Description
Translating In-Yer-Face Theatre for the Greek stage
Constantinos Dimitrakakis
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’
During the 1990s a new innovative kind of drama started to show up in Great Britain, known as in-yer-face theatre, originating from young writers who challenged conventional theatrical codes and prese¬nted provocative and aggressive material on stage in order to shock audiences and raise public consciousness (Sierz 2001). They were innovative in terms of content and form and established a new theatre language which was more direct, raw and offensive. This study examines a representative play of this kind of drama, Attempts on her Life written by Martin Crimp in 1997 and two Greek translations of it, by Aspa Tombouli (1999) and Athanasia Karagianno¬poulou (2007), in order to investigate how impoliteness and especially the shock effects are rendered and if the primary aim of in-yer-face theatre is achieved in these two Greek texts. Τhis paper elicits data through a questionnaire which is answered by both translation postgraduates and professionals related to the theatre industry (actors, directors). Results show that both groups perceive impoliteness in both stage translations in a similar way: the latest translation seems to fulfill a bit more eloquently the goals of in-yer-face theatre. The significance of this study lies in highlighting variation in the use of pragmatic phenomena cross-culturally which fit the needs of theatre genres.
