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Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders pp 125–145Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Translating Titles and Content: Artistic Image and Theatrical Action

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Abstract

If the beginning was a letter, not a word, then it was also an image. Moreover, the image carried its own meaning. By initiating the interrelationship of image and word in Biblical exegesis, it is possible to relocate and simultaneously revive avant-garde aesthetics. Once linguistic descriptions and titles rely on word play for their impact, their translation becomes problematic. But if a title is part of a painting—just as a letter is also an image—is there not a justification for changing the form of the art itself in order to achieve the desired impact? And could the same be done for theatrical scripts? Examples are drawn from artists and writers such as Alphonse Allais, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Brossa, and the Italian Futurists.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For another well-known example of the visual interpretation of Bet, see the Midrash Rabbah (Freedman1983: 9–10).

  2. 2.

    There is a strong semiotic argument for using the term “iconicity” rather than “visuality” for this kind of writing, since all written script is visual (Elleström2016). However, the use of the term “iconicity” is here avoided because of its religious connotations and precisely because the nature of phonetic letters is, in a profound sense, iconoclastic (Flusser1992: 24–35).

  3. 3.

    Jakobson’s most ignored category of translation was defined in the late 1950s (Jakobson1971: 261). The twenty-first century has witnessed further dismissal of the consideration of intersemiotic transposition as translation (Bellos2012: 323–26).

  4. 4.

    These striking pull-out images are, as if to represent some mysterious intrusion, unpaginated (Campos1993: between 42 and 43). I am grateful to Else Vieira for helping me locate Campos’s version or what he himself called his “transcreation”.

  5. 5.

    Hugo developed these ideas in 1839 (Hugo1971: 715–16). They have been mentioned in relation to contemporary translation, but not systematically applied (Scott2012: 92).

  6. 6.

    Charpin (1992: 62) links this work to the fashion for public farting performances, although the date of the piece—1889—would suggest this to be a little premature, since Joseph Pujol, the Pétomane, made his Parisian début in 1890 (Nohainand Caradec2000: 39, 198). Perhaps his provincial exploits, starting in 1887, had prepared the way for such allusions.

  7. 7.

    Of course, as reasoned assessments of Whorf point out by constructing a history of philosophical interpretations of the linguistic relationship to the world, “none of his central ideas were new with him” [sic] (Schlesinger1991: 7). Attacks on linguistic determinism do not tend to pay much attention to the kind of closed system within a titled piece of art. John McWhorter argues, for example: “In the real world, language talks about the culture; it cannot create it” (2014: 160).

  8. 8.

    The translation as “Red Sea” (e.g. Exodus 13.18) is derived from the Septuagint, although the meaning and geographical location of the Hebrew phrase have been disputed (Batto1984).

  9. 9.

    There may be the potential for extending Derrida’s idea of the parergon as title by such retitling (Derrida1978: 22). In his excellent discussion of Duchamp’s titling, Welchman avoids encapsulating the word play through translation (1997: 219–31).

  10. 10.

    There is a detailed treatment of verbalized images in Dalí’s art, although it has some inaccurate titling (Zaslavskii2005).

  11. 11.

    This visual translation of Bureaucracy was exhibited in 2017 at TransArtation in St Andrews and Norwich, and published in the accompanying catalogue (Perteghella et al. 2017: unpaginated).

  12. 12.

    The need to think about performance is usually a starting point for discussions of theatre translation (e.g. Anderman1998: 71; Johnston2004: 25) Here also see Chapter 7 by Cara Berger in the present volume. The intersemiotic nature of theatre is probably the reason it and one of the most translated authors in the world (Shakespeare) are absent from the recent study of translation in which intersemiotic translation is rejected for serious consideration (Bellos2012).

  13. 13.

    A French translation does slightly better than the published English version by explaining the Italian phrase, but nevertheless leaves the title as Pas même unchien (Lista1976: 71).

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  1. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    John London

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  1. Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Madeleine Campbell

  2. Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, London, UK

    Ricarda Vidal

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London, J. (2019). Translating Titles and Content: Artistic Image and Theatrical Action. In: Campbell, M., Vidal, R. (eds) Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97244-2_6

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