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American Higher Education and Dramatic Literature in(to) English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2013

Dorothy Chansky
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Extract

In 2011 and 2012, I undertook a two-part survey to answer some large questions about the use of plays in translation in the higher education drama classroom in Anglophone North America and to test my ideas regarding the simultaneous ubiquity and invisibility of translation there. My project here is to report on that survey and to make clear why translation studies is ready to take a prominent role in theatre studies. U.S. colleges and universities constitute one of the largest single markets in the world for drama translated into English. Most U.S. theatre history classes include plays from the world canon, and many specialized classes in theatre departments focus on plays from non-Anglophone cultures. In English departments, where other genres in translation (e.g., the novel) may be approached with caution, drama seems to be offered a “pass” because the notion of being dramaturgically literate depends on some knowledge of a sizable canon of non-Anglophone plays. Yet despite its ubiquity, translation is often so normalized as to be invisible to those who depend on it. As Laurence Senelick notes, “For most students, a work exists wholly in its translated form, spontaneously generated.” Translation, as the survey confirmed, is part of the DNA of theatre studies. As such, I argue, it needs to be brought to the foreground of the field. In saying this, I am not unaware of the rich work undertaken by scholars, editors, and practitioners who are enmeshed in the difficult issues involved with translating plays, which include pressing for greater attention to cultural sensitivity and literacy. My focus here is on the academy and the classroom, where, for better or worse, the vast majority of future dramaturgs and audience members will cut their teeth on a critical mass of plays and where no single language or production entity or publisher can claim pride of place.

Type
What Are You Surveying?
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 419 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2013 

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References

Endnotes

1. There are more than four thousand colleges and universities in the United States, of which 59.8 percent are four-year undergraduate schools or universities and the other 40.2 percent are two-year schools. “College Enrollment Statistics,” http://www.statisticbrain.com/college-enrollment-statistics/, accessed 19 June, 2013. One Web site's data indicates 367 programs in theatre or drama in four-year schools, which include both undergraduate-only schools and those that give graduate degrees. “Drama and Theatre Schools/Programs in the United States,” www.univsource.com/thea.htm, accessed 24 July 2011.

2. Kurt Taroff reminds us “that no other branch of literature is studied in translation without attention to the translation itself as a form of mediation.” See “Whose Play Is It Anyway?: Theatre Studies, Translation Studies, and Translation for the Stage,” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 4.3 (2011): 241–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 241. Survey Respondent no. 27 wrote, “As a theatre historian with a post in an English department, I was, in my first few years, continually surprised by the lack of use of texts in translation in the department—and indeed with the curricular restrictions against using texts that were not originally written in English. I agree with the premise in your introductory email that ‘globalization is … a default setting’ for theatre professors, and I never recognized exactly how default it was for me until I started trying to teach these courses and realized that I don't think in terms of national boundaries or languages.”

3. Laurence Senelick, e-mail to author, 29 April 2012.

4. The October 2007 issue of Theatre Journal (59.3), edited by Graham-Jones, JeanGoogle Scholar, was a special issue on translation and featured a forum entitled “What's at Stake in Theatrical Translation?” I refer to some of the contributions—all articulate and deliciously varied—later in this article, but it is important to note that the pieces deal almost exclusively with the work of the translator, not the reader, the teacher, or the academy writ large. This is not a criticism; it is a reminder that my project here is pedagogical and institutional.

5. As I explain later, there was a category in the survey for respondents to indicate an ability to read with the help of a dictionary or to communicate in a rudimentary way in a second language. At this juncture I am calling those respondents monolingual, but clearly I am cheating a bit. Such a person would be able to tell you what was in the headlines or order in a restaurant in a second language but would not be able to eavesdrop across accents or be your advocate with a doctor. As with so much else in translation, there are gray areas. Jean Graham-Jones has observed that, for her, fluency requires complete ability to be immersed in the idioms and slang of the moment, not merely excellent reading ability and great skill with vocabulary and grammar (personal communication, 26 July 2012). For a discussion supporting this stance, see Landers, Clifford E., Literary Translation: A Practical Guide (Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Landers argues that maintaining fluency requires constant visits to the culture of the language in question.

6. Typical response rates for surveys among “customers and members” can range from 5 to 40 percent. For the “general public” the range is 1–20 percent. “Typical Response Rates,” Practical Surveys Web site, www.practicalsurveys.com/respondents/typicalresponserates.php, accessed 30 May 2013.

7. Additionally, a few are retired or are currently without institutional affiliation.

8. Two teach in conservatories, four are retired, one is a librarian, and one teaches in a business college. A few are unemployed or list themselves as independent scholars.

9. An additional 4 percent reported that they had earned a B.S. degree. Since this leaves 23 percent unaccounted for, possibly some respondents simply noted the highest degree they held, although the question (which perhaps was poorly designed) asked them to check all degrees they held.

10. Not all respondents completed the full forty questions. Percentages for any datum are percentages of the number of people who answered that question. The number who completed the entire survey is 183.

11. Of the twenty-two people who checked “other” for reading ability, the language that appeared most frequently was Latin (6), followed by Greek (5). One respondent wrote in Swahili, one wrote in Malay, and one wrote in Inezeño Chumash. Of the thirteen who checked “other” for fluency, two spoke Portuguese and one Catalan, languages consistent with Spanish studies. A person who checked fluency in one language could also check the reading ability box for yet another language.

12. Indeed, one respondent wrote, “Stage languages (gesture, movement, design, etc.) also require translation from culture to culture and period to period. This too is an area that your research might address.”

13. The MLA Language Enrollment Database shows that in 2009, 216,419 students in postsecondary education were enrolled in French classes. Spanish classes had a total enrollment of 864,986. Nelly Furman, David Goldberg, and Lusin, Natalia, “Enrollments in Languages Other than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2009” (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2010)Google Scholar, 25 (tab. 5); online at www.mla.org/pdf/2009_enrollment_survey.pdf, accessed 30 May 2013. For the year our “average” respondent associate professor might have graduated from college (1983), 386,238 were enrolled in Spanish classes and 270,123 in French classes. Richard I. Brod and Monica S. Devens, “Foreign Language Enrollments in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education—Fall 1983,” ADFL Bulletin 16.2 (January): 57–63, at 62 (tab. 5).

14. See Hyon B. Shin and Robert A. Kominski, “Language Use in the United States: 2007,” U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Service Reports, April 2010, 6 (tab. 2), www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/acs/ACS-12.pdf, accessed 9 May 2013.

15. I regret that I did not specify in the survey that respondents might state their opinion as to whether they regarded plays originally written in medieval English but read in modern English to be translations.

16. Thirty-one respondents (17.5%) reported that they use an anthology exclusively; fifty-four (30.5%) reported that they use an anthology plus a few individually selected plays.

17. This person was one of six (3%) who preferred not to state their sex, so my use of “his” is arbitrary.

18. All quotes are from a follow-up questionnaire distributed electronically in May 2012 to the sixty-three respondents to the survey who agreed to be contacted with more detailed questions. Of the twenty-four who sent answers to the questions, all but two agreed to the use of their names. Nonetheless, I have decided in several instances to use no names where I think the information—albeit freely provided—might in any way embarrass the respondent. Professional ranks are those at the time the respondent answered the survey.

19. Some version of this putative standoff ghosts most writing on translation, but the source I will use—one that brings the debate into focus both clearly and with regard to what it overlooks—is Venuti's, Lawrence introductory chapter in The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar. These are his preferred terms. It is also important to note that Venuti sees foreignizing not as more “accurate” but as more estranging for the target readership.

20. For the follow-up survey, a single Canadian citizen responded, but she teaches at a U.S. university.

21. Kathleen Dimmick (Bennington College, VT); John O'Connor (Fairmont State University, WV).

22. James Brandon, Professor of Theatre and Speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan, reports that students who have studied a foreign language “become valued ‘experts’ in the classroom discussion.” Brandon allows students to select their own translations, suggesting an approach that privileges discussion and comparison from the outset.

23. One retiree was quite direct: “Greek drama is rhetorical and poetic. Young folks today cannot abide either”—taking responsibility, though, by adding, “you simply have to put the mother source into an understandable context for the students. Nobody is going to learn much about Philoctetes without some understanding of ancient Greek society, mythology, philosophy, theatrical style. … Why is that guy abandoned out there?” The need for an “understandable context” is hardly unique to theatre in arts and humanities studies.

24. Those who characterize a student body as one thing and not another sometimes ignore the students in their own classes. Clearly some students—her actors—were going to speak the “gorgeous language” that so appeals to Pullen.

25. Henrich, Joseph, Heine, Steven J., and Norenzayan, Ara, “The Weirdest People in the World?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2010): 61–135CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

26. This is not a hard-and-fast division, of course. Anne-Charlotte Harvey, professor emerita from the University of California, San Diego, wrote that “all aspects of the translation process should be presented. Those aspects cannot be studies without the ‘special interest’ or ‘case study methods.’ … The nitty-gritty, the hands-on that the students will remember and, one hopes, learn from.” And this does not mean that the senior scholars who responded with generosity and detail do not and did not do case studies.

27. Although beyond the scope of this essay, one element that figures in attitude toward learning languages is American educators' long-standing tradition of valuing bilingualism when it is the product of literary study yet showing some dismay about immigrants who learn English but never become mainstream or “educated” or sophisticated.

28. Venuti.

29. Ibid., 15.

30. Ibid., 16.

31. Ibid., 32.

32. Grossman, Edith, Why Translation Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 71.

33. Among those who argue most eloquently and beautifully for the importance of understanding context are Walton, J. Michael, Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ewans, Michael, “Aischylos: For Actors, in the Round,” in The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field, ed. Warren, Rosanna (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 120–39Google Scholar.

34. Wiles, David, “Translating Greek Theatre,” in “What's at Stake in Theatrical Translation? A Forum,” ed. Graham-Jones, Jean, special issue, Theatre Journal 59.3 (2007): 363–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 365.

35. Sharon Begley, “What's Really Human? The Trouble with Student Guinea Pigs,” Newsweek 156.5 (2 August, 2010):30, www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/23/what-s-really-human.html, accessed 13 July 2012.

36. Ley, Graham, A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater, Revised Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 82–92Google Scholar.

37. Woodruff, Paul, “Justice in Translation: Rendering Ancient Greek Tragedy,” in A Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. Gregory, Justina (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 490–504Google Scholar.

38. Damrosch, David, How to Read World Literature (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), 65–85Google Scholar, at 71.

39. Theatre Journal 59.3 (2007)Google Scholar; cf. n. 35.

40. Venuti, 1–34.

41. Robyns, Clem, “Translation and Discursive Identity,” Poetics Today 15.3 (1994): 405–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Klaus, Carl H., Gilbert, Miriam, and Field, Bradford S. Jr., Stages of Drama: Classical to Contemporary Theatre, 4th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999)Google Scholar; Walker, Craig S. and Wise, Jennifer, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Drama, vol. 1: From Antiquity through the Eighteenth Century (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

43. I thank Sara Warner for pointing out to me that this mode of crediting translators is a Norton house policy and therefore is not the decision of the drama anthology's editors and may not necessarily even be to their liking.

44. I acknowledge that this project is likely to be doable only in languages where Anglophone students can read that language's alphabet. For example, Italian, Hungarian, or even Turkish would be easy enough. Greek or Russian would be more difficult but probably manageable. Arabic and Hebrew might require too steep a learning curve, and languages with thousands of symbols—such as Japanese—would likely take far too much time. I thank Curtis Bauer for sharing with me an assignment he uses in creative writing classes in which students use the linear, syllabic, and rhyme schema of a poem in a language they do not understand as a template for writing a poem of their own in English. Bauer reports that this is usually the students' favorite assignment.

45. Damrosch, 84–5.