was as if Maggie Thatcher or John Major or Tony Blair had got so maddened by a Ben Elton or a Rory Bremner sketch that they resolved to put an end to such nonsense once and for all. And then woke up the next morning and went ahead and did so and ran that particular comic’s career right off the rails. (Popham, 2005, p. 24) Popham, an experienced and competent fi lm reviewer, has failed to understand that the issue of the ban on satire is an issue of freedom of speech. Viewers’ access to the information conveyed by the docu-film emerges as the issue, pointing at a discrepancy between the filmic success in using experimental editing and the uncertain alignment of the subtitles with the other communicative codes of Viva Zapatero!. Elisa Perego recently emphasized that ‘readability issues deserve to be addressed and explored primarily for the benefit of the audience thus making use of audiovisual products. This could include viewers, who deserve to have access to a quality product to enjoy it fully without being unduly aware of or disturbed by subtitles’ (2008, p. 212; see also Chiaro, 2008, 2009). Viva Zapatero! does not achieve readability because its multimodal texture is too complex for the translation mode. A list of examples in which subtitling cannot begin to render the verbal and non-verbal density of the original could include shots referring to political satire with regional accents, foreign languages which are not

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necessarily distinguishable for audiences without linguistic training (e.g. 17’ 22”), translator’s ideological interference (1h 2’ 49”) and many more. In an email exchange with the author in 2006, Guzzanti discussed how she took an active role in the translational process. It is indeed possible to assert that, due to such close involvement in the translation process by Guzzanti, the text producer of the subtitles is influenced by the ideological importance of this documentary translation. What Simeoni termed the translator’s habitus (1998) has an evident impact on creative translations, especially in what Jeremy Munday, in his reading of critical discourse analysis perspectives, terms ‘register’: The macro-level context of culture, related to the predominant ideology of the society, is communicated through the variables of Register as they are interpreted by the author or translator. This allows for some element of personal decision-making, even within the constraints of the overriding socio- cultural environment. (Munday, 2008, p. 47) Not only does Guzzanti’s register suffer from a limitation in conveying the quantity of information that her multimodal text imposes, but it also suffers from its relational approach to the material. As defined in Fairclough, relational approach focuses on the relations between a text and its context – specifically on the role that these relations play in the contextual meaningmaking process. The relations in question can be external or internal; for Fairclough, the ‘analysis of the “external” relations of texts is analysis of their relations with other elements of social events and, more abstractly, social practices and social structures’ (2003, p. 36). In this perspective, language is considered the social structure in which all potential meanings can be realized; the social event is the text as a final product of the mediation of social practices. In the case of Viva Zapatero!, its purpose is a response to the social practices of Italian politicians of interfering with satire and freedom of speech. Social practices are ‘a broader social dimension of discourse than [. . .] various acts accomplished by language users in interpersonal interaction’ (van Dijk, 1997, p. 5). The context of Guzzanti’s discourse affects her authorial style and consequently the translational style, and the translation choices. In the subtitles, Guzzanti’s narrative voice- over becomes a legitimization of the evidence provided; internal relations in translational choices appear to make a subjective authority into a reliable authority. From her chosen register, the director’s voice risks superimposing itself on the evidence, thus undermining the message. However, instead of portraying the reality of the

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situation, the issues with readability and information overload, involuntarily aided by some erroneous or misleading translation choices, undermine the text producer’s intention of showing what the situation is like by colouring it with a visible set of internal relations connected with the author’s ideology. In terms of internal relations, the rhetorical devices of the voice- over do not work in the subtitles – another translation mode was needed. Possibly, choosing a voice- over in English would have achieved a more cohesive and intrinsically legitimizing text – as happens with Michael Moore’s docu-films in Italy. For these reasons, the translation mode becomes a form of oblique censorship. The multimodal elements of Viva Zapatero! affected the translation quality; the intercultural mediation became difficult to achieve. Yet the text producers decided to subtitle it in order to deal with space-related translation constraints that other translation modes, for example, dubbed voice- over, might have partially effaced. Taking cinema viewers as a sample, whereas Guzzanti’s docu-film had little international circulation with only 419,000 cinema admissions,1 her inspiring model, Michael Moore, had 9.4 million admissions for his Fahrenheit 9/11,2 according to the Lumière database. Run by the European Audiovisual Observatory, this database systematically collects data available from the European member states; however, the data needs to be considered indicative because the Observatory is unable to verify the accuracy of the data provided by national sources. Incidentally, Moore’s docu-film was translated with a mixture of translation modes: his voice- over was dubbed and his interviews were subtitled, even in Italy, the most accomplished ‘dubbing country’. These numbers are statistically significant, even if the European Observatory signals that Italian admissions especially tend to be higher than the quota registered. Notwithstanding all these caveats, the numbers emphasize an issue with the European circulation of Viva Zapatero! that is not attributable to the genre, but more to translation mode, which, as I have argued above, effectively became a form of oblique censorship.

Final Remarks: Accessibility vs Affordability The observations presented so far emphasize that in 2003 Guzzanti, Biagi, Santoro and Luttazzi suffered the effects of a direct form of censorship. Francesca Billiani offers a useful definition of censorship, particularly but not exclusively suited to describe regime censorships, ‘Censorship itself must be understood as one of the discourses, and often the dominant one, produced by a given society at a given time and expressed through repressive cultural, aesthetic and linguistic measures or through economic

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means’ (2007, p. 2). The issue of film distribution deserves to be mentioned as the Italian distribution system enforces translation modes based upon preconceived ideas of preferences in the audiences targeted in the foreign market. How do producers and distributors decide whether to dub, subtitle or do a voice- over translation? Are these decisions dictated by preconceived notions, or marketing studies, applied to the foreign markets? Are they budget- driven only? Common justifications for using one translation mode instead of others usually name target audiences’ expectations as set market constraints. Within Translation Studies, these expectations have been studied from the user- end perspectives only in a few language combinations. More recently, a considerable amount of research is becoming available on perception and appreciation of audiovisuals dubbed from English into Italian (to mention but a few, Antonini et al., 2008; Bucaria, 2006, 2008). For translations out of Italian, as with the case of Viva Zapatero!, budget constraints on translations may not be necessarily focused on income or profits but on preconceived ideas of viewers’ expectations. Guzzanti experimented with Viva Zapatero!, constructing a new narrative voice while reviving the Italian tradition of docu-films. Unfortunately her experimental techniques were not well served by her reliance on existing translation modes. Hazel Morgan notes ‘the best subtitles are the ones you hardly notice because they make you feel you are understanding the original as you hear it’ (2001, p. 164). Discussing the quality of subtitles, Morgan touches on two cardinal points: the constraints of affordability influencing quality and the ideals of accessibility, according to which audiovisual materials ought to be made available to wider audiences (subtitling activities interest European governments: in the United Kingdom, legislative acts on discrimination and accessibility including the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 brought forward an increase in intralingual subtitling activity and quality). In December 2009, European governments had to transpose a directive into national law ‘concerning the provision of audiovisual media services’ known as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 2009/0056(COD). Such a directive has at its heart concerns with accessibility and linguistic and cultural pluralism, as premises 5 and 6 attest (cf. 2007/65/EC Recital 1 (adapted),3 and 2007/65/EC Recital 3). Almost a reply to the questions above, the European directive highlights issues that affect successful circulation: a good rendering of a film increases accessibility and sales: Audiovisual media services are as much cultural services as they are economic services. Their growing importance for societies, democracy – in

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particular by ensuring freedom of information, diversity of opinion and media pluralism – education and culture justifies the application of specific rules to these services. (Art. 6, 2007/65/EC Recital 3) The film industry needs to select translation modes no longer on the basis of perceived market expectations but on using modes appropriate to particular source texts. As the market, the film industry and the viewers have financial interests at stake, support for quality and accessibility becomes an issue of end-user perception. Studies in this area have considered the dichotomy between affordability and cost-effectiveness to be part of a notion of audiovisual translation as a service. This service necessitates researchers’ attention to ‘enjoyment’ and success of translation via close monitoring of its perception among viewers and the increase of viewers’ enjoyment as a result of fuller comprehension (see Antonini and Chiaro, 2008; Bucaria, 2008; Fuentes Luque, 2003). Recently, Yves Gambier pointed out that ‘no one [in Translation Studies] seems to approach the people who decide translation policies’ (2007, p. 2). There are case studies concerning France and Italy which show that quality is no longer a requirement and pressure, if not censorship, remains the most common denominator affecting audiovisual translators (Gambier, 2006, 2009; Sarthou, 2009; Paolinelli and Di Fortunato, 2005). Finally, it must be emphasized that Guzzanti’s censored satire becomes an obliquely censored fi lm because the quality of the translation mode does not match the complexity of the original. The paradox of circulation to which Guzzanti’s fi lm falls victim is that translation modes are defined according to preconceived ideas about viewers’ perceptions that continue to dominate the industry despite research into alternative modes. Experimental and committed fi lm directors such as Guzzanti deserve to reach the international audience they aspire to without suffering the oblique censorship imposed on their products by an inadequate translation mode. The European directive represents an important step forward and reinforces the view that there is a great need for further research into Anglophone audiences’ perception of translated audiovisuals in order to establish more appropriate and effective modes of translation.

Notes 1. Source Lumière database, [Online, accessed 31 August 2010 at http://lumiere. obs.coe.int/web/film_info/?id=23995] 2. Lumière database, [Online, accessed 31 August 2010 at http://lumiere.obs.coe. int/web/film_info/?id=21934]

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3. ‘In the light of new technologies in the transmission of audiovisual media services, a regulatory framework concerning the pursuit of broadcasting activities should take account of the impact of structural change, the spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) and technological developments on business models, especially the financing of commercial broadcasting, and should ensure optimal conditions of competitiveness and legal certainty for Europe’s information technologies and its media industries and services, as well as respect for cultural and linguistic diversity.’

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Gambier, Y. (2006), ‘Orientations de la recherche en traduction audiovisuelle’. Target, 18, (2), 261–93. —(2007), ‘Multimodality and audiovisual translation’. MuTra Audiovisual Translation Scenarios – Conference Proceedings. —(2009), ‘Créativité et décision: le traducteur audiovisuel n’est pas une roue de secours’, in Federici (ed.), Translating Regionalised Voices in Audiovisuals. Rome: Aracne, pp. 179–95. Gambier, Y., and Gottlieb, H. (eds) (2001), (Multi)Media Translation. Concepts, Practices, and Research . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Gottlieb, H. (2005), ‘Multidimensional translation: semantics turned semiotics’.MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings. [Online, accessed 4 January 2010 at www.euroconferences.info/ proceedings/2005_Proceedings/2005_proceedings.html] Morgan, H. R. (2001), ‘Subtitling for Channel 4 Television’, in Y. Gambier and H. Gottlieb (eds) (2001), (Multi)Media Translation. Concepts, Practices, and Research . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 161–5. Munday, J. (2008), Style and Ideology in Translation. Latin American Writing in English . London and New York: Routledge. Nord, C. (1991), Text Analysis in Translation: Theory, Methodology and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation- oriented Text Analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Paolinelli, M., and Di Fortunato, E. (2005), Tradurre per il doppiaggio. Milan: Hoepli. Pavesi, M. (2008), ‘Spoken language in film dubbing’, in D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds), Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 79–99. Pedersen, J. (2008), ‘High felicity: a speech act approach to quality assessment in subtitling’, in D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds), Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 101–16. Perego, E. (2008), ‘Subtitles and line-breaks. Towards improved readibility’, in D. Chiaro, C. Heiss and C. Bucaria (eds), Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 211–23. Popham, P. (2005), ‘Italy under Berlusconi: The silencing of Sabina’. The Independent , 15 September, 24. Sarthou, J- L. (2009), ‘Règles, consigne, contrainte et censure dans le doublage des productions audiovisuelles’, in Federici (ed.), Translating Regionalised Voices in Audiovisuals. Rome: Aracne, pp. 197–208. Simeoni, D. (1998), ‘The pivotal status of the translator’s habitus’. Target , 10, (1), 1–40. Taylor, C. (2003), ‘Multimodal transcription in the analysis, translation and subtitling of Italian films’. The Translator, 9, (2), 191–205. van Dijk, T. A. (1997), ‘The study of discourse’, in T. A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction , vol. 1. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 1–34. Weissberg, J. (2005), ‘Viva Zapatero!’ Variety, 9 October, 59.

Chapter 9

How Do ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ Translate? Gender Images across Italian, British and American Print Ads1 Ira Torresi University of Bologna

Introduction: About Stereotypes Gender stereotypes, like all stereotypes about a given sub- group of society, fall within traditional definitions of the stereotype as an automatic and pre-logical inference about a group’s supposedly shared characteristics (Villano, 2003, p. 29), or, more particularly, as ‘a coherent and rather rigid set of negative beliefs that a certain group shares about another social group or category’ (Mazzara, 1997, p. 19, my translation). Elsewhere, however, I have argued in favour of a more general understanding of what is meant by ‘stereotype’ (Torresi, 2004). This broader meaning includes all fi xed modules of thinking and behaving by which we orientate and move through our social and cultural world, ‘all preconceptions and conventions based on, and replicated by, popular “common sense” and/or their [own] diffusion’ (p. 271): for instance, the whole nebula of qualities and practices connected with the concept of cleanliness. This defi nition goes well beyond the notion of group stereotype, and may be termed cultural stereotype. At the same time, group stereotypes can be seen as one sub- set of cultural stereotypes rather than a totally different kind of stereotype – however well- defi ned this sub- set may be. By this alternative definition, a stereotype is an assumption which is not based on and is usually not subjected to conscious rational judgement, which is crystallized within a given cultural area, and which is supported and reinforced by the degree of diffusion and consensus it gains or maintains within a society. (Torresi, 2004, p. 271)

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This understanding of stereotypes owes much to the notion of memes, the cultural equivalent of genes, initially expounded by Richard Dawkins (1976). Additionally, at first sight, cultural stereotypes may be thought to closely resemble cognitive categories (see for instance Lakoff, 1987). The concept of cultural stereotypes, however, is not a cognitive one, as it places the focus on the propagation and replication of fixed ideas rather than the way in which these influence any individual’s understanding of the world (although the two dimensions are, of course, closely inter woven). The means of propagation of cultural stereotypes are diverse and may encompass all agents of socialization, including the media. Thus, in a methodological perspective, we can safely speak of the existence of a cultural stereotype when we see a given assumption recur across the media of a given cultural area; while to discover and define a cognitive category one would need to rely on specific experimental surveys among the members of the culture in question, such as the ones carried out on colour categories by Berlin and Kay (1969). All this is very well, one might think, but what does it have to do with translation? The short answer is, a lot, especially when working with promotional text types. The translation of promotional material and, notably, advertising is ‘consumer- oriented’ (Hervey et al., 2000) and usually ‘covert’ (House, 1981). The success of a translated promotional or advertising campaign depends on how carefully it is adjusted to the target readership or audience – not only to their native language, but also to the social and psychological levers that may push them to buy the product being advertised. Advertising relies heavily on stereotypes that the target community can immediately recognize and uncritically accept as a given that conforms with their own world views, so that they will be more inclined to accept new elements such as the product being promoted (Williamson, 1978, p. 170). To make the most of the little space and time available for an advertisement or commercial, advertisers resort to shared cultural values and symbols (Van Zoonen, 1994, p. 79) that further circumfuse such stereotypes with an aura of normality, as if they stemmed from the nature of things rather than having been socially and historically constructed, thus turning them into mythical ‘what-goes- without-saying ’ (Barthes, 1972, p. 11, emphasis in the original). Assessing how cultural stereotypes travel across cultures, languages and markets cannot therefore be ignored if one looks at advertising translation as a holistic process that is not confined to verbal language. If the source text relies on stereotypes that are at least partly different in the target market’s culture(s), then any target text that is not adapted or trans- created

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accordingly is doomed to functional failure. This particularly applies to those hidden, largely unquestioned stereotypes that translators might not recognize as cultural constructs, but may rather take as the universally ‘normal’ way to be. Arguably, gender stereotypes below the threshold of blatant sexism can be said to fall in this category. Given this perspective, although gender stereotypes would fit perfectly in the definitions of group stereotypes mentioned above, throughout this chapter I will be referring to them in the second, broader understanding of the cultural stereotype, for two main reasons. The first is that stereotypes as defined by the first meaning (social group stereotypes) are often taken to be necessarily positive or negative. This may be maintained for gender stereotypes as they are commonly understood, of the easily recognizable kind (e.g. women are tactful, or emotionally fragile; men are brave, or tactless). In this chapter, however, the focus will be placed on the normative dimension of the stereotypes carried by advertising specifically targeted at women or men: in other words, how gender- specific media create models with which men and women are implicitly encouraged to conform in order to be normal, up to standard. This process by which a given gender trait is recurrently presented as the ‘right’ way to be or behave can be termed as the normalization, or normativization, of stereotypes, or, following Barthes’s indignation at seeing how nature and history are confused in contemporary mythopoiesis, their naturalization. Such a process can either be initiated by secondary socialization agents (such as the media) and be accepted and kept up in primary socialization contexts (the family, the community of peers, teachers and other groups of people a child or adolescent comes in direct contact with), or the other way round. The directionality of stereotype normalization is not the focus of interest here. Rather, the analysis will be focused on the reiteration of certain stereotypes – in particular, those concerning good looks, or in other words, a positive body image – that are consistently presented as normal or positive (i.e. normalized) by the media.

Material and Methodology To highlight which gender stereotypes are more recurrent (therefore, more strongly normative) in the media specifically targeting women and men in the Western world, three comparable corpora were collected of men’s and women’s magazines, respectively published in Italy, the United Kingdom

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and the United States. Before describing my particular corpus, let me very briefly qualify the term. By ‘corpus’ here I do not mean an electronic and tagged collection of texts, but, following the historical use of the word, simply a body of text that is as complete and consistent as possible, and whose elements are as homogeneous as possible, being selected according to specific criteria. In fact, my use of the term differs from those of corpus analysts (e.g. ‘a large collection of authentic texts that have been gathered in electronic form according to a specific set of criteria’, Bowker and Pearson, 2002, p. 9) only in that my corpora are not in electronic form – storing the scanned ads in a hard disk hardly counts if they are not further processed for automatic searching and investigation. The selection criteria were manifold and operated at different levels. The very first level was the choice of the kind of media to be used, and how to collect it. Magazines were selected mainly because of the relative ease with which they could be gathered through internet subscription, and also because the volume of advertising they would contain was expected to be comparable across the three countries chosen for analysis (this expectation was confirmed). Yearly subscriptions (which were made in August 2005) were also deemed a good way to ensure that no issues would be missed over a homogeneous period of time, and that the magazines would all start to come in at approximately the same time. Unfortunately, several issues were lost in the mail and publishers took different times to process subscription orders, but this variable could not be foreseen at the media selection stage. The second stage of corpus selection concerned the kind of magazines to be chosen. I have already outlined above how the focus of my research was on the normative aspect of normalized stereotypes. As a consequence, I was more interested in those gendered images that told readers how they should behave, appear and, ultimately, be, rather than what stereotypical gender traits they should be more inclined to seek in their partners (although the latter, arguably, can be seen as a component of the former). The obvious choice was therefore women’s and men’s magazines, which not only address readerships that are identified by their gender, but also tend to provide them with advice about their image and life. It was expected that the kind of advertising they contained would not be different from non- commercial content in this respect, and the results supported this expectation. Magazines that were gender- specific only in that they were dedicated to activities that are stereotyped as gendered, such as knitting, home-making or, conversely, hunting or do-it-yourself, were excluded from

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the corpora; all the selected magazines had to be devoted to general ‘lifestyle’, with a possible slant for fashion or fitness (since, as already stated, the main interest was in body image stereotyping). The next step was to seek a newsagent’s advice to draw up a list of all such magazines available from Italian newsstands. The correctness of that information was then checked on the internet before proceeding to search for equivalents of the Italian magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States. For some magazines, finding comparable titles was easy, since Vogue, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan , Glamour, GQ and Men’s Health all have national versions in the three countries under consideration. Finding comparable titles for the Italian Silhouette – focusing on women’s fitness and figure – also seemed rather simple, and the choice settled on the British Health&Fitness and the American Women’s Health&Fitness. Unfortunately, it was not possible to subscribe online to Health&Fitness at the time when all the other subscriptions were made, and therefore the British magazine had to be taken out of the corpus. It was replaced by New Woman , which, however, does not count as comparable to Silhouette and Women’s Health&Fitness, but rather as a contrast, since the magazine was known for promoting exactly the opposite kind of women’s body image than the other two – a flexible, diverse array of shapes and sizes rather than a much narrower range of variations on the slim and fit figure. Interestingly, however, the advertising contained in New Woman was less different from the kind featured by the other British women’s magazines than expected. Another inconsistency is the lack of a British equivalent for Italian For Men and American Men’s Edge . Since these two magazines seemed highly compatible in content and tenor, and highly interesting in terms of gender stereotypes (both of them being more ‘popular’ than Men’s Health , published by ‘genre’ magazine publishers – Cairo Editore and Future, respectively – and indulging in what I might define as simplistic renderings of inter- gender relationships), I decided not to eliminate them from the respective corpora, and to leave the British corpus with seven magazines instead of eight. Each one of the three corpora, then, consists of all the advertisements found in the magazines of the relevant country that contain verbal and/ or visual references or allusions to a gendered person. So- called ‘editorial advertising’ (longer promotional texts where products were advertised together with, or endorsed by, the magazine itself), subscription promotion and magazine supplements were excluded from the corpus. The analysis was qualitative and carried out on both the verbal and the visual parts of the ads; the main reference for visual analysis was Kress

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and Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (1996). Due to editorial and copyright constraints concerning images, relevant visual elements will be mostly described verbally.

Some Results Although I was looking for differences, what I found among the Italian, British and US corpora were mostly similarities. It seems that most stereotypical traits associated with women and men and promoted by genderspecific magazines do not undergo significant variation across the three countries, as might have been expected, given that they are all located in the so- called industrialized Western world. A few stereotypical traits do, however, seem to be articulated differently across the three corpora. Due to space constraints, and since they appear to mark dramatically different trends than the ones outlined in past research on gender advertising, in what follows I mainly focus on recurrent, therefore normalized, body image stereotypes as linked to masculinity. The stereotypical traits outlined in the section ‘Beauty and Youth: It’s a (New) Man’s World’ are recurrent across the three corpora, whereas the one analysed in the section, ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’ is pre- eminently American, and can be found only in (or rather, pervades) Men’s Health US and Men’s Edge .

Beauty and Youth: It’s a (New) Man’s World According to psychologist Jean Kilbourne (1979, 1987, 1995), advertising pushes women towards obsessions about their own body image, whereas values other than care for one’s looks, youth and slimness (e.g. status, wealth, maturity, intelligence, success in general) are more usually presented as male standards. Kilbourne’s research into American advertising spans three decades, but apparently in more recent times youth and, if not slimness, then the absence of fat, have become pre- eminent features of a man’s ego and self-perception, as well. In the men’s magazines included in my three corpora, in fact, the pursuit of self-assertion in the form of acquiring a satisfactory body image is a constant feature not only in advertisements, but in non- commercial content, as well. According to advertising, the standards for handsomeness invariably include appearing younger than one’s age and being fit and muscular – extremely so in ads for high-protein dietary supplements

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circulated in Men’s Health , For Men and Men’s Edge ; always, however, without any trace of fat. Starting with the body, the American versions of Men’s Health and Men’s Edge both contain large quantities of advertisements for specialty foods and supplements, gym equipment and drugs aimed at increasing muscle tissue and/or training performance. It is interesting to note that such advertisements are less frequent in British men’s magazines, and virtually missing in Italian ones. This is probably a consequence of more stringent European Union bans on certain muscle-building products, which might also explain why one of the very few such ads found in the Italian corpus, promoting MM USA’s Thermo Serum, insists on the absolute safety of the product rather than on fabulous results: prodotti assolutamente affidabili , sicura ed efficace, in modo sicuro [absolutely reliable products, safe and effective, safely] (Men’s Health Italy, August 2006, pp. 30–1). Leaving legal and safety issues aside, however, such cases show the extent to which fat is becoming an issue that – according to advertising – deserves attention and public discussion for men, as has long been the case for women. Although this kind of advertising is still much less frequent in men’s than in women’s magazines (especially the fitness-related ones), in advertising targeting men, too, fat is very frequently presented as an enemy to be fought or, more routinely, burnt. In the Thermo Serum ad mentioned above, for instance, the product is said to act bruciando i grassi in eccesso, brucia il grasso accumulato [burning excess fat, burns fat build-ups]. Arguably, ‘burn fat’ is a specific collocation rather than a metaphor, but nonetheless it may acquire new undertones when used in connection with unmistakable war metaphors such as ‘attacking’ or ‘targets problem areas’ (e.g. Nutrex’s Lipo- 6 capsules ad, Men’s Edge, July 2006, pp. 112–13). This way of representing fat as an enemy to be defeated, and the product as an ally, is very similar to what happens in the much more ubiquitous advertising of women’s slimming or anti- cellulite products. Incidentally, war metaphors are recurrent in advertising for home cleaning products and ‘purifying’ foodstuffs, as well (Torresi, 2004), which highlights the close relationship between the concepts of dirt and fat in the kind of body image normalized by advertising. The ad for Nutrex’s Lipo- 6 capsules mentioned above also contains an interesting element that is not usually found in ads targeted at women, but on the other hand is recurrent in ads for men’s grooming products. In its body copy we find ‘enhances muscle definition and brings out a lean midsection’ (my emphasis). The wording suggests that the fat being burnt is an unwanted addition to the body and that the real midsection, the lean

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one, is lying under it waiting to be uncovered. The hidden message being, ‘What you are is not the real you. The real you will only come out if you use our product’. This seems to confirm the conventional notion that, while a woman’s beauty is constructed by something that is put on – makeup, perfumes, creams and lotions, hair dye and the like (Kilbourne, 1979, 1987) – a man should always look natural, authentic, even unrefined. Advertising appropriates this traditional notion and tells men that in order to look that way, they should buy more or less the same kind of products women do, only men are not supposed to apply such products onto themselves but to let the products help them reveal their real looks (which in turn implies that, puzzlingly, men not complying with the normalized handsomeness standards do not quite look like themselves). For instance, an ad for an ‘abs diet’ book sports before-and- after pictures and the headline, ‘Is there a great set of abs hiding under your gut, too?’ (Men’s Health US, August 2006, p. 113, my emphasis). In another ad, Just For Men hair dye is said to grant a ‘real natural look’, the word ‘real’ being highlighted in lilac against the dark grey headline and repeated in each title of the four body copy sections; the same idea of authenticity is reiterated in the phrase ‘natural look’ (repeated three times across the copy) (Men’s Health US, May 2006, insert between pp. 56 and 57). The advertised product is actually said to cover grey hair and, at the same time, ‘match your natural color precisely’, as if grey were not a natural hair colour. Stating that men look distinguished with grey hair, unlike women – as one advertisement shown by Kilbourne (1979) maintained – clearly seems outdated, and old age or even maturity seem to have drifted out of the acceptability borders of stereotyped handsomeness, as confirmed by the increasing number of ads for men’s antiageing products. In Men’s Health UK, for instance, we find that Clinique’s anti-ageing moisturizer ‘brings skin back to a more healthy-looking state’, as if ageing were not healthy (January/February 2006, p. 7). Another appropriation of stereotypical traits traditionally associated with masculinity to advertise grooming products that are traditionally seen as anti-masculine is the frequent reference to moisturizing creams or lotions that energize, strengthen or add power to a man’s skin. To provide but a few examples, Nivea for Men is described as energia pura , rivitalizzante , rivitalizza , rinforza [pure energy, revitalizing, revitalizes, strengthens] (Men’s Health Italy, December 2005, p. 179); Clinique offers an ‘anti- ageing powerhouse’ (Men’s Health UK, January/February 2006, p. 7); and Shiseido Men products are said to ‘power your skin’ thanks to their ‘high-performance skincare system’ that ‘restores vitality by strengthening’ and brings out ‘the power of Shiseido Men’ (Men’s Health US, September 2005, p. 27 of the

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‘Styleguide’). The relatively frequent recurrence of such examples across the three corpora shows the cross- cultural reach of the association of reassuringly familiar stereotypes of manliness with new standards of grooming, which include facial treatments and seeing the signs of one’s age as problematic. Reference to energy, power and strength can also be found in the body copies of ads for L’Oréal’s Men Expert skincare products. The campaign for such products, however, more prominently sports a new and perhaps more interesting trait. Admittedly, it is only one campaign, but it recurs in all three corpora and it is worth analysing for its stigmatization of ageing and reversal of the male gaze paradigm (see the ‘Conclusions’ section), which, as we will see in the section ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’, reaches far beyond this case study. Moreover, at least in Italy, for a period of several months, the print campaign was accompanied by pervasive and voluminous installations in highvisibility public spaces such as train stations. Here I will account for one ad only, promoting the Hydra Energetic anti-fatigue moisturizer, although the corpora also contained another ad from the same campaign that had the same characteristics. The visual part of the ad is split in two: on the left (the position of given elements according to Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996), we find a picture of the handsome model’s face as a whole, and a caption conveying what is supposed to be his own self-perception, reading in Italian Pensi di avere una bella faccia ? [Do you think your face looks good?], echoed by the British English ‘You think you look the business?’ and by the more direct ‘You think you look wide awake?’ in the American counterpart (respectively, Men’s Health Italy, January 2006, p. 23; GQ UK, September 2005, p. 205; and Men’s Health US, September 2005, p. 35). The man’s perception about his own looks, and the picture of his face – which apparently does fall within the current handsomeness stereotypes – is contrasted with the close-up of his slightly tired-looking eye on the right, accompanied by the respective captions, Lei pensa soprattutto che hai una brutta cera [Above all, she thinks you look unwell/tired], ‘She thinks you look overworked’, and ‘She thinks you need a wake-up call’ (in the figurative sense of ‘you need something to make you look less tired/sleepy’). The body copy goes on to describe the energizing effect of the moisturizer. The left-hand and right-hand captions are built in such a way that the wordplay they contain has the effect of highlighting the opposition between what ‘you’ think and what ‘she’ thinks. Right-hand captions start with ‘lei’ or ‘she’; additionally, the right-hand picture, besides being in the

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half of the page that is usually devoted to new elements or the rheme, and is naturally more salient (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996), is a close-up, which denotes closer personal distance between the model and the reader than in the previous photograph. The fact that the model looks straight into the camera, and therefore seems to be looking out of the page directly at the reader, also elicits the reader’s emotional response (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). All this has the effect of presenting what is in the righthand part of the ad (what ‘she’ thinks of you) as more important than the left-hand part (what ‘you’ think of yourself). An external authority is introduced whose opinion of a man’s looks is more important than what the man thinks or feels about his own appearance. And, surprisingly, it is a woman, or rather, a generic feminine entity only hinted at in the captions. The implication is that dissatisfying such external authority, even in small details, would spell failure – not just failure to conquer her or keep her by one’s side, but failure on a more general, social or even existential level. Suddenly, then, men seem to be pushed towards caring for their appearance through the ‘scare’ techniques referring to peer or partner stigmatization, of the kind that Fenati (1987) describes as typical of the 1950s. As I show in the section ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’, a more straightforward version of the same technique is used in connection with parts of the male body other than the face and, interestingly, once again in connection with men’s body image as judged by women. It thus appears that the burden of the ‘beauty myth’ (Wolf, 1991), far from being taken off women’s shoulders (as confirmed by the analysis of the advertisements in the women’s magazines in my corpora, which is not discussed here), is starting to cast its shadow on men, too. The phenomenon has already come to the point of extreme body fragmentation that is frequently applied to female bodies in all kinds of advertising, and is indicated by Kilbourne (1979) as one of the causes of distorted body images in girls and adult women. An ad for BodyBuilding.com, for instance, displays a muscular male body that is a collage of different pictures, each detail displaying handwritten captions such as ‘32” waist’ or ‘ripped 6 pack’ and with a hand- drawn smiley face replacing the head. The headline reads ‘you know what you want to look like . . . we can make it happen!’(Men’s Edge , May 2006, p. 43). That men are having to cope with unattainable ideals of good looks, unfortunately, does not imply a feeling of solidarity with women in realizing how burdensome the beauty myth they have been subjected to for millennia is. Quite the contrary, the responsibility for setting up the new standards for male handsomeness is often placed on women as relentless

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and authoritative judges. It appears, then, that women, in addition to having to go through the consequences of their own beauty myth, might unwittingly become the imaginary perpetrators of the introduction of the male ‘handsomeness myth’, with all the complications for inter- gender dialogue that this might bring about, as is further discussed in the section ‘Conclusions’. This fictitious women’s over- critical gaze is in no way limited to a man’s face; in American advertising it becomes much more invasive, as we will see in the following section. What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. He thought it should be limited to women. Woody Allen, Zelig A conspicuous difference that sets the American corpus apart from the Italian and British ones and that would need to be taken into consideration should similar material be submitted for translation is the pervasive and open allusion to sexual performance and what is presented as a man’s sole resource in the bedroom – the penis – as central in relations with women. In two of the American magazines, Men’s Health and For Men (but not in GQ ), ads for chemical or surgical penis enlargement, sex- enhancing drugs and even sex toys are ubiquitous. They invariably use the same scare technique we have seen in the Men’s Expert campaign: the implacable she-judge, the fictitious feminine entity for whom being a man really boils down, not to what she sees on a man’s face this time, but to his being able to give her sexual pleasure, and therefore, metonymically, to the penis. For example, in an ad for Xomax, male readers are told that ‘what she wants’ from her man is a ‘bigger, thicker, longer penis’ (Men’s Edge , June 2006, p. 100). In a Sustain ad, the man is further commodified as his sexual partner becomes ‘another satisfied customer’, obviously presenting having several partners as a plus for a man (Men’s Health US, January/ February 2006, p. 139). An ad for FastSize (see Figure 9.1) makes the shejudge rhetoric more visual, featuring a young woman whose attire would suggest the imminence of an erotic situation, but who is instead caught just after the act of checking her partner’s penis size with a conspicuous yellow measuring tape in one hand, and slightly lowering the waistband of his shorts with the other. The enthusiastic expression on her face tells us that the man has passed the measuring test and has been deemed, as the

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Figure 9.1 Advertisement for FastSize, Men’s Edge , July 2006, p. 109

body copy goes, ‘fit for sex’– meaning that having sex is simply out of the question for men with smaller penises. The headline is an equally telling ‘Do you measure up?’ – implying that there is a minimum standard penis size to qualify for sex, and possibly to meet a woman’s expectations in every other respect (since it is, ‘Do you measure up?’, and not ‘Does your penis measure up?’). Arguably, the figure of the young woman with the measuring tape (who is in the foreground, more centred, dressed in a warmer and brighter colour than the man, with her elbow pointing out of the page, and in all ways the most salient element of the visual) has a high castrating potential, even conceding that an ironical interpretation of the ad is made possible by the nonsensical situation and exaggerated surprise and enthusiasm on the woman’s face. A much less threatening model of a woman is depicted in the single ad for penis enlargement found in the Italian corpus (Andromedical, For Men , December 2006, p. 186), which gives a clear idea of how advertisements for products falling into this category can be ‘translated’ outside the United States. Here the woman is depicted as a Lolita: she is obviously very young, wears girlish pigtails and looks away from the reader with what looks like a naughty smile. She is licking a tall ice- cream cone, with a clear visual allusion to oral sex. Overall, she is presented as the prize for a larger penis rather than a judge giving out marks. The existential need to satisfy her, which is so recurrent in the American corpus, is not mentioned or hinted at.

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The metonymical substitution of the penis for the man (and all his worth) is brought to extremes in an ad for the HeadBlade razor where, however, the woman is no longer the judge, but the agent who makes the metonymical substitution clear by asking the man, who is portrayed from behind to highlight the (inevitably phallic) shape of his shaved head, ‘Can I touch it?’ (Men’s Edge , June 2006, p. 73). The man’s head is the only element of the visual that receives direct light, but everything else in the ad hints at an altogether different interpretation of the ‘it’ in the question. The question is visualized as a whisper, given its smaller print and closeness to the man’s ear, which adds to the erotic undertones of the situation depicted: the scene is dark, the two models are close together, and the woman has her eyes closed and lips parted. No element of the ad seems to justify an ironical interpretation. American readers of Men’s Health and Men’s Edge , then, are constantly reminded that their essence really comes down to the penis, and their worth exclusively lies in how good they are in bed. Penis enlargement and sexual enhancers, in this perspective, are presented as a man’s affirmative action, a way to make one’s life better and even to become a better person. To some men (and women), this might appear depressing enough, but in the same magazines one can also find ads for other kinds of products that go as far as quenching every hope of improvement with a little help from chemicals or surgery. An ad for Tabu Toys, for instance, sets the standard for being a good lover so high that it is beyond human capabilities, by suggesting that no sexual prowess can compete with mechanical vibration. Its headline reads, ‘You may be a great lover, but can you vibrate at 12,000 rpm?’ (Men’s Edge , July 2006, p. 91). The answer is provided by the ad for Outrageous Toys, whose headline states, ‘No comparison’ (Men’s Edge , April 2006, p. 117). Once again, translators beware: no comparison for similar ads was found in the British and Italian corpora, which might imply that ‘translating’ such materials requires an approach that is much more complex – and cautious – than simple interlinguistic transposition. It is perhaps worth repeating that these examples are from men’s magazines, therefore they are explicitly targeted at men. It is not women who are told that they should care about their partners’ penis size or sexual prowess; it is men who are told that they should boost their penises unless they want to be precluded from sex and female consideration, and that no matter how hard they try, they cannot compete with sex toys. The castration complex has never been made so patent. Moreover, ads for penis extension, sexual enhancers and sex toys almost invariably feature pictures with erotic undertones or that can even be

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labelled as instances of soft porn. Thus, the male reader is aroused at the same time as he is told that he can have access to sex only if he is in line with certain quantitative standards, or even that he had better step aside and leave the way to vibrating dildos. In this kind of men’s advertising, then, women are represented simultaneously as alleged subjects (judges) and real objects (of male desire); this double role will be discussed in the following section.

Conclusions It would be naïve on my part to maintain that my interest in the kind of advertisements we have discussed here lies only in the implications that the stereotypical traits analysed here may have for translators and translation scholars. An equally important perspective in this study is connected with gender studies, and in this perspective, gender identities and their representations are objects of study per se. Before discussing the implications of my work from the point of view of translation studies, then, it may be appropriate to draw a few conclusions about gender relations. Of course, I do not try to conceal the inevitable gender bias in my analysis; a male researcher would most probably interpret my material in a different way than I do. From a woman’s perspective, there is a fil rouge that connects some of the examples shown in the section ‘Beauty and Youth: It’s a (New) Man’s World’ and those in the section ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’. Whether it is to promote skin revitalizers, anti-age products or penis enlargement, the ads often refer to an external authority whose approval a man must seek about his own body image. Erasing wrinkles and obtaining a more conspicuous maleness are presented as something every man should do to be up to his woman, whether she is his partner for life or a one-night encounter. In today’s advertising, standards of masculinity tend to be – perhaps for the first time – defined in terms that are not subjective, but objective. In advertising fiction, the male becomes the object of the female gaze, thus reversing the paradigm that has informed decades of feminist criticism. Male readers abruptly become aware of their new ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey, 1975, online), after having been socialized into the exclusive role of the gazer by the very media that are now changing the rules of the game. The psychological leverage power attributed to women (as a category) and the pressure allegedly being put on the men who receive such advertising

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messages, may result in ‘real’ women being disliked for their unsuspected role as arbiters of male body image standards. Thus it could be argued that we go back to our usual role as objects of male consideration (in the somewhat familiar form of blame) without ever really becoming gazers. Not to mention that the corpus also includes several instances of more traditional representations of inter- gender relations in which the male gaze is not challenged in any way. There are other ways in which such ads actually reiterate the male gaze upon women, this time in the form of traditional stereotyping. The ads for the L’Oréal’s Men’s Expert line point to a kind of woman who is so superficial that she is unable to go beyond the details of a man’s outer appearance, such as the wrinkles on his face or the bags under his eyes. The ads in the section ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’, on the other hand, seem to limit the common ground between the two acknowledged genders to sexual intercourse. A man, these ads maintain, only matters to a woman if he satisfies her sexually, and conversely, a woman is only relevant to a man when it comes to sex – even if the focus is on giving her pleasure rather than obtaining pleasure from her. Whether meek sex kittens or castrating viragos, women simply do not exist outside the sex sphere. And although the latter stereotyping of women is only present in the advertising found in some American men’s magazines, in these magazines it is so recurrent that their readers would need a huge rationalizing effort to detach themselves from it. Shifting to a translator’s point of view, the kind of analysis outlined in the section ‘Some Results’, has significant practical implications. It is clear that, when translating and adapting advertisements for men’s fat burners for the Italian, British or American market, one can effectively exploit the representations of fat as an enemy that recur in ads for women’s anticellulite and slimming products (actually, in this field male-targeted ads tend to borrow the very same wordings found in female-targeted ads for similar products). When it comes to men’s skincare, however, it is important to suggest that the prospective customer may ‘recover his real self’ through the product rather than describing the advertised good as an addition that is necessary to achieve one’s ideal self (which, on the other hand, would be perfectly acceptable in ads targeting women). Other elements, however, do not travel well across the cultures or markets considered here, for a number of different reasons. Certain dietary supplements are illegal in Europe, and classified ads – a favoured collocation for British ads connected to body modification – do not exist as a genre in Italy and are much less frequent in US magazines than in the United Kingdom.

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As we have seen, it is perfectly sensible for American Men’s Health to publish ads for penis enlargement surgery or products that equate readers to their members without thinking they would feel outraged, but this might raise some eyebrows among the staff of the Italian and British versions of the same magazine. And perhaps, explicitly being equated to one’s member would not be taken well by most Italian readers, if only because they are not used to it (yet). One might argue that the issues above range from the cultural to the legal sphere, therefore they should not be a translator’s concern. As I have had the opportunity to highlight elsewhere, however (Torresi, 2004, 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2010), the translation process naturally encompasses the text as a whole, not one component – the verbal – only. In advertising translation, particularly, commissioners usually require thorough transcreation, meaning not only the artistic and creative use of language in re- writing the copy but also the adaptation of commercial appeal and motivations to buy as well as the incorporation of relevant cultural, religious and legal issues (Adab, 2000, 2001; De Mooij, 1998/2005, 2003, 2004; Fuentes Luque and Kelly, 2000; Guidère, 2000a, 2000b, 2001; Zequan, 2003). Separating the visual from the verbal, legal issues from the rest of the context, and culture from language, is therefore neither easy nor recommendable for the functional success of the target text when working with semiotically complex and highly context- dependent texts such as advertisements. While translating materials such as those illustrated in the section ‘What Makes a Man a Man, or, What It Takes to Make a Woman Happy’, in particular, ignoring the fact that penis enlargement products are advertised far less frequently in the United Kingdom and in Italy than in the United States, and that when they are advertised, they refer to a woman figure entirely different from the one that recurs across US men’s magazines, would be no less a translation mistake than getting the grammar wrong. Turning from general to more practical considerations, translators who are able to trans- create and adapt rather than ‘ just’ translate advertisements, and who can work in a team with art directors and copywriters, provide clients with additional services that they should be able to underline and monetize accordingly. Thus, collecting and analysing advertising corpora, or even just keeping a critical eye on advertising circulated in the countries where one’s working languages are spoken (including one’s own), can turn out to be a good investment, especially if this is advertised as an additional ‘cultural research service’, as well as being professionally and ethically correct and – hopefully – unpredictably interesting.

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Note 1. The research presented in this chapter was carried out in the framework of the two-year project titled ‘Lettura in chiave di genere della comunicazione pubblicitaria gender-specific’, tutored by prof. Raffaella Baccolini and funded by the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì from August 2005 to July 2007.

References Adab, B. (2000), ‘Towards a more systematic approach to the translation of advertising texts’, in A. Beeby, D. Ensinger and M. Presas (eds), Investigating Translation . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 223 – 34. — (2001), ‘The translation of advertising: a framework for evaluation’. Babel , 47, (2), 133 – 57. Barthes, R. (1972), Mythologies . Translated by A. Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang. Berlin, B., and Kay, P. (1969), Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bowker, L., and Pearson, J. (2002), Working with Specialized Language: A Practical Guide to Using Corpora. London and New York: Routledge. Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Mooij, M. (1998/2005), Global Marketing and Advertising. Understanding Cultural Paradoxes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. — (2003), Consumer Behavior and Culture. Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. — (2004), ‘Translating advertising. Painting the tip of an iceberg’. The Translator, 10, (2), 179–98. Fenati, B. (1987), ‘Le forme del piacere’, in M. Livolsi (ed.), E comprarono felici e contenti: pubblicità e consumi nell’Italia che cambia. Milan: Edizioni Il Sole 24 Ore, pp. 91–106. Fuentes Luque, A., and Kelly, D. (2000), ‘The translator as mediator in advertising Spanish products in English- speaking markets’, in A. Beeby, D. Ensinger and M. Presas (eds), Investigating Translation . Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp. 235 – 42. Guidère, M. (2000a), Publicité et traduction . Paris: L’Harmattan. — (2000b), ‘Aspects de la traduction publicitaire’. Babel , 46, (1), 20 – 40. — (2001), ‘Translation practices in international advertising’. Translation Journal , 5, (1). [Online, accessed 29 September 2010 at http://accurapid.com/ journal/15advert.htm]. Hervey, S., Higgins, I., Cragie, S., and Gambarotta, P. (2000), Thinking Italian Translation: A Course in Translation Method: Italian to English. London and New York: Routledge. House, J. (1981), A Model for Translation Quality Assessment. Tübingen: Narr. Kilbourne, J. (1979), Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women. Cambridge: Cambridge Documentary Films.

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— (1987), Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women . Cambridge: Cambridge Documentary Films. — (1995), Slim Hopes: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness. Northampton: Media Education Foundation. Kress, G., and Van Leeuwen, T. (1996), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design . London and New York: Routledge. Lakoff, G. (1987), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mazzara, B. M. (1997), Stereotipi e pregiudizi. Bologna: il Mulino. Mulvey, L. (1975), ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’. Screen , 16, (3), 6–18. [Online, accessed 28 July 2009 at https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/ MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrative+Cinema]. Torresi, I. (2004), ‘Women, water and cleaning agents. What advertisements reveal about the cultural stereotype of cleanliness’. The Translator, 10, (2), 269–89. — (2007a), ‘Translating the visual. The importance of visual elements in the translation of advertising across cultures’, in K. Ryou and D. Kenny (eds), Across Boundaries: International Perspectives on Translation Studies. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 38–55. — (2007b), ‘Translating dreams across cultures: advertising and the localization of consumerist values and aspirations’, in S. Kelly and D. Johnston (eds), Betwixt and Between: Place and Cultural Translation . Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 135–45. — (2008), ‘Advertising: a case for intersemiotic translation’. Meta, 53, (1), 62–75. — (2010), Translating Promotional and Advertising Material. Manchester: St. Jerome. Van Zoonen, L. (1994), Feminist Media Studies. London: Sage. Villano, P. (2003), Pregiudizi e stereotipi. Rome: Carocci. Williamson, J. (1978), Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars. Wolf, N. (1991), The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: William Morrow & Co. Zequan, L. (2003), ‘Loss and gain of textual meaning in advertising translation: a case study’. Translation Journal , 7, (4). [Online, accessed 29 September 2010 at http://accurapid.com/journal/26advert.htm].

Chapter 10

Translating Place: The Piano from Screen to Tourist Brochure Alfio Leotta Victoria University of Wellington

A rugged Auckland West Coast beach on a gloomy day. Two women walk along the shore. A young blonde man calls out to them and asks in a broad German accent: ‘Excuse me . . . I wonder . . . could you tell me: is this way they made ze film . . . ze Pi . . . ze Piano?’ The opening sequence of Topless Women Talk about Their Lives (dir. Harry Sinclair, 1997) acknowledges the iconic status of Karekare beach that, for more than a decade now, has been the destination of a film-tourist pilgrimage for visitors from all around the world (Harvey, 1994; Beeton, 2005). The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, 1993) was the first New Zealand film1 to achieve worldwide popularity. In 1994, one year after its release, it was estimated that the global takings of the movie had reached US $140 million (Croft, 2000).2 The extraordinary critical response to Jane Campion’s masterpiece was sealed by the award of a Palme d’Or, three Oscars and several other prestigious international prizes. The international success of The Piano also contributed to putting New Zealand on the global map for moviegoers who might not have been exposed to any image of the country. Most of the critical commentaries about The Piano deal with its feminist commitment, post-colonial questions or stylistic issues (Coombs et al., 1999; Tincknell, 2000; Margolis, 2000). This chapter will draw from some of these works in order to present a conceptual framework for understanding the film-tourism generated by The Piano. In particular, I attempt to answer two major research questions: why has The Piano engendered such a strong impact on tourism and how have tourism authorities capitalized on the film’s spin- offs by ‘translating’ the story’s appeal from film to tourist language.

Visions of Landscape in Tourism and Film According to Michael Cronin, ‘the implication of visual practices in travel is long established. From romantic landscape painting to the picture

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postcard and TV holiday programmes, travelling is often primarily projected as an activity of seeing’ (2000, p. 81). Cronin claims that the centrality of the visual in the tourist experience might be explained by the necessity to overcome anxieties connected to lack of knowledge of the locals’ language and culture. The convergence between images and travel is particularly apparent in the interconnection between the histories of cinema and tourism, with both cultural activities providing different but overlapping answers to the modern desire for temporal and spatial mobility. As forms of modern symbolic production, tourism and cinema are also responsible for the emergence of new myths and their collective representations. Recent feature films have represented New Zealand both as an imaginary fantasyland and as a ‘real’ place. These images have served to reinforce the myth of a wild, pure and natural New Zealand. This myth, in turn, has been exploited by the local tourism board, which, during the last two decades, has been able to create a successful travel brand destination. Research commissioned by Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) at the beginning of the new millennium identified the country as rich in four assets: landscape, people, adventure and culture (Morgan et al., 2003, p. 292). The tourist authorities consequently designed a new promotional strategy which positioned New Zealand as ‘an adventurous new land and an adventurous new culture on the edge of the Pacific Ocean’ (Piggott cited in Morgan et al., 2003, p. 292). The essence of the New Zealand brand, as conceived by Tourism New Zealand, is the landscape, and in particular a landscape imbued with sophisticated, innovative and spirited values which allow tourists to express themselves through activities and experiences. In particular, the national tourism board has targeted the ‘interactive traveller’ who ‘seek[s] out new experiences that involve engagement and interaction, and demonstrate[s] respect for the natural, social and cultural environment’ (TNZ, 2004, p. 1). The characteristics of the interactive traveller are reminiscent of that category of the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ defined by Pierre Bourdieu (1984) as the ‘intellectuals’. The main features of Bourdieu’s intellectuals are their preference for ‘aesthetic–asceticism’ expressed by their characteristic leisure activities (mountaineering, hiking, walking) and their fascination with ‘natural, wild nature’. The intellectuals possess a cultural capital that is greater than their actual economical capital. This could partially explain their predilection for ‘the most culturally legitimate and economically cheapest practices, for example, museum going, or in sport, mountain- climbing or walking’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 267). Another characteristic of the intellectuals is their constant quest for what Urry defines as the ‘romantic gaze’. The romantic gaze emphasizes a private

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and semi- spiritual relationship with the object of the gaze. In Urry’s words: ‘The romantic gaze involves further quests for new objects of the solitary gaze, the deserted beach, the empty hilltop, the uninhabited forest [. . .] and so on’ (2002, p. 150). Landscape plays a crucial role in tourism as a function of commodification which orientates space towards the selling of tourist destinations and experiences. Similarly, landscape has an equally central function in the cinematic medium. Early films privileged the representation of the natural world, and the subsequent emergence of narrative cinema relied on a spatial background to accompany the depiction of actions and events. Landscape seems to play an even more prominent role in New Zealand national cinema, to the extent that several critics have stressed its structural importance as a signifier of national identity in local feature films. As Bob Harvey, the mayor of Waitakere City, puts it: ‘[F]or many years New Zealand film production was without major facilities and studios were unknown. Sets were difficult, so location was everything, both an asset and a challenge’ (Harvey and Bridge, 2005, p. 17). Roger Horrocks goes even further, arguing that ‘in almost all New Zealand films the physical landscape makes its presence strongly felt not only as scenic background, but as an influence shaping the lives of the characters. Certain emotions seem to grow and flourish in this landscape’ (Horrocks, 1989, p. 102). Others have celebrated the uniqueness of the New Zealand cinematographic landscape, allegedly characterized by a dark, gloomy and edgy look (Neill and Rymer, 1995; Harvey and Bridge, 2005).3 The representation of a ‘sublime’ landscape in local films consistently draws upon the myth of a wild, pure, natural New Zealand that underpins the local settler culture. As New Zealand cinema purports to traverse the nation, and ‘discover’ sites and sights, it places the spectator in the position of a voy(ag)eur or a modern day explorer. The emphasis on landscape in New Zealand cinema has provided local and international audiences with a double ‘discovery’. On the one hand, due to its ability to mobilize the spectator gaze, it has brought a series of New Zealand ‘scenic gems’ closer. On the other hand, it has allowed for the discovery of a spirit of nationhood which was shaped through the very consumption of the country’s scenic views. The creation of a New Zealand national community is, therefore, strictly intermingled with its translation and promotion as a tourist destination for foreign audiences. The global competition between international tourist destinations has obliged countries to position themselves in order to cover different market niches. Tourism New Zealand has sought to capitalize on the possibilities

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of non- conventional publicity tools, particularly film-induced tourism, ever since the launch of the ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ campaign in 1999. As Glenn Croy points out, ‘[T]his image building and promotion process effectively utilises TNZ’s limited financial resources by using other groups’ resources to provide the images and then creating association to New Zealand’ (Croy, 2004, p. 7). From this point of view, the production of The Lord of the Rings (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001–2003), which associated the country with adventure and other-worldly scenery over a period of three years, has been a serendipitous development for New Zealand’s tourist authorities. Several destination-marketing organizations, such as Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand, have used the film to promote the country as a tourist destination. Landscape is an artificial construct, one which cannot be divorced from the real and imaginary relation human beings entertain with space. This notion is crucial to the relation between film and tourism in New Zealand. In order to understand this interaction, it is necessary to investigate the ways in which space is constructed in both film and tourist texts and how it is invested with symbolic and ideological meaning. The Piano represents a very useful case study that can illustrate the functioning of this essential semiotic process. I begin with the process through which Karekare beach, the most famous location of the movie, has become a popular New Zealand icon. I then focus on the analysis of a poster commissioned by Tourism New Zealand that uses The Piano to promote both Karekare and the country as a whole. The examination of the semiotic structure of the advertisement provides the basis for a comparative study of film and tourist languages and in particular the critical issue of intersemiotic translation from screen to tourist advertisement.

Travel as Translation Set in the mid-nineteenth century, The Piano tells the story of Ada, a mute Scotswoman who is sent along with her daughter and her piano to New Zealand for an arranged marriage with a wealthy British settler, Alistair Stewart. Stewart proves to be diffident and insensitive to Ada’s passion for the piano and decides to abandon the instrument on the beach where the protagonist landed. In turn, Ada does not make any effort to befriend her future husband and instead becomes involved in an affair with Baines, a Scottish settler who lives with the Māori. Baines, who has retrieved the piano from the beach, offers to sell back Ada’s instrument, one key at a

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time, in exchange for piano lessons and kisses. Eventually Ada, who is attracted to Baines, yields to his advances and has sexual intercourse with him. Stewart finds out about Ada’s sexual encounters with Baines and, in retribution, chops off her index finger, thus depriving her of the ability to play music. At the end of the film Ada, Flora and Baines leave together to start a new life in another settler community, Nelson, in the South Island. Although The Piano is in no way a film about tourism or the ‘tourist experience’, through a narrative of migration and settlement, it explores mobility and its limits. The film is characterized by a clearly symmetrical configuration of the places visited by Ada. The narration begins in Scotland, which represents civilization and the familiar. Then, through the liminal spaces of the sea and the beach, it passes into the exotic and primitive world of New Zealand. Travel is an act of separation from the familiar culture and language, and it inevitably necessitates a translation effort. Ada, who significantly is mute in the film, is able to communicate in the unfamiliar context of New Zealand through the music of her piano. At the end of the film, the heroine leaves, once again across the beach and the sea, for a different civilized place, understood as the settlement of Nelson. The first sequence of the film opposes two places and establishes the necessity of a journey. The scene is set in Scotland, where Ada herself announces that she is about to leave for a ‘distant country’. The actual destination (New Zealand) is revealed by the text on the packing case of the piano, an object which will become a symbol of civilization and the familiar. The film introduces, from the outset, the distance and fracture between two geographical and psychological places, an opposition which will be reinforced throughout the rest of the film. In terms of a morphology of narrative places, Propp (1968) distinguishes two spaces present in the folktale: the ‘own space’, where the hero is born and grows up, and the ‘other space’, where he/she has to perform. Similarly, Greimas and Courtes point out that every narration is divided into a ‘topic space’, where the subject acts, and a ‘heterotopic space’ (espace hétérotopique) where the subject stipulates a contract which will ultimately be sanctioned positively or negatively (1982, p. 142). In the case of The Piano, the heroine has to deal with an actual contract, the wedding agreement arranged by her father, which obliges her to leave home for an unfamiliar place. The Piano is the story of both a physical and a psychological journey. Ada’s character, therefore, could be read as a simulacrum of the traveller. This is particularly significant in light of the fact that The Piano has contributed to attracting thousands of tourists to West Auckland beaches. According to Boorstin (1962, p. 107), the modern mass tourist travels in

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guided groups, within the ‘environmental bubble’ of the familiar, and is insulated from the strangeness of the host environment. Similarly, once Ada is left alone on the beach surrounded by her luggage (Stewart has not yet arrived to collect her), she creates a simulation of the familiar civilized world: in the surreal scenes of her first night in New Zealand she plays the piano and, like a Victorian proto-backpacker, camps under her hooped skirt. The skirt, a true ‘environmental bubble’, will save Ada again when Stewart attempts to rape her in the woods. In the latter scene, Ada falls over her skirt and seems defeated, but is eventually saved by her allenveloping clothes, the symbol of Victorian femininity.4 Another interesting analogy between the tourist and Ada is provided by her muteness. One of the most common experiences for tourists overseas is the impossibility of establishing independent and unmediated communication with the host environment and the local people. This situation is perceived as both the greatest appeal and the greatest risk of the tourist experience: the desire to ‘get off the beaten track’ and to meet the ‘real people’ clashes dramatically with the impossibility of communicating with the locals. This is why tourists need surrogate parents (travel agents, couriers, hotel managers) to take responsibility and protect them from harsh reality. In a similar way, Ada needs a ‘mediator’, a translator, here represented by Flora, in order to communicate with the external world. As Tincknell points out: ‘Flora in her tiny version of Ada’s black bonnet and crinoline appears as a miniaturised mirror of her mother, mimicking her actions, moods and responses and giving verbal expression to Ada’s views’ (2000, p. 111). One of the most significant tropes of the first part of the film is the protagonist’s inability to communicate with her ‘local hosts’. For instance, the main problem in the relationship between Ada and Stewart is that the latter does not understand the importance that the piano has for his new wife. This is why the marriage between Ada and Stewart cements the bond between the woman and her daughter. It seems obvious that when Ada is finally able to communicate with the local hosts, particularly Baines, she will no longer need Flora’s translation support. The role of Ada’s translator is occasionally transferred to the little notepad used by the heroine to write short sentences. The notepad is strangely reminiscent of the pocket dictionaries that provide tourists with keywords or basic sentences in a foreign language. In summary, the heroine is not in control of the narrative, the communication or the space and, as a consequence, seeks refuge in the familiar, namely the piano and her clothes. To fit Ada into the frame of the tourist/traveller is not to ignore the complexity of her character or to preclude other interpretations of the film.

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Instead it offers a ‘tourist reading’ of The Piano that is relevant to the extent to which it can contribute to explaining the tourist spin- offs generated by the movie. Even though migration and tourism are experiences marked by profound differences they nonetheless share some basic tropes such as the notions of travel, mobility and opposition between the new and the familiar. This is particularly true in a postcolonial society such as New Zealand, where the settler gaze is likely to short- circuit the tourist gaze.

New Zealand, or a Piano Stranded on the Beach The beauty of the landscape and its importance within the narrative also played a crucial role in attracting potential film-tourists to Aotearoa/New Zealand. In the first part of The Piano, nature, and the untamed space in particular (the sea and the forest), is constructed as an actant, an actual character of the story. Merleau- Ponty (1964) claims that the relation between subject and space is inscribed within deep narrative structures; space could, in fact, actively oppose the project of the subject and, therefore, should be considered as an actant: a closed door, for instance, is an ‘opposer’, an antisubject that is an obstacle to the potential programme of the subject. Referring to the importance of the New Zealand bush in the story, Jan Chapman, the film’s producer, points out that: ‘it was really a major player in the film. And now I also feel that it is very much part of New Zealand, that the relationship to the land is fundamental there’ (Bilborough, 1993, p. 142). The creation of a filmic landscape that could effectively represent the lush difference of nineteenth- century New Zealand meant that the producers of The Piano had to shoot in various distant locations around New Zealand’s North Island.5 Many scenes were filmed 40 kilometres west of Auckland at Karekare, the location that features as the beach where Ada first lands in New Zealand. One of the main differences between The Piano and The Lord of the Rings tourist spin- offs is that while the latter has been spread around dozens of film locations in both the North and South Islands, the tourism induced by The Piano was mainly concentrated on Karekare beach. But why do tourists visit the beach while ignoring the bush or other film locations? The most obvious reason for this is that the image of the piano on the beach was heavily marketed from the outset and quickly became a powerful icon of the film. Second, Karekare and West Auckland beaches in general are considered the ideal type of New Zealand beach: empty, wild and untamed. Some physical features of the beach (the black sand, the

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rough waves, the shape of the range that surrounds the beach, the rock that faces the shore) give tourists the possibility of easily identifying the location as Karekare or at least as one of the West Auckland beaches. By contrast, the representation of the bush, a hybrid creation of distant and neighbouring places jigsawed together, does not provide us with any hint of the actual location of the settlements in the film. The iconic status and emptiness of Karekare is precisely one of the appeals for international, particularly European, tourists seeking escape from crowded, metropolitan beaches. Third, the relatively easy access to Karekare meant that the beach was already part of an established tourist circuit, even before the filming of The Piano began. Subsequently, the beach continued to hold its own identity as a tourist destination with the added imaginary element provided by its association with the film. Finally, since the production of The Piano, the local administrative body, Waitakere City Council, has actively encouraged film productions and film-induced tourism to West Auckland beaches. However, as already mentioned, the main reason for the success of Karekare as a film-tourist destination is to be found in the use of the landscape in the film and the significance of the beach in the narrative. The representation of the landscape, particularly in the landfall scene, resonates with the protagonist’s emotions, namely anxiety and loss of control. This is expressed through a number of technical devices, such as the use of grey tones or the long shots that emphasize the power of nature over the characters. At the visual level, the idea of ‘liminality’ is translated by the image of the piano stranded on the beach, an image so powerful that it has become the icon of the movie. The image’s impact derives from the disjunction between a sophisticated musical instrument and the wild beach, invoking a clash between nature and culture, civilization and the primitive world. At the same time, however, the piano can also be seen as a mediating object which allows Ada to communicate in this foreign and primitive environment by translating her inner desires into a pre- symbolic language. From this perspective, it is not surprising that The Piano’s landscapes, and the beach in particular, have become such popular icons of New Zealand. The image of the piano on the beach has in fact become a potent visual symbol of New Zealand itself, in its original blend of familiar European culture and ‘exotic’, wild nature. For international spectators/tourists, The Piano is an imaginative map of the biculturalism of New Zealand society, a visual national monument that summarizes the essence of a nation, like the Eiffel Tower for France or the Colosseum for Italy. A number of agents, from advertisers to the tourist industry, have reinforced the iconic status of the piano on the beach as this particular image

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of New Zealand offers serendipitous opportunities for cross-marketing. The landscapes in The Piano have helped position New Zealand as a global competitor among tourist destinations; the ‘green, clean and wild country’. In discussing how The Piano has packaged New Zealand locations overseas, Anna Neill claims that ‘because of the way the film’s luscious footage of remote bushes trades in the exotic, it brings New Zealand right into the global arena, offering its hardly touched landscape up to the tourist’s (or foreign investor’s) eye’ (Neill, 1999, p. 137). The wild and untameable beach of The Piano is the ideal object of the romantic gaze of urban dwellers visiting New Zealand, and the sense of isolation and remoteness conveyed by the film landscape is reinforced by the significance of the beach in the story. Similarly, the real Karekare beach somehow matches the expectations of tourists, as there is no direct commodification of the site. While practically all New Zealand guidebooks mention Karekare as the beach setting of The Piano, there are no tours dedicated solely to the movie’s locations; similarly access to the beach is, of course, free and there is no signage to reveal its connection to The Piano. The Piano -tourist wishing to visit Karekare will often be able to reach the destination on his/her own and will, therefore, be able to cast a solitary gaze on a relatively untouched and uncommodified tourist site, thus experiencing the feeling of an individual, romantic ‘discovery’ of the tourist destination.

Translating the Beach from the Language of Film to the Language of Advertising The New Zealand Film Commission was the first institution to recognize the potential spinoffs of The Piano for New Zealand. According to film commissioner Lindsay Shelton, even before the triumphal Oscar ceremony where The Piano received three Academy Awards, the film was creating interest in New Zealand, with particular benefits for tourism and export (NZPA, 1994; Shelton, 2005). Nevertheless, not everybody shared the same optimism about the film’s capacity to attract more tourism and foreign investment. Tourist Board chief executive David Beatson, for example, was strongly opposed to using the film as a tourist promotional tool on the grounds that the Karekare beach settings and dense bush images were too muddy and gloomy to attract holiday-makers (Hill, 1994, p. 48). Furthermore, the film was considered too ‘arty’ to cash in on, as it was thought that the very people to whom the film appealed would be put off

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by any attempt to capitalize on it. Managers of other destination marketing organizations were more long- sighted than Beatson. Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive Peter Cullinane, for example, referring to the movie’s potential spinoff, claimed that: ‘Some of the best tourists to this country are backpackers, who would relate to the scenery. It would appeal to the environmentally aware tourists’ (Hill, 1994, p. 48). Time has proven Beatson wrong, as Karekare has since become the site of an international film-tourism pilgrimage (Harvey, 1994; Thompson, 2000). In 2001, increasingly aware of the global profile films achieve and create, Tourism New Zealand used an image inspired by The Piano in its international advertising campaign ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ (see Figure 10.1). The promotional poster created by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney is not a still from The Piano, as some have suggested, but a staged picture that features some elements not present in the original film. Tourism New Zealand and Saatchi & Saatchi had to face the difficult challenge of translating and adapting the tourism-inducing potential of The Piano into an actual tourist product. A semiotic analysis of the poster uncovers the complex relationship between film and tourist languages and dissects the process of intersemiotic translation.

Figure 10.1 ‘100% Pure New Zealand’, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney for Tourism New Zealand, 2001

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By dividing the poster into three horizontal sections we note an upper band that contains the logo of the advertising campaign (100% Pure New Zealand), a central section that in technical terms is defined as the ‘visual’, and a lower band that contains both the ‘claim’ of the advertisement and the logo in smaller font. The central image echoes the visual composition of the original scene from the movie, dominated by horizontal lines: clouds, horizon, waves and piano. These lines generate the sense of infinity and untameable power that highlight Ada’s isolation and powerlessness in the face of nature primitivism in the film. Unlike the movie, however, the horizontal lines are framed by two vertical black silhouettes: the edge of the range on the left and the small rocky island on the right. In the centre of the picture, at the crossover between beach and sky, is the piano. The latter, a blend of vertical and horizontal lines is in its turn framed horizontally by the two white bands and vertically by the two black rocks. The poster emphasizes the position of the piano as the focal point of the picture. It is worth noting that the piano depicted in the poster is different from the one represented in the movie in at least two aspects. First of all, it is a grand piano, even more sophisticated than the original, and second, the instrument is open and ready to be played: a clear visual invitation to the viewer (whereas in the film it is boarded up for the long sea journey). Both characteristics contribute to making the presence of the piano on the beach even more surreal than it was in the movie. Furthermore, the piano cannot be separated from its reflection on the water, which is blurred, almost a dreamlike image or a mirage. Viewers of the poster, aware that no such piano exists in this location, will probably project onto the real beach its virtual image. The ghost of the piano will inhabit the beach forever. The textual analysis of the ‘claim’ in the lower band reveals that the enunciator is directly addressing the enunciatee: ‘A short drive out of Auckland and you’re staring at one of the most beautiful beaches in the world’. The first sentence establishes an informal relationship with the ideal reader. Nevertheless, if we analyse the content of the sentence in relation to the visual composition of the picture, the enunciation becomes more assertive. The enunciator is, in fact, not only suggesting a mode of action (staring), but has already framed the picture, implicitly confirming the right way to view it. In the rest of the ‘claim’, the enunciator suggests other activities (‘People come here for the surf,6 the solitude and the occasional movie’) and reinforces the link between The Piano and New Zealand (‘if you haven’t seen “The Piano” it’s time you did’). Finally, in the left corner of the lower band, the poster provides the reader with information concerning the

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advertisement’s location (‘Kare Kare, Auckland, West Coast’) to accompany those characteristic features of the beach (black sand, ranges, small rocky island) that make the location recognizable. To sum up, the visual composition of the poster is marked by the opposition between horizontal lines (signifying infinity, remoteness and the power of nature) and vertical lines that frame the picture and, consequently, control this power. The structure of the image works to emphasize the prominence of the icon of the movie, the piano, which, in turn, is further reinforced through the use of a grand piano and the simultaneous presence of its simulacrum, the reflection of the piano on the water. Furthermore, the poster, unlike the movie, makes the identity of the location explicit through the use of both textual and visual elements. The text also suggests the right way of experiencing the beach: the enunciator has, in fact, pre- constructed and pre-packaged a tourist gaze that is now ready to be replicated by the tourist. A number of analogies and differences between tourist and film language emerge from the analysis of the ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ poster. Obviously, these differences arise from the vastly different interests and goals that characterize the film and tourism industries, respectively. The ultimate aim of the film-makers is twofold: to produce a unique aesthetic object and to sell this very same object, the movie. By contrast, destinationmarketing organizations mainly deal with selling a location . While landscape no doubt played an essential role in the narrative of The Piano, the filmmakers were not interested in the recognizability of the film landscape. This is by definition purely functional to the narrative and often comprises a jigsaw of different places. On the contrary, the priority of tourist advertisements is to facilitate recognition of the potential tourist destination. In the ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ advertisement, the authors emphasize the characteristic features of Karekare and the association with the filming of The Piano. The possibility of clearly identifying this place is, in fact, essential for any subsequent form of the location’s commodification. The second main difference between film and tourist texts concerns the relative emphasis on the narrative and the enunciative structure. In most movies, the narrative has a prominent role: even within the constraints of seriality and genre categories, a feature film will usually tell an original story that involves the action and interaction of one or more fictional characters. Apart from exceptions such as the presence of a narrator, the use of voice- over or subjective shots, generally the enunciative structure of a movie is ‘transparent’. The enunciator shows the enunciatee a scene from an impersonal point of view. Very seldom does a film stress the enunciative

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roles: usually the presence of I (enunciator, camera) and you (enunciatee, virtual spectator) is hidden or disguised. By contrast, tourist texts often reduce the importance of the narrative. The stories told by tourist brochures or advertisements are inevitably predictable as they employ standard recurrent tropes: lying on a beach under the sun, gazing at exotic landscapes, enjoying fine traditional food. Nothing disturbing or dramatic ever happens, as conflict and pain are removed from the tourist narratives, hence the calm sea represented in the Piano poster. Rather, tourist texts play with the visual pleasure generated by the destination image in anticipating and stimulating the hedonistic behaviour of the potential tourist. Similarly, tourist texts emphasize the enunciative roles within the narration: tourist brochures are filled with representations of narrators (tourist guides) and the narratees (tourists), with this enunciative strategy creating or reinforcing the bond between the ideal guide and the ideal tourist. The ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ poster is a clear example of the traditional enunciative structure of a tourist text. The narrative is predictable, as the pattern of activities allowed on the beach is limited by the text of the ad: tourists can ‘stare’ at the beach, enjoy surfing or solitude. Conflict is erased and escapist desire enhanced by the appeal of the picture. In the same way, the enunciator establishes a direct informal relationship with the enunciate, while explicitly constructing an ideal reader/tourist. The ideal tourist prefers ‘romantic gazes’, is young and likely to engage with the landscape: these characteristics obviously recall the social figure of the ‘interactive traveller’ described earlier. In the case of The Piano, there is, however, an essential analogy between film and tourism language, an analogy which lies in the similar compositional modes used to frame the landscape. In most of Campion’s film, the enunciator establishes clear control over the landscape; the film frames the land in a way that draws upon conventional ways of seeing, namely, the classic European figurative traditions of the early British settlers. As Simmons puts it, these similarities are evident in the employment of devices such as ‘a commanding vantage point; the syntax of the sublime; the planar logic of foreground, middle distance with an object of interest, and a light- saturated horizon; its patently staged theatricality’ (Simmons, 1999, p. 126). Other signs of the collapse of the film gaze into the settler gaze are present in the depiction of the Māori and the flora. The film’s depiction of nature inspired by the European canons of the sublime implies a neocolonial stand. In his work on early New Zealand landscape painters,

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Francis Pound (1983) demystifies the myth of an unmediated representation of New Zealand nature, claiming that access to the pure and original land is impossible. Similarly, in The Piano, the Māori are represented as an integral part of the landscape, a mere accessory to the wild New Zealand nature. They are a component of the background and signify a potential threat, which is never realized. According to Māori scholar Leonie Pihama: ‘[T]he perception of Māori people given in The Piano is that our tipuna (ancestors) were naive, simpleminded, lacked reason, acted impulsively and spoke only in terms of sexual innuendo’ (2000, p. 128). The very act of seeing is an act of possession and displays an unequal relationship of power between the seer and the seen.7 Urry (2002) claims that the tourist gazes at the visited place and people from a position of power imposing his/her own ideological norms. The tourist compares what is gazed at with the familiar and in doing so he/she reproduces his/her expectations. Similarly, Michael Cronin argues that in contemporary travel settings, tourists gaze at the natives as objects in the visual landscape (Cronin, 2000). The analysis of the promotional ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ advertisement demonstrates that the compositional modes of The Piano are replicated in the poster. In The Piano, the settler gaze shapes the film gaze, which in turn provides the tourist gaze of the moviegoer/tourist with an appealingly exotic, but safe, New Zealand. The film consistently draws upon the myth of a wild, pure, natural New Zealand, one that vitally underpins New Zealand settler culture. The same rhetoric appears in the tourist field, particularly in the ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ brand. The movie translates the landscape by providing tourists with a controlled image of ‘exoticism’, which they both seek and repossess through the imaginary frame of the filmic souvenir and the actual frame of the camera. The ‘hermeneutic circle’ is eventually closed: the settler gaze initially possessed the land, the film gaze synthesized the settler gaze and the tourist gaze repossesses the land, looking for the filmic images that were seen at home.

Conclusions The panoramic views of Karekare’s cold tides as depicted in The Piano became the distinctive mark of New Zealand for film viewers all around the world. According to Lydia Wevers, the landscape in the film functions as ‘an authenticating context for a narrative which encoded “New Zealand” to foreign audiences’ (1994, p. 1). Viewers were struck by the uniqueness of the

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dark West Coast beaches and the dense, subtropical bush. And yet, the film landscape was constructed according to Western modes of representation. The distinctiveness that characterized the film locations did not alienate Western viewers, as it was framed within the familiar canon of the sublime. Subsequent New Zealand films such as Once Were Warriors (dir. Lee Tamahori, 1994) and Topless Women Talk about Their Lives (1997) implicitly or explicitly commented on the role of film in the process of landscape commodification. These films acknowledge the global resonance of the image of New Zealand landscape constructed by The Piano and other local films. The opening sequence of Once Were Warriors, for example, shows an idyllic New Zealand country landscape which fills the frame. However, as the camera gradually zooms back, it reveals a gritty urban setting, within which the rural landscape appears only on an advertising billboard. The over-representation of the landscape in New Zealand cinema conceived as a manifestation of the ‘uniqueness’ of the country is part of the attempt to define a clear national identity. This representation of a ‘tamed otherness’ has been particularly congenial to the tourist industry, which later exploited the image of the country produced by The Piano, translating the visual appeal of the film into tourist texts such as brochures and posters. The New Zealand film industry used the uniqueness and exoticism of the location to position itself in the global market. Similarly, because of its limited budget, the national tourist board increasingly used film features as a marketing tool. The overlaps between film and tourist gaze are particularly prominent in New Zealand for two reasons. First, early settlers were confronted with an alien environment that they represented and tamed using European artistic conventions: the New Zealand landscape was framed by the canons of the sublime and picturesque that in turn fed the tourism industry of the time. Early New Zealand travel images produced to promote the country to both tourists and settlers inherited the traditional canons of visual art. This legacy is also apparent in much later cultural productions, such as The Piano. Second, the limited opportunities offered by the New Zealand domestic market implied that most of the country’s cultural products were conceived for export overseas. Tourism has always been a precious asset of the country, but it has recently gained even more importance, overtaking dairy production and becoming the first export industry of the country. The subsistence of New Zealanders relies on the selling of their country, so that Aotearoa is first and foremost a tourist destination before being home or whenua . This validates Minette Hillyer’s definition of New Zealanders as ‘both tourists and themselves proud pioneers’ (1997, p. 18).

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The construction of a national identity is inextricably linked to the shared imagining of the land as a tourist commodity. The ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ poster is a perfect example of the way in which a tourist text can re-present and re-mediate film spaces and objects by generating an imaginative and cognitive activity that may, in turn, interpellate the physical and simulated mobility typical of tourist practice. The translation of film into tourism language is particularly effective in New Zealand, due to the colonial history of the country. In New Zealand there is an affinity between the modes of vision of both the tourist and the settler, an affinity determined by their common need to make sense of an unfamiliar land by framing it within familiar conventions. The increasing popularity of film-induced tourism begs further research about the way in which the complex relation between film and tourism develops in cultural contexts characterized by a different history of the relation between the land and its inhabitants. It also points to the scope for further research into intersemiotic translation between different visual ‘languages’ as multimodal texts are mediated and appropriated for the purposes of marketing and international exchange.

Notes 1. Although officially an Australian production, everyone referred to it from the outset as a New Zealand movie. This was acknowledged by the Australians after Cannes when Sydney’s Telegraph Mirror recognized that ‘The Piano is as much a part of New Zealand as the kiwi or the haka’ (Shelton, 2005, p. 129). 2. The takings of The Piano cannot be compared to those of previous internationally successful New Zealand films such as Vincent Ward’s The Navigator (1988) and Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table (1990), which just recouped their limited budget (Shelton, 2005). 3. Similarly, some art critics have claimed that the work of local painters is determined by the distinctive ‘harsh clarity’ of New Zealand light. According to Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith, in New Zealand painting ‘two patterns emerge: a general orientation towards landscape [. . .] and a positive response on the part of a number of more important New Zealand painters to the distinctive qualities of New Zealand light’ (1982, p. 9). Francis Pound later criticized the thesis of geographic determinism, arguing that an immediate response to the landscape is impossible, as nature is always seen through the eyes of culture (Pound, 1982). Landscape is also a crucial theme in much twentieth- century New Zealand literature. Literary critics have pointed out how the popularity of the trope of a ‘haunted landscape’ in New Zealand literature reflects the alienation of European settlers from a land they wanted to possess, but failed to relate to (McNaughton, 1986; Schafer, 1998).

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4. For an analysis of the symbolic significance of the clothes in The Piano, see Bruzzi (1993, p. 10). 5. Among the locations used by the filmmakers are West Auckland, Matakana, Waitakere Ranges, Bay of Plenty and Mount Taranaki (Edwards and Martin, 1997, p. 171). 6. It is interesting to notice that the possibility of surfing suggested by the text contrasts strikingly with the image of a calm sea presented by the ‘visual’. This inconsistency could be explained by the tourist text’s distaste for disturbing or dramatic elements, such as waves. 7. As Foucault reveals in his analysis of medical power, the doctor represents the ideological norms and is permitted to gaze from a position of power at the patient, ‘the Other’, who represents the deviation from such norms (Foucault, 1973).

References Beeton, S. (2005), Film- Induced Tourism . Buffalo, NY: Channel View Publications. Bilborough, M. (1993), ‘The making of The Piano’, in J. Campion (ed.), The Piano. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 135–53. Boorstin, D. J. (1962), The Image: A Guide to Pseudo- Events in America . Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste . Translated by R. Nice. London: Routledge. Brown, G., and Keith, H. (1982), An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839–1980. Auckland: Collins. Bruzzi, S. (1993), ‘Bodyscape’. Sight and Sound , 3, October, 10. Coombs, F., and Gemmell, S. (eds) (1999), Piano Lessons: Approaches to The Piano. Sydney: John Libbey. Croft, S. (2000), ‘Foreign tunes? Gender and nationality in four countries’ reception of The Piano’, in H. Margolis (ed.), Jane Campion’s The Piano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–61. Cronin, M. (2000), Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation . Cork: Cork University Press. Croy, W.G. (2004), ‘The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand, and tourism: image building with film’. Paper presented at the Working Paper Series of the Department of Management, Monash University, Melbourne. Edwards, S., and Martin, H. (1997), New Zealand Film: 1912–1996 . Auckland: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1973), The Birth of the Clinic . Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock. Greimas, A. J., and Courtes, J. (1982), Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Translated by L. Crist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Harvey, B. (1994), ‘The Piano : virtual reality of the real thing’. The National Business Review, 15 April, p. 2. Harvey, B., and Bridge, T. (2005), White Cloud, Silver Screen . Auckland: Exisle Publishing. Hill, D. (1994), ‘Beatson doesn’t play The Piano’. Admark , March 31, p. 48.

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Hillyer, M. (1997), ‘We Calmly and Adventurously Go Travelling: New Zealand Film, 1925–35’. Masters Thesis, University of Auckland. Horrocks, R. (1989), ‘The creation of a film feature industry’, in S. Toffetti and J. Dennis (eds), Te Ao Marama . Turin: Le Nuove Muse, pp. 100–3. Margolis, H. (ed.) (2000), Jane Campion’s The Piano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNaughton, T. (1986), Countless Signs: The New Zealand Landscape in Literature. Auckland: Reed Methuen. Merleau- Ponty, M. (1964), Le Visible et l’Invisible. Paris: Gallimard. Morgan, N. J., Pritchard, A., and Francis, J. (2003), ‘Destination branding and the role of the stakeholders: the case of New Zealand’. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 9, (3), 285–99. Neill, A. (1999), ‘A land without a past: dreamtime and nation in The Piano’, in F. Coombs and S. Gemmell (eds), Piano Lessons: Approaches to The Piano. Sydney: John Libbey, pp. 136–47. Neill, S., and Rymer, J. (1995), BFI Century of Cinema Series – New Zealand Cinema: Cinema of Unease . British Film Institute. [Video recording]. NZPA (1994), ‘“Piano” gives NZ world springboard’, New Zealand Herald , 24 March, p. 24. Pihama, L. (2000), ‘Ebony and ivory: constructions of Māori in The Piano’, in: H. Margolis (ed.), Jane Campion’s The Piano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 114–34. Pound, F. (1982), ‘The real and the unreal in New Zealand painting’. Art New Zealand , 25, 42–7. — (1983), Frames on the Land: Early Landscape Painting in New Zealand . Auckland: Collins. Propp, V. (1968), Morphology of the Folktale . Translated by L. Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schafer, J. W. (1998), Mapping the Godzone: A Primer on New Zealand Literature and Culture . Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Shelton, L.(2005), The Selling of New Zealand Movies. Wellington: Awa Press. Simmons, L. (1999), ‘From land escape to bodyscape: images of the land in The Piano’, in F. Coombs and S. Gemmell (eds), Piano Lessons: Approaches to The Piano. Sydney: John Libbey, pp. 122–35. Tincknell, E. (2000), ‘New Zealand Gothic? Jane Campion’s The Piano’, in I. Conrich and D. Woods (eds), New Zealand: A Pastoral Paradise? Nottingham: Kakapo Books, pp. 107–19. Thompson, W. (2000), ‘Disney heads to Henderson’. New Zealand Herald, 19 August, p. 10. TNZ (2004), ‘Interactive travellers: who are they?’. [Online, accessed 7 July 2006 at www.newzealand.com/travel/library/y42301_23.pdf]. Urry, J. (2002), The Tourist Gaze . London: Sage. Wevers, L. (1994), ‘A story of land: narrating landscape in some early New Zealand writers or: not the story of a New Zealand river’. Australian and New Zealand Studies in Canada , 11, 1–11.

Chapter 11

Bad-Talk: Media Piracy and ‘Guerrilla’ Translation Tessa Dwyer University of Melbourne

In chronicling a multi- generational family business dealing ilegal drugs and the tween these Organizations and the men and women on either side of the battle. The words of Gary W. Poller, Professor of Criminal Justice and Police Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, in writing about the savings and loan scandals of the 19810s, can also be used to illuminate some of the central premises of the show These garbled lines of text appear on the back cover of a DVD box set of The Wire: The Complete Season 1–5: ‘No Corner Left Behind’ (HBO, 2002– 2008). Despite its slick, professional- seeming packaging (complete with HBO’s copyright insignia), this ‘small type’ instantly gives the game away. Together with the curious background image (see Figure 11.1) featuring an unmistakable view of Australia’s Sydney Harbour at night (despite the series being exclusively set and produced in Baltimore, USA), the incomprehensible English of this box set’s blurb announces that it is indeed an illegal, pirated product. Whether resulting from a process of sloppy English-to-English transcription, text recognition scanning or inter-lingual translation ‘proper’ (Jakobson, 2000 [1959]), these lines of mangled English testify to relations of language difference, intercultural intervention, and transnational commodification and exchange. However, with the exception only recently of fan practices (Barra, 2009; Díaz Cintas, 2005–2007; Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez, 2006; Kayahara, 2005; Nornes, 2007; Pérez- González, 2006, 2007), the amateur subtitles and voiceovers of pirated media are largely ignored or dismissed by both Translation Studies (TS) and the broader translation community.

Media Piracy and ‘Guerrilla’ Translation

Figure 11.1 A pirated DVD box set of The Wire , HBO, 2002–2008

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In the following discussion, I take a reverse course, focusing on the wider genre of pirate or, as I term it, ‘guerrilla’, translation, to which the subset of do-it-yourself fan subtitling (fansubbing) belongs. Taking the ‘bad-talk’ of pirated media seriously, I argue that guerrilla translation practices in their diversity raise a host of issues relating to the broader social and political context of audiovisual translation (AVT) in the era of globalization. In particular, such ‘bad-talk’ directly transposes TS to the non-Western, nonEnglish speaking terrain of the ‘Majority World’.1 It is here, where media piracy is rife, that issues of translation assume a guerrilla-like dimension, becoming more a matter of everyday, ad hoc survival than choice. The techniques and practices of translation that proliferate within media piracy operations are, in fact, the only experience of translation available to huge populations across the globe. It is my contention that such forms of unofficial, underground translation effectively map significant routes by which global power relations intersect with language, pinpointing the extraordinary power wielded by entertainment media and its translation in the exercising of cultural capital. By examining, in particular, the different dynamics of fan and non-fan pirate translation side by side, I aim to draw out some of the complexities of this varied scene. As theorists like Yves Gambier (2006–2007) and Maria Tymoczko (2005, p. 1089) note, the translation of multimodal, audiovisual mediums such as television, film and computer interfaces is currently experiencing a huge transition, moving from a once-marginalized area of TS into one of its central paradigmatic pillars. As Gambier states, ‘AV media [. . .] play a major linguistic role today, especially in private homes, just as school and literature did in the past’ (2006–2007, p. 5). As this new area of practice and research gains momentum, many of the foundational concepts of TS have come unstuck. Emerging forms of global media are effectively destabilizing notions of the ‘text’, the ‘author’ and the ‘original’, in the process dismantling many of the seemingly entrenched hierarchies in which such concepts were nurtured and held sway. The destabilizing effect of globalization and increasing mediatization is best explored by examining a subject that in itself is destabilizing these very processes and products, both feeding off and threatening to destroy official channels of media production and capitalist consumption. Media piracy has been characterized as ‘Hollywood’s own digital Frankenstein’ (Lobato, 2008, p. 22), appropriating the digital medium and its associated regulatory controls to its own ends (Pang, 2004, p. 27). Despite its having ‘no political or intellectual calculation’, Laikwan Pang suggests that traditional media piracy, so prolific within Asia, ‘may help to reveal the

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hidden patterns of our ideologically-infused entertainment technology’ (2004, p. 28). Along the way, its ‘ridiculous subtitles’ (Pang, 2005, p. 147) shed light on the changing technologies and politics of translation in the global era.

‘Revolutionary’ Fans As mentioned, fansubbing stands out from other forms of guerrilla translation due to the respect in which many in the growing field of AVT hold it. Within TS, fansubbing has recently garnered considerable scholarly attention and been hailed for its ‘revolutionary’ approach (Díaz Cintas, 2005–2007), ‘abusive’ break with industry conventions (Nornes, 2007, p. 155), and innovative use of new technologies and multimodality (PérezGonzález, 2006, 2007; Díaz Cintas Muñoz Sánchez, 2006; Kayahara, 2005). For Abe Mark Nornes, for instance, fansubbing ‘strives to translate from and within the place of the other by an inventive approach to language use and a willingness to bend the rules’, and, hence, represents ‘one group of translators from whom we may learn much’ (2007, pp. 179, 182). This flourishing of interest in fansubbing tends to share a common focus on its practicalities and formal make-up, ultimately seeking to assess whether this somewhat mutant form of AVT might present a potential model for adoption by practising translators. With this goal in mind, commentators seek to engage with the very different look and feel of fan translation compared to mainstream professional AVT. Such studies are perhaps exemplified by Pérez- González’s article referencing Hartmut Stöckl’s multimodal theory, which seeks to systematically analyse the new ways in which fan translators interact with their source material through setting out a series of distinctions between core modes (like language), sensory channels (auditory and visual), sensory channel medial variants (static or dynamic) and the ‘sub-modes attached to written language, mainly font and colour variation’ (2007, p. 74). Pérez- González (2007, pp. 74–5) writes, ‘Whilst mainstream subtitlers are advised to rely on typefaces with no serifs and “pale white” fonts to enhance legibility [. . .] fansubbers subordinate optimum visibility to aesthetics’.2 Indeed, one of the first things one notices about fansubbing is its unconventionality. As a much discussed and avidly guarded aspect of ‘anime’ subculture,3 it tends to be loud, irreverent and in-your-face. Characters might speak with differently coloured subtitles (a convention borrowed from subtitling for the deaf and hard- of-hearing) (Díaz

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Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez, 2006, p. 51), or different font styles might be used to indicate aspects of their personality (Hatcher, 2005, Appendix). Through exploiting such core and sub-mode variants, fansubbers are able to emphasize material aspects of language, such as its mode of delivery (volume, tenor). Moreover, fan subtitles don’t just stick to the bottom of the screen but are allowed to roam freely across it (Nornes, 2007, p. 183), sometimes responding creatively to the image. Pérez- González (2007, p. 77) notes a tendency to emphasize the ‘pictorial dimension of written signs’ through sub-modes such as ‘perspective, depth, angle, composition’ and the introduction of new spatio-temporal relations produced through this non- conventional positioning of the subtitles. In addition, fansubbers also employ a mix of static and dynamic karaoke- style subtitles for background music and title/ credit sequences. Most groundbreaking of all is fansubbing’s use of translator notes or glosses, which Nornes likens to literary footnotes (2007, p. 182). Here text is introduced that has no equivalence in the source material. According to Pérez- González (2007), the introduction of non- diegetic text, often in the form of a headnote defining ‘untranslatable’ words or explaining dense cultural references, is particularly significant, epitomizing the way in which the fansubbers’ experimental approach to modes demonstrates a type of interactivity that is as much about attitude and ideology as technology. This innovative exploration of semiotic resources highlights the creative, interventionist manner in which fan translators engage with their source material. It ‘opens up a new space of interaction between the translator and the viewer of the audiovisual text in question’, maximizing the fansubber’s ‘cocreational’ (Barra, 2009) role and visibility (Pérez- González, 2007, p. 76).

Imitative Modes Returning to The Wire, we notice that the intralingual English-language subtitles available on this pirated DVD box set are of a uniform white font, that they are conventionally placed at the bottom of the screen and that they do not seem to involve any noticeable points of intervention with the source material – there are no translator notes and no attempts to emphasize the graphic or material dimension of its spoken and written language. Similar observations can be made through perusing a number of other pirated DVDs. The Vietnamese subtitle track found on a pirated copy of Iron Man (dir. Favreau, 2008, see Figure 11.2) sourced in Ho Chi Minh City displays

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Figure 11.2 Cover packaging of a pirated DVD of Iron Man (dir. Favreau, 2008) from Vietnam

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an unvarying yellow font and is again positioned at the bottom of the screen. The single voiceover provided is spoken impassively over the top of the existing audio track, which remains faintly audible in the background. In respect to multimodality, a formal breakdown of such instances of non-fan guerrilla translation diverges radically from that of fansubbing. In multimodal terms, the subtitles employed in commercial bootlegging operations tend to imitate the conventions of mainstream AVT. Bootlegged guerrilla translation tends to display a conservative approach to multimodality, replicating the way in which ‘commercial subtitling aims to achieve a one-to- one correspondence between [. . .] two different medial varieties of the same linguistic stimulus: subtitles only convey an edited version of the character’s speech’ (Pérez- González, 2007, p. 75). This is hardly surprising, as such products are attempting to pass as legitimate merchandise belonging to the world of mainstream production and professional translation. The appeal lies largely in their ability to mimic, as closely as possible, the conventions and production quality of official, legally sanctioned media, replicating (at least superficially) its audio, visual and translation quality. Here, in its imitative mode, guerrilla translation aims foremost to achieve a level of invisibility. Instead, however, as I go on to demonstrate, the act of translation becomes, ironically, doubly visible and opaque. Despite aiming to ‘pass’ as mainstream, such translation practices tend to announce themselves via their overt ‘badness’ thereby bringing the very fact of translation into the open and unwittingly destabilizing the institutionalized invisibility of mainstream translation practices (Venuti, 1995). Consequently, the imitative nature of this conservative formal approach ultimately exposes the hidden agendas of professional AVT (Nornes, 2007, p. 155).4 This dynamic is noted by Pang (2005, p. 147), who transcribes some English subtitles accompanying a pirated DVD of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (dir. Tarantino, 2003) purchased from ‘an obscure shopping mall in Hong Kong’. Noting the way in which ‘this set of subtitles [. . .] corresponds little to the real dialogue, and even suggests incorrect information’, Pang states that it is these ‘ridiculous subtitles’ that stand out as ‘the one major element defining the unique pirated-Hollywood-movie-watching experience’ (2005, pp. 147–8).

Good Piracy? In contradistinction to the image of the lo-tech bootlegger, the more technologically resourced, online nature of fan piracy and fansubbing tends

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to be associated with egalitarianism, camaraderie and political resistance, especially by anti- copyright advocates like Lawrence Lessig (Pang, 2004, p. 26). Part of the reason for this enthusiastic championing of fansubbing practices, despite their questionable legality (Hatcher, 2005; Tushnet, 2007), is that this particular form of pirate intervention is hailed by many in the wider community as an example of creative free speech rather than aggressive capitalism gone wrong. Lessig, for instance, is a particularly vocal supporter of the proliferation of ‘transformative uses of creative work’ that in many ways characterizes the digital age and argues that current laws are not up-to- date with the developments of new technology (Lessig, 2004, p. 185). As Kavita Philip explains, for Lessig, the ‘generation of youth that have grown up with the internet are most severely affected, since all their modes of knowledge and entertainment are already interpellated by digital systems of production, distribution, and consumption’ (Philip, 2005, p. 211). As well as fitting neatly into this youthful, technologically savvy demographic, fansubbing also tends to be non- commercial.5 In fact, fansubbing communities have created honour systems and codes of ethics designed to minimize any potentially harmful impact upon commercial entertainment industries (Hatcher, 2005). For these reasons, many legal commentators conclude that much fan-based production falls into the US copyright law category of ‘fair use’ (Tushnet, 2007, p. 60). In short, the interest in fansubbing within TS tends to follow the line of thought that identifies it a form of ‘good’ piracy, the implication being that more traditional, commercially driven bootlegging is, conversely, ‘bad’. It is my aim to problematize such fi xed notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, engaging instead with the messy diversity of the media piracy landscape, acknowledging that the ‘thing we call “piracy” is not a homogenous [sic] concept. It’s defined differently in different locales’ (Larkin, 2005, p. 112). In communist Romania in the 1980s, for instance, profitable blackmarket piracy was anti- censorship, anti- government and, hence, overtly political (Dwyer and Uricaru, 2009). Conversely, the government’s own form of piracy (when, for instance, preview tapes were aired illegally on Televiziunea Romana) was mainstream yet non- profit (Dwyer and Uricaru, 2009, p. 53, note 1). In the Philippines, another form of ‘official’ piracy was common during the Marcos dictatorship years when ‘American textbooks were reprinted locally and without paying royalties to the original publishers’ (Baumgärtel, 2006b). Known as the ‘Asian Editions’, this form of piracy was permitted via the Presidential Decree 1203 (Baumgärtel, 2006b).

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In such contexts, the quality of guerrilla translation becomes difficult to judge. For instance, consider the illegal screenings of foreign film preview tapes by communist Romania’s state- owned television station. Here, subtitling of a high professional standard nevertheless stood for ideologically ‘cleansed’ content, where references to religion, sex and even scenes involving elderly characters were routinely cut. Alternatively, the blackmarket translation of films was usually made with a single voiceover, typically in a rush and without prior viewing. ‘In this context, the “bad” translation and degraded sound and picture typical of pirate media came to signify a different kind of quality: that of uncensored content’ (Dwyer and Uricaru, 2009, p. 49). The problem with Lessig’s advocacy of so- called ‘good’ piracy is that it relies on positioning Asian bootlegging as bad (2004, p. 63). According to Liang (2005b, p. 81), Lessig ‘denounces the figure of the “Asian pirate”, the non- creative “copier”’. Rather, I argue that the diversity and uncontrollability of pirate ‘bad-talk’ has much to offer, unravelling the complicated spatial coordinates and everyday workings of piracy while also unscrambling some of its messy politics.

User-Friendly Translation? According to Kayahara, ‘the advances presented by DVD imply that the face of audiovisual translation studies will never be the same again’ (2005). Among the changes he envisions are increased job opportunities (with DVDs offering up to eight different dubbing tracks and 32 subtitling tracks), practical benefits (such as durability and no longer having to rewind), growing awareness, interest and analysis of language difference and translation options by scholars and the general public, and finally, bringing the technological means of AVT to the masses enabling consumers and amateurs, like fans, to take matters into their own hands. As he observes, ‘DVD technology makes it very easy for fans to produce their own language versions of films’ (Kayahara, 2005). The low cost, high speed and easily transportable nature of DVDs and other digital formats makes this technology particularly user-friendly and accessible. In combination with the networking capabilities of the internet, the possibilities seem limitless. For Pérez- González, the changes exemplified by fansubbing are currently transforming the entire audiovisual scene beyond issues of translation alone. He states, ‘the interventionist agenda of anime fandom is only

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the tip of the iceberg which subsumes all current and future initiatives taken by the viewers to assume more power following the decentralisation of the media establishment’. Fansubbing processes demonstrate a new age of ‘interconnectedness between the emerging non-linear communication networks [. . .] shaped by “cultural chaos” [. . .]’ (2006, p. 275). He refers, for example, to the phenomenon of viral videos and ‘broadcast yourself’ internet sites such as YouTube and MySpace, and notes the unprecedented fan-led interventions into the production of the Hollywood feature Snakes on a Plane (dir. Ellis, 2006). Tymockzo (2005, p. 1089), on the other hand, considers the broader implications of ‘new technologies’ for TS as a whole, beyond the audiovisual sphere alone, noting in particular the way in which technological development has enabled the processes of decentralization that have come to characterize the global era. She notes how these new conditions ‘have increasingly begun to shift the nature of the agent of translation away from the individualistic model that has dominated Western conceptualisations of the translator’ (Tymockzo, 2005, p.1089). According to Tymoczko, such changes typify the current challenges facing media outfits like CNN that broadcast in more than 40 languages and, thus, require the coordination of extremely high- speed, multilingual translation. She predicts that future research in the field of TS will necessarily follow practice and adapt accordingly (Tymockzo, 2005, p. 1088). Certainly, the way in which technological development affects both AVT and TS in general is well worth exploring in depth. As Pérez- González (2006, 2007) notes, fansubbing positions itself at the forefront of such changes, representing both the accessibility of the digital and the decentralizing dynamic enabled via online networking. Through this fansubbing focus, Pérez- González (2006, p. 275) presents quite a positive spin on these changing technological conditions, underscoring their empowering democratic potential and the promise they hold in terms of minority and niche communities. Quoting media sociologist Brian McNair, he notes how ‘top- down, elite- controlled media [. . .] is [. . .] being replaced by a decentralised global “infosphere” of unprecedented accessibility and diversity’ (my emphasis). In particular, he highlights the way in which fansubbing practices epitomize a new mode of active consumption while similarly highlighting the role of translation, fostering a new space of productive interaction between viewer and translator (Pérez- González, 2007, p. 76). Although Tymoczko’s outlook and objectives are different to those of Pérez- González, her commentary on the effects of emerging technologies and globalization similarly refrains from discussing any negative

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implications whatsoever. Despite this, it is not difficult to see how the accessibility and decentralization enabled via the digital and the internet present as many threats to AVT as opportunities. These are described in some detail by Nornes, who disparages the widespread lowering of standards that has resulted from new expectations in regard to cost- effectiveness and turnaround times driven by online and digital technologies like email (2007, p. 235). ‘Like manufacturers of tennis shoes’, he writes, ‘the translation house has come to transcend national borders, crisscrossing the planet through cheap shipping and computerized communication networks to exploit cheap labour and develop new markets for its services’ (p. 236). For Nornes, these sins are epitomized by the ‘genesis file’ (‘invariably an English-language dialogue list, no matter the source language of the film itself’), which allows a translation house to act as ‘one- stop shop’ where translators ‘work blind’, forced to rely upon English as a pivot language (p. 235). Additionally, as the tools of AVT are delivered to the masses, it is equally easy to surmise how they might get into the ‘wrong’ hands, so to speak. It is here that traditional, non-fan piracy and its various forms of guerrilla translation enter the scene. Do these profit- driven pirates epitomize exactly the type of people who are unfit to take translation into their own hands? And can the decreasing quality of much profit- driven ‘professional’ AVT be attributed to their wrongdoing? While it is tempting in some respects to pit fan and non-fan guerrilla translation against one another, as representing the two ends of the scale in regard to implementing changing AV technologies, such an approach ultimately proves somewhat simplistic. For instance, the argument that non-fans exploit where fans experiment fails to take into account the importance of the digital divide in assessing issues of accessibility (Gambier, 2006–2007, p. 4), ignoring the cultural disparities that structure the global moment in relation to First and Third (or Majority) World politics. Rather, a more complex and nuanced picture emerges when these two diverse forms of guerrilla translation are considered in conjunction and appreciated for their similarities as well as differences. Just as fansubbing can provide a useful demonstration of the cooperative, co- creational possibilities of new media, the conflict-ridden scene of more traditional media bootlegging provides an equally illuminating response to the changing technologies of AVT, going some way towards outlining a much-needed non-Western perspective. Below, I consider the technological underpinning of pirate translation in order to interrogate the politics of access and global empowerment embroiled within the wider AVT landscape.

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The Digital Sub-Modern First, we can note that non-fan piracy, perhaps even more than fansubbing, fully explores the promise of digital reproduction, taking this concept and practice to the extreme. For Lobato (2008, p. 22), digital piracy is ‘[n]ot only [. . .] a side- effect of technology developed by the major studios, but it is also made possible in many cases by DVD preview discs secretly copied by U.S. technicians during postproduction’.6 To a degree, this illegal activity simply realizes the inbuilt potential of the technology, exploring in full its logical repercussions. Similar arguments have been posed in economic terms, likening piracy to a form of cockroach capitalism or ‘globalization from below’ (Baumgärtel, 2006a, p. 377) that takes the decentralization and deregulation of transnational capitalism to the extreme, in the process uncovering some of its legal loopholes and power inequalities. Tilman Baumgärtel wonders, for instance, if media piracy ‘might be the most aggressive and most developed – illegal – version of capitalism’ (2006b, p. 6). Additionally, many of the claims that Pérez- González makes in regard to fansubbing also apply to non-fan guerrilla translation. For instance, nonfan piracy and, by extension, its translation practices have been equally ‘facilitated by the availability and affordability of digital technologies’ as those of fansubbing (2006, p. 275). In fact, in many ways traditional media piracy constitutes an inevitable by-product of the separation that digitization has forced between content and medium (Wang, 2003, p.31). The endlessly reproducible nature of the digital means, for instance, that films can be effortlessly copied onto cheap, disposable formats such as CDs, DVDs and VCDs, which themselves hold little value. As legal scholar and activist Lawrence Liang states, ‘the ordered flow of cinema is constantly frustrated by technologies that enable the reproduction of a 20 million dollar fi lm on a 20 rupee CD’ (2008). Shujen Wang states, ‘Global audiences, more and better informed about new releases in the U.S. by instantaneous Webcasting, have become less willing to wait for local theatrical releases, creating an instant market for pirated products’ (2003, p. 32). For this reason, media piracy and its guerrilla translations can in part be seen as responding to a desire created by the speed of digital technologies and networking. In part, this amounts to a trickle- down effect. For many in the Majority World, experiences with technology do not so much speed up everyday life as punctuate it with extended moments of delay and breakdown (Larkin, 2004, p. 305). Nevertheless, an expectation of both speed and access sets in. According to Nitin Govil, ‘[T]he argument within the industry for simultaneous global

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release has to do with narrowing the time during which piracy can take root in spaces waiting for legal distribution; today, that window is down to less than one day, including subtitling, etc.’ (2005, p. 43). Where fan and non-fan piracy differ in relation to their use of new technologies, more than in terms of degree, is in relation to the internet and online technologies. Although media bootlegging practices have fully embraced digital formats such as DVD and VCD, and make use of digital technologies to add or ‘encode’ subtitle and voiceover tracks, this deployment remains largely ‘off-line’ (Pang, 2004, p. 25), thereby bypassing many of their more virtual and interactive capabilities. For instance, the online labour and distribution networks so central to fansubbing practices are almost entirely absent. Instead, bootlegging operations tend to be wedded to tangible objects that require actual distribution and transportation (p. 25). As Baumgärtel notes, ‘[P]irates in the Philippines seem to make little use of the means of digital distribution that are available to them, but seem to rely on more “traditional” methods, that include messengers and personal delivery, and using long distance busses [sic] and fishing boats for the delivery of illegal DVDs’ (2006a, p. 383). He continues, ‘[w]hen [. . .] fishermen smuggle illicit movies into the country [. . .] disks are hidden in the belly of tuna fish or in barrels of shrimp’ (p. 386). According to Baumgärtel and Rolando Tolentino, these age- old methods underscore the long and complicated history of piracy in the Philippines. Here, on street corners, in parking lots and in various mainstream shopping malls, the term ‘DVD’ is ‘pronounced in a low almost sinister-like whisper’ as ‘Dividi’ and has come to signify both a national type (the Moro) and an entire way of life rather than any mere technological format (Tolentino, 2006, p. 6). Referring to the phenomenon of pirates ‘handdelivering the master Dividi copy’, Tolentino highlights the ‘anachronistic use of technology’ that tends to characterize piracy in the Philippines, where the ‘new’ of the digital tends to proceed hand in hand with more primitive technologies, methods and networks (p. 11). According to Pang, this ‘sub-modern’ dimension, often likened to ‘guerrilla tactics’, encourages the ‘Western stigmatisation of Asian movie piracy’, linking it to the lo-tech criminal worlds of drugs, theft, porn and terrorism (2004, p. 26).7 The reasons behind this anachronistic approach are largely practical. The offline nature of piracy in South East Asia means that pirated discs ‘require almost no technological knowledge’ and are, thus, accessible to a very broad demographic ‘in terms of class, age, culture and geography’ (Pang, 2004, p. 25). Pirated discs can be played on pirated region-free DVD players (‘the buyer will be asked [. . .] what brand name he or she prefers

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to have glued on the generic player’) (Tolentino, 2006, p. 6), whereas the even cheaper, ‘everyday and user-friendly’ VCDs (considered a primitive alternative to the DVD), are particularly prominent within East Asian and Third World contexts (Davis, 2003, p. 166; Hu, 2004, p. 208).

Spatial Pathologies The anachronistic use of technology displayed by media pirates and guerrilla translators underscores the situated nature of technology. Far from representing a physically liberating, de-territorializing tool, as is often suggested in the rhetoric of progress, technology use is always geographically embedded. While VCDs can be said to represent a specifically ‘Asian’ technology that is particularly suited to piracy (Davis, 2003), the politics of space and place also play out in relation to DVDs. Through the system of region coding, for instance, ‘the world’s markets are carved into six geographic zones’ and DVDs from one region cannot be played in another region (Hu, 2006, p. 1). According to Brian Hu, the entire region coding system is implicated in ‘enforcing economic and political censorship by denying the option to see alternative films or alternate versions with alternative languages’ (2006, p. 4). For Hu, region coding is primarily designed to protect geographic windowing strategies whereby ‘Hollywood films are typically released in the United States first, and then gradually in other markets’. Linking this practice to both ‘territorial price-fixing’ and censorship, Hu argues that it also directly encourages media piracy (2006, pp. 1–4). Furthermore, he implicates mainstream AVT practices in these processes of ‘regional lockout’, stating: Another way territorial rights and geographic windows are maintained via DVD is through subtitles and audio channels. When films are sold for territorial distribution, they are typically sold not simply by country, but by language. [. . .] Region coding can also help enforce these linguistic territorial rights since Chinese-language DVDs (Region 3 and 6) are incompatible with French DVD players (Region 2) (Hu, 2006, p. 2) Although piracy has been likened to a form of ‘spatial pathology’ (Govil, 2005, p. 43) for the manner in which it traverses vast areas of land at surprising speed through a series of underground routes (Liang, 2008), it remains, nevertheless, geographically determined. While commercial

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subtitling and dubbing processes are implicated in the economics of geographic windowing and region coding, helping to mark territorial borders and control (and cost) aspects of space and time, guerrilla- style AVT practices carve out an alternate, subterranean cartography. Their amateur subtitles and garbled mistranslations become telling clues left behind in an otherwise close-to- seamless digital operation. They function as a mapping device, revealing the ‘persistence of the geographic’ (Govil, 2005, p. 42) within the pirate’s shadowy, elusive and decentralized operations. In the Philippines, for instance, pirated films tend to enter the country through one of two routes that become inscribed in their translation. Those films displaying Malay and Bahasa Indonesian subtitles will usually have arrived via ‘the [. . .] island of Mindanao characterised by its Muslim population and close connection to [. . .] Malaysia and Indonesia’ (Baumgärtel, 2006a, p. 386). Those displaying characteristically Chinese inflected English subtitles come from Hong Kong or Singapore (Baumgärtel, 2006a, p. 389). Alternatively, in Nigeria, as Larkin (2004) discusses, Indian films are very popular amongst the predominantly Muslim Hausa population. These films used to arrive through Lebanese and Indian traders via the Persian Gulf. Consequently, they tended to have Arabic and English subtitles that were sometimes obscured by scrolling advertisements for video shops in the Gulf. Hollywood films also tend to arrive in Nigeria via the Middle East. Larkin states: ‘One Jean- Claude Van Damme film I watched had Chinese subtitles superimposed over Arabic ones, providing a visible inscription of the routes of media piracy’ (2004, pp. 295–6).

DIY Interactivity As discussed, Tymoczko refers to the decentralized organization of labour (perhaps typified by fan translation practices) as one of the most significant changes affecting AVT today (2005, p. 1089). This is seen as part of the innovation, or at least change, brought about by the networking opportunities provided by the internet. In this context, what is the relevance of the lo-tech, ‘offline’ nature of non-fan pirate translation? Such practices do not conform to Tymoczko’s notion of technological development, yet significantly, they do answer her calls for the ‘internationalisation’ of TS (2005, p. 1086). By bringing the politics of the Majority World into view, non-fan forms of guerrilla translation enable us to interrogate notions of access and selfempowerment enmeshed within ideas of technological development. They remind us that within the parameters of the Majority World, fansubbing and

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online technologies are only available to elite (though ever-broadening) sectors of society. The rest rely on other, older forms of networking and community interaction. According to Larkin, there is ‘a fundamental political question of access embedded in the issue of piracy’ as ‘there’s a massive realm of the world’s cultural production that is made off limits to whole categories of society’ (2005, p. 114). He states: ‘All the people watching pirated DVDs would never be able to afford [legal DVDs]. Some 1% at the top might, but for the vast majority of Nigerians, 120 million people, as probably for the vast majority of Indians, the stable commodity price of [. . .] a CD is just not feasible’. Liang argues that in the age of globalization and transnational dialogue there is an urgent need to think ‘through the problem of understanding the publics which lie outside the assumptions of the liberal public sphere’ (2005a, p. 12). He states: The impulse behind copying in Asia and other parts of the non-Western world may not arise from [. . .] self- conscious acts of resistance, but may instead be understood in terms of ways through which people ordinarily left out of the imagination of modernity, technology and the global economy [find] ways of inserting themselves into these networks (Liang, 2005a, p. 12). By and large, in this non-Western terrain made up of ‘illegal cities’, the ‘avenues of participation’ tend to be non-legal, unprofessional and unconventional. Ravi Sundaram terms this type of intervention ‘recycling’. He writes, ‘This is a world of those dispossessed by the elite domains of electronic capital, a world which possesses a hunter- gatherer cunning and practical intelligence’ (2001, p. 96). Here interactivity plays a crucial role – not the predestined interactivity of digital and online media, but rather a do-it-yourself (DIY) interactivity that manifests in people’s irreverent attitudes towards media. The interactivity that defines non-fan guerrilla translation diverges substantially from the types of technological interactivity described by Pérez- González (2006, 2007). Whereas fans utilize the technological capabilities of digital software programs and online networking, non-fan media pirates ‘interact’ with technology in a lo-tech and un-prescribed manner. This is not an inbuilt (and therefore, to a degree, controlled) form of interactivity but an altogether outsider approach that intervenes with, repurposes and recycles technology, DIY fashion. It is exactly this type of outsider interactivity that tends to be left out of the equation in current research on guerrilla-style AVT.

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While the technological experimentation and online networking so crucial to fansubbing communities is available to certain sectors of society only (youth, the educated and the upwardly mobile), the cultures of recycling and DIY are age- old and cross- generational. Sundaram notes how ‘software pirates, spare parts dealers, electronic smugglers, and wheeler- dealers of every kind in the computer world’ are accommodated by Delhi’s ‘history of single- commodity markets’ that dates back to the Mughal Empire which lasted until the mid nineteenth century (2001, p. 95). Sundaram goes on to detail the way in which second-hand modems and computer manuals, late night internet connections and out- of- date software provide an informal technological training to ‘those excluded from the upper- caste, Englishspeaking bastions of the cyber- elite’ (p. 95). According to Liang, ‘new media challenges the one-way, monopolistic, homogenising tendencies of old media, as it tends to be decentralised in ownership, control and consumption patterns and, hence, offer greater potential for consumer input and interaction’ (2005a, p. 8). This seems a particularly useful way of framing the type of technological interaction effected via non-fan media piracy and its translation. Whereas fansubbing exploits the interactivity of online networks to obtain (rip), translate and distribute (or file share) material, exemplifying the global trend towards decentralized working conditions and distribution/reception modes, traditional bootlegging employs an entirely different type of ‘interactivity’ that although technologically conservative could potentially prove more subversive and interventionist. According to Pang, ‘[p]irated movies provide us with a different perception of Hollywood films that is beyond the producers’ control’ (2004, p. 30). She suggests that ‘one of the most effective ways to interrogate the power concentrated in the hands of technology producers and information distributors [. . .] is to actively participate in technological processes that reshape the products’, thereby challenging the subservience of consumption. While fans tend to hold the authority of the ‘original’ in high esteem, profit- driven pirate translators unwittingly encourage viewers to ‘see through’ the very workings and illusions woven by ‘originals’.

Audience Haggling Yet another form of interactivity is suggested by Hamid Naficy’s (1996, 2005) postcolonial take on ‘bad’ dubbing. Writing eloquently on translation, postcolonial politics and migrant experiences, Naficy describes the interaction between Iranian audiences and imported 1950s American

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films in terms of ‘haggling’ rather than ‘hailing’ (1996, pp. 8–13). Despite the cultural imperialist agenda behind America’s Truman- era policy of exporting films to Third World countries, Naficy suggests that Iranian modes of film translation and consumption were anything but passive or respectful (1996, p. 17). Instead, drawing on their strong oral tradition, Iranian audiences were noisy and highly interventionist, as was Iranian dubbing, which typically took many liberties with ‘originals’, imbuing narratives and characters with lively local flavour. Jerry Lewis, for instance, was dubbed by beloved local radio personality Hamid Qanbari, who ‘spewed specifically Persian expressions or even jokes that were then current in Iran and on the radio’ (Naficy, 2005, n.p.). For Naficy, the ‘drastic manipulation’ characteristic of this dubbing industry (which saw around two to three dozen voice- actors dubbing almost all the foreign and domestic films shown in the country) created an overt ‘clash of cultures’, which he suggests ‘enriched the experience of watching films and doubly endeared the indigenised diegetic characters to audiences’ (1996, p. 13). In this way, Iran’s thriving dubbing business transformed foreign films into more familiar territory and yet, at times, they also created moments of rupture, producing noticeable tensions with the source text, turning a tragedy into a comedy, for instance (Naficy, 1996, p. 13). Naficy reports that John Wayne was made to speak like an Iranian tough guy and that Burt Lancaster was dubbed into a Persian Turkish accent that carried ‘very specific cultural baggage not in the original’ (2005, n.p.). In fact, Naficy positions dubbing at the centre of what he terms Iran’s ‘hybrid production mode’ where ‘apparent losses’ could transform into ‘surprising gains’ and where audiences had to adjudicate between the translation and the film, deciding whether to take either, or neither, on face value. Here, he recounts first-hand the way in which audiences can experience a degree of distance in relation to noticeably translated media, with the translation coming to function almost like a character in itself – a third party in an open- ended, noisy conference between film and audience. For Naficy, instances of typically low- quality or ‘unfaithful’ dubbing provide AVT practices with a whole a new level of visibility, alerting audiences to the way in which mediation processes destabilize ‘originals’, engendering multiple layers of meaning. In a similar fashion, those who buy and watch pirated media may be aware of the fact that the translations on offer are far from reliable. Just as their packaging tends to announce that they are not the ‘real deal’, so, too, do the errors of their translation, which are not necessarily taken on face value. As Naficy recalls, AVT ‘hiccups’ tend to produce an effect of distanciation. Although bootlegged guerrilla translation

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generally attempts to mimic professional ‘standards’, unintentional local flavouring often creeps through the cracks, producing ‘Chinese-flavoured’ English subtitles, for example, of the type encountered by Baumgärtel in the Philippines (2006a, p. 389). Despite typically lacking the overt playfulness or interventionist agenda of Iranian dubbing, the translation errors common to bootlegged media register (and potentially subvert) contemporary socio-political power dynamics.

Bad-Talk Pérez- González positions fansubbing as exemplifying a new age of consumer intervention mobilized through acts of translation (2006, 2007). Along with Kayahara (2005) and others, he applauds this democratizing of AVT, emphasizing the co- operative, grass-roots nature of fan-based guerrilla translation. As Nornes (2007) reminds us, however, negative effects are also noticeable from the technologically led decentralization of translation: not least, a dramatic lowering of standards. The ‘bad-talk’ of nonfan pirate translation, however, presents a different take on the changing conditions and technologies of translation in the global era, reminding us that technology use is always geographically located and that it does not necessarily play by the rules. Though not as innovative in terms of look, feel or functionality as fansubbing, non-fan guerrilla translation is equally telling in terms of the ‘ontological nature of digital data’ (Baumgärtel, 2006b), making manifest its capacity for endless reproducibility. Additionally, it partakes in a non-technological form of interactivity that potentially challenges the global power relations and capitalist systems of territorial control in which AVT is unavoidably implicated. The shoddy translation or ‘bad-talk’ that tends to accompany traditionally pirated media constitutes a particularly everyday reality in the non-Western, Majority World where it is readily available to a broad cross-section of society. It might be time for the broader AVT community to tune in.

Notes 1. Purportedly coined by Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam, the term ‘Majority World’ intends to override the negative connotations of ‘Third World’ or ‘Developing Nation’, by describing countries and communities in terms of what they have rather than what they lack . As its name suggests, the Majority

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2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

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World contains the vast bulk of the global population. See www.appropedia. org/Majority_world. Here, Pérez- González (2007, p. 74) quotes an article by Fotios Karamitrouglou from 1998. The term anime is used in Western contexts to refer to Japanese-produced animation largely intended for Japanese- speaking audiences. Nornes writes: ‘Ever since the subtitle’s invention in that chaotic babel of the talkies era, translators confronted the violent reduction demanded by the apparatus by developing and maintaining a method of translation that conspires to hide its work – along with its ideological assumptions – from its own readerspectators’ (2007, p. 155). However, it is worth noting that the non- commercial nature of fansubbing is not a given. According to Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez, ‘some people try to sell fansubs on the Internet and even during prominent anime events’ (2006, p. 44). Ironically, another source for pirated Hollywood movies within South East Asia is the censorship board of Mainland China. Having spoken directly to a number of piracy informants from the Philippines, Baumgärtel explains, ‘Most American film companies submit digital copies of their latest releases way ahead of their official opening in the US to the Chinese authorities, because they want to distribute their productions on the huge Chinese market’ (2006a, p. 391). Film director Benny Chan confirmed this information (Davis, 2003, p. 171). The association with criminality and terrorism is also noted by Govil (2005) and Davis (2003, p. 166).

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Index

adjustment, in translation 41, 111 Amid the Clouds 72 The Arrival 124–5 Arshavin, Andrei 106 audience haggling 210–12 audiovisual translation (AVT) 139–42, 196 accessibility vs affordability 153–5 DIY interactivity 208–10 see also Viva Zapatero! Baldry-Thibault framework 145–6, 148 Bendtner, Nicklas 103–5 Benoit, Pierre Mademoiselle de la Ferté (Mademoiselle de la Ferté: um Romance da Actualidade) 30, 32, 34, 38 Biagi, Enzo 140, 147, 151 Biblioteca do Lar 42n3 Blood Wedding 66 bootlegging 200, 201, 204, 206, 210–12 Bradley, Jack 65 Bremner, Rory 140 Brossard, Nicole 97 Catacutan, Alvin 92 censorship 140, 145, 153–4 Chapman, Jan 182 chroniclers, writers as 47 Colecção de Hoje 42n3 comics journalism 119–23 agendas mediation 131–3 ironic potential 129–31 media attention and cultural exchange 133–4 multimodality and meaningmaking 123–5 visual nature 125–9

contos (Espanca) 30, 34, 40, 42n6 critical discourse analysis 147, 152 Cross, John 103 cultural cosmopolitanism 59 cultural stereotypes 158, 159, 160 Custis, Shaun 108 de Peyrebrune, George Doña Quichotta (Dona Quichotta) 30, 31, 34, 36, 40 divided loyalties 63 Dodgson, Elyse 71 do-it-yourself (DIY) interactivity 208–10 double palimpsest 48, 49 ‘double’ text 46, 48, 54 DVD piracy 194, 195, 198, 200, 202, 205–7, 209 economic power, and manipulations 112 Edin 124, 130, 131 electronic media 1 Emira 124 Emmert, Richard 88 Espanca, Florbela 26 mental state of 39–41 original texts of 30–3 proto-feminism of 34–7 sexuality of 37–9 translations of 28–30 biographical resonances 33–41 figurative echoes 33 view of marriage 35–6 Extralinguistic Cultural References (ECR) 142, 145, 148, 150 fansubbing 197–8, 200–6, 208, 210, 212

218

Index

film-tourism 176 landscape visions 176–9 see also The Piano The Fixer 121, 131 For Men 162, 164, 168, 169 Found in Translation 63 Fujino, David 92 gender stereotypes 158, 160, 162 geographic windowing 207, 208 global communications system 102 globalization 100, 114–15 and news translation 101–3 good piracy 200–2 GQ 162, 166, 168 group stereotypes 158, 160 The Guardian 109 guerrilla translation 196 fansubbing 197–8, 200–6, 208–10, 212 good piracy 200–2 and imitation 198–200 see also media piracy The Gull 83–91 as translation and performance 97–8 as webwork 92–4 webwork of languages 94–7 Guzzanti, Sabina 139–55 see also Viva Zapatero! Hare, David 64–9, 74 Hayama, Simon 92 Health&Fitness 162 hermeneutic purpose, of translation 11–13 Himmelweg 72, 74, 75, 78 homeworker 42n2 The House of Bernarda Alba 64–9, 77, 78 ‘hybridized’ language 45, 53 Hytner, Nicholas 66, 69 imagetext 9, 20–2 imitation 198–200 The Independent 107 inscription, in Whiteley’s selfportraits 9, 15–16, 18, 21 interartistic self-representation 9, 12, 19

interlingual mediation 113 interlingual translation 8 intermodal self-representation 9, 10, 12, 19 intermodal translation 49 international conflicts 134 intersemiotic translation 124, 146 intertextual self-representation 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19 intratextual translation 46 jobbing translators 28 Johnston, David 69–76 Joorabchian, Kia 108 Kazan, Elia 139 Kiyooka, Roy 96 Kogawa, Joy 86 Koizumi, Maya 86 Koohestani, Reza 72 Kubo, Hakuzan 89 Lakhous, Amara 47–54, 56–9 How to Be Suckled by the She-Wolf Without Getting Bitten 48–9 Le cimici e il pirata 48 Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio 48–9, 57, 59 Leggio, Francesco 48 linguistic error 52–3 literal translator 64, 67, 77 Lorca, Federico García 64–9 The Lord of the Rings 182 ‘A love from times long past’ 43n10 Luttazzi, Daniele 140, 147, 153 Lyttleton Theatre 66 magazines 160–1 beauty and youth 163–8 sex-related ads 168–71 Marlatt, Daphne 83–5 Maryan, M. Le Secret de Solange (O Segredo de Solange) 31, 35, 36, 39–40 The Masks of Destiny 40 Matsui Akira 88 Mayorga, Juan 69–70, 72–6

Index McKea, Margaret 94 meaning making 113, 115 media piracy 196, 201, 205 audience haggling 210–12 spatial pathology 207–8 see also guerrilla translation mediators, translators as 54–7 Mehrez, Samia 46 Men’s Edge 162–4, 167–70 Men’s Health 162–6, 168, 170, 173 migration 57–8, 59 Miki, Roy 84, 95, 96 Minden, Robert 87 ‘minorization’ process 48 The Mirror 107 misrepresentation, in sports news 100, 104–10, 111, 115 mistranslation, in sports news 100, 104–10, 115 Moore, Michael 153 multimodal transcription framework see Baldry-Thibault framework narrative voice 141, 144, 152, 154 National Theatre The House of Bernarda Alba 64–9, 77, 78 Neven 121, 124, 131, 132–3 New Woman 162 New Zealand, and film-tourism see The Piano news translation, misrepresentation/ mistranslation in 101–3 case studies 103–10 Noh play 82, 84–5, 87–9 fundamental principle 90 traditionalism 90–2 see also The Gull non-fan piracy 196, 200, 204, 205, 206, 209, 210, 212 bad-talk of 212 see also guerrilla translation; media piracy non-textual factors, of stage performance 64, 77, 78 normalized stereotypes 160, 161, 163 Obasan 86

219

oblique censorship 145, 153, 155 Once Were Warriors 190 ontological narratives 127 Palestine 120, 125–7, 128 Pandolfi, Gwenda 66 The Piano 176 as language of advertising 184–9 and New Zealand tourism 182–4 and travel 179–82 pirate translation see guerrilla translation promotional/advertising text 159–60 see also magazines Radio del Plata 106–8 RaiOt 139, 140, 147 Rameau, Jean Le Roman du Bonheur (O Romance de Felicidade) 31, 34, 36–8 Ramos, Juande 109–10 reading circle (dokusho sa-kuru) 83 region coding 207, 208 register, of narration 141, 152 relational approach 152 Remembering Lao-Tse 7–24 resemiotization 113 rewriting 57–8 romantic gaze 177–8, 184, 188 Royal Court Production International Department 71 Wall 68 Way to Heaven 69–77, 78 Sacco, Joe comics journalism see comics journalism self-mockery 129–30 Safe Area Gorazde 121, 131 Sameh 124, 126–9, 130 ‘Sansei Poem’ 95 Santoro, Michele 140, 147, 151, 153 Scardifield, Simon 65, 67 Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio 48–9, 57, 59 selective appropriation of textual material 104

220

Index

self-representation of Sacco 130 of Whiteley 7-24 settler gaze 182, 188, 189 Shelton, Lindsay 184 Silhouette 162 ‘The siren’ 43n10 social practices 152 Specht, Heidi 85, 86, 88, 92 spotting 145, 148, 150 stereotypes 158–9, 160 cultural stereotypes 158, 159, 160 gender stereotypes 158, 160, 162 group stereotypes 158, 160 normalized stereotypes 160, 161, 163 Steveston 87 Steveston migrations, play on 85–7 subtitles/subtitling 145, 147–50, 197–8, 200, 206, 208 The Sun 108 Tan, Shaun 124–5 Tévez, Carlos 106–7 theatre translations conflict of cultures 68, 75 see also The House of Bernarda Alba; Way to Heaven confl ict of interests 63, 64 , 67–8 , 78 theatre translators 63 think-aloud protocols (TAP) 12 Tidd, Phillip 94 Topless Women Talk about Their Lives 190 tourist gaze 182, 187, 189–90 Toyoichirô, Nogami 83 Toyoshi, Yoshihara 83, 89 transculture 47–8

translational studies (TS) 194, 196, 197, 201, 203, 208 translators as mediators 54–7 transnational narratives 46 features 47–8 translators as mediators 54–7 truth in 50–4 see also Amara Lakhous transtextuality 10–11 user-friendly translation 202–4 visual theory 9 Viva Zapata! 139 Viva Zapatero! 139–55 censoring 150–3 genre 142–5 subtitles/subtitling 145, 147–50 waka 23n14, 89 Waley, Arthur 82 Wall 68 Way to Heaven 69–77 webwork 84 The Gull as 92–7 Wenger, Arsène 106 Whiteley, Brett Remembering Lao-Tse 7–24 see also self-representation The Wire 198 women translators 27–8 see also Espanca, Florbela Women’s Health & Fitness 162 words and images, in Remembering Lao-Tse 7–24 world literature 59 Zelizer, Barbie 122