Translation Studies Special Issue: Translation and Performance Cultures: Agents and Networks

Special Issue Editors

Enza De Francisci, University of Glasgow

Cristina Marinetti, Cardiff University

This special issue seeks to begin a discussion about the particular contexts, material conditions, and individuals that have enabled authors, texts, and performance traditions to travel through translation. Covering theatre, opera and song from a range of different languages and time periods, we aim to shed light on the contexts and networks of agents – actors, singers, singing/acting masters, censors, directors, critics, writers and translators – who have intervened in the circulation of translated texts in a range of performance cultures. While cross-cultural encounters and transnational exchanges have characterized theatre history from its inception, little attention has been paid to the agents mediating those encounters and to the multiple forms of translation they engendered. Engaging with the growing academic interest in theatre translation, this special issue aims to advance research by bringing this area into dialogue with broader discussions around world literature and the sociology of translation.

Abstracts are invited for articles exploring the translation of plays, opera and song in different time periods and performance cultures. Contributions are invited on any of the following topics (but other issues and questions are also very welcome):

• Exploring the labour of the theatre translator and its relationship to its objects, environment and collaborators;
• Celebrity capital and the rewriting of theatre texts: actors, directors, singing/acting masters as agents of translation;
• Direct and indirect censorship: the role of censors and institutional gatekeepers on the selection, rewriting and circulation of foreign drama and song;
• Uncovering theatre translation networks around the world, shedding light on how they have contributed to the process of theatre making across time;
• The economics of drama translation: copyright, performance rights, and their impact on the translator’s visibility/invisibility;
• Theatre archives as an alternative source of knowledge for translation researchSpecial Issue Editor(s)

Deadline for abstracts: 21 December 2020

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