Katerina Zachou

You’ve been involved in translation. How do you find this process? What is translation for you, speaking from personal experience? 

I’ve been exclusively involved in theatrical translation and I’ll say what all translators say but what I also firmly believe: translation is bridging cultures. I am interested in theater, translation came through theater, so I didn’t start out with a dream to become a translator. I realized that there are great plays in German which neither have been performed here, nor is there any awareness of the existence of these authors and texts. In this context, I got involved in theatrical translation with students of German Literature and students of Greek Literature in Berlin, where Greek plays are translated into German. The special thing about theatrical translation… Shall I continue?

Yes.

The special thing about theatrical translation… which I’ve come to realize and which we were discussing today on the panel, is that the translator’s joy is to see their work performed. That’s greater happiness than seeing it in print. It’s a shame when it’s only performed and not printed, no doubt about that, but the great joy is to see the play performed and that’s when you also realize the changes you have to make to the text. If you don’t hear the text spoken by the actors, directed, if you don’t see the text begin to make sense on stage, the theatrical translation isn’t really complete. It’s still incomplete. Its completion comes with the performance. I would say this is the greatest pleasure that derives from doing theatrical translation.

Is there a translator that you admire?

I wouldn’t use the word “admire”. I greatly appreciate the work of many translators in Greece. Regarding translators of German, there are only a few. Automatically the name Giorgos Depastas comes to mind, he does a great job with Notos Theater. Or rather, he did with Notos Theater, but anyway, he’s still active in translating. There are several translators who are doing serious work. The problem with theatrical translation is that anyone who wants to do it, does it. Some people translate a play just because they know German and may have a friend who has a theater group. These translations are not always bad, but they certainly have issues that need to be solved. 

What difficulties does one encounter, when they translate a play? What is different?

The greatest difficulty is the orality of the discourse and when I say orality I don’t only mean the spoken discourse. That is an illusion in theater. What we call spoken discourse in theater is not really spoken discourse, it is condensed discourse. By orality I mean that you don’t have the possibility to explain, or to put footnotes. Whatever is written should enable the director and the actor to work on the play. In the translation that I had the pleasure to see published, the system I followed was to put endnotes, thinking that these notes will help the director who’d like to stage it find out about certain things, which I chose to translate in a certain way, but they should know the story behind, so to speak. But that only happens in written texts in theater. And a written, printed text is rare in theater. Most translations remain at the level of written but not published text. So you communicate orally with the director. As Anastasakis was saying at midday, the director often asks the translator, “What did the original text say here?”, “Why did you write this and not that?”. So, yes, I’d say, things are like that in theater.

Do you strictly follow the translations when staging a play? Do you strictly follow them when staging a play?

No. No one ever does. Anything else they tell you is a lie. In theater, we often say that there is an incomplete text of the play, which is the written text, and a second one, the performance text. The incomplete text of the play in German becomes an incomplete text in Greek translation, which in turn absolutely needs the performance to become a second text to appear on stage. Fylaktaki was saying at noon… Wait a minute, was it Fylaktaki? No. Janna Tsokou was talking about Peymann when he was directing in Vienna and how he used to print the translations in the theater program. He would print the translation as he staged it, with huge Xs on some of the monologs that were cut in the performance and you’d see a text with Xs and brackets and additions and a thousand other things like that. That’s the performance text after all, it’s not the translation that the translator initially does at their desk. Not to mention that we tend to talk about collaborative translation, because, ultimately, the translator does it in collaboration with the director, with the actors. That’s the ideal, of course, to be able to be part of the team. When there is a “table-read”, as we say in theater, where the reading of the play takes place, it’s common practice abroad for the translator to be present and they all analyze the text together in depth, until they come to a final linguistic form.

What is theater for you personally?

This is not relevant to translation.

No.

What theater is for me personally… It’s an endless source of pleasure, even though nine out of ten performances you’ll see might be lousy. But the magic of theater is that it’s something specific, instantaneous, which dies the moment the performance ends. But this death is also a rebirth, because if the performance is good, it can’t be compared to any movie or anything else. And the constant rebirth through theater, which is deeply dialogic and deeply “democratic”, is for me a unique thing.

We attended your discussion earlier at the Translation Corner, at Babel. And you mentioned… What is your opinion about some plays that have been translated and then after several years, they are translated again? What do you think of that?

It’s absolutely necessary, because theater is a living thing. That’s exactly why it dies and comes alive and dies and comes alive again. “Dies” may be considered a negative word. In any case, it’s not timeless. The ideas in the text may be timeless, but language is a living thing, which is constantly changing. So we cannot stage a play in 2016 written in the language of the ’50s. It is inevitable that there will always be new translations. And it’s a good thing, right? It certainly is.

What do you think could be done to integrate theater and translated plays more, so that it has a greater impact, if I can put it that way?

That cannot be done generally. It depends on the general education of the people. What needs to be done is that the institutions work much more closely with each other. And when I say institutions, I mean the theaters, whether they are state-run, national, or small groups. They should somehow get over the copyright hurdle, which is a very big problem, and work with people who want to translate. And we should put a stop to the idea that anyone who knows German can translate. This thing is a big mistake, but you already know it first hand, it happens in translation in general, anyone who knows German, translates. It brings very bad results and sometimes theatrical or literary works have been condemned because of that, bad translations are done and they don’t resonate.

Do you think that the evolution of theater would be different without the translation of plays?

I can’t imagine the evolution of theater without translation. It would be monolithic, there would only be The Shepherdess’ Lover. When the National Theater was inaugurated in ’32 and brought translated plays, we started to have theater in Greece. There were about twenty Greek plays throughout the period of the Turkish rule until after the Revolution, until ’32: The Shepherdess’ Lover, Golpho by Peresiadis, etc. which are fine, but can you imagine how it would be if we only had these ten and another ten or twenty plays along the way? It’s impossible to think of theater without translation.

Are you a member of a professional translators’ association?

No. I don’t consider myself a professional translator. I should have another qualification for that. The reason I do it is out of love for theater and I specialize in theatrical translation. I don’t dare to touch, so to speak, other translation subjects.

Would you choose translation as your exclusive profession?

No, because… Unless I get fired! No, because… I like it very much, I am involved in it, but I don’t think it could be the only thing I would do professionally. I think it would tire me.

What’s your image of this field in general? 

Of theatrical translation? It’s a harum-scarum situation. And my colleagues on the panel – both professional translators and less professional, so to speak – share the same opinion. There is no coordination, there is no organization, there is nothing. I hope that we can do something through the cooperation of institutions. That is, the university should take action. All foreign language departments currently have their own translation sector. We love theater, we love translation, so we have to do something.

So are you optimistic about the future?

I am optimistic, yes! I want to be.