Description
Comedy of menace: The Birthday Party on the Greek stage
Athina Sarafi
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’
The paper is a case study examining three translations of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1957) for the Greek stage. Pinter’s first full-length play is classified as a comedy of menace. The essence of this particular genre is the ominous, threatening feeling that the writer gradually builds in the subtext, whilst the dialogue is mundane with some humorous moments. The study examines three Greek versions of the play (Pavlos Matesis 1969, Errikos Belies 2013, Dimosthenis Papado¬pou¬los 2016), with respect to how translators transfer this ‘ominous threatening feeling’, in a language – like Greek, which favours positive politeness in interaction (Sifianou 1992). Results indicate that the translators adjust aggression and interpersonal distance/proximity in order to render the violence in the subtext. A questionnaire, addressing 15 English-Greek bilingual postgraduate students, examines target reception of these devices. The significance of the study lies in that it shows how pragmatic variables in social interaction are highly significant in transferring aspects of a source play text.
