English Theatre Culture 1660–1737 Online Symposium (October 2020)

Translation of Drama with a Special View to English Restoration Theatre

21 October 2020 (online)

seminar convenor: Prof. Pavel Drábek (University of Hull, UK)

keynote speaker: Assoc. Prof. Jorge Braga Riera (Complutense University of Madrid)

The specific nature of translating for the theatre has been widely and repeatedly acknowledged, but apart from a handful of narrowly defined case studies (David Johnston 1996; Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein 2005; J. Michael Walton 2016; Geraldine Brodie and Emma Cole 2017), translation of old drama (and theatre) – that is, theatre texts from historically distanced periods – has been a surprisingly underresearched subject, especially in moving beyond the aforementioned specific case studies towards transferable principles and methods. The research project that initiated this online symposium, English Theatre Culture 1660–1737, is specifically interested in the challenges, theoretical and practical issues of translating early modern drama.

This call invites papers that address the theory and practice of transation of play texts from historically distanced periods. A range of topics is welcome, such as (but not limited to):

• historic practices of theatre translation;
• analysis of existing translations of English Restoration drama
• between theatre translation and adaptation;
• practical conditions and circumstances of theatre translations;
• translating for actors;
• negotiating differences in source and target theatre cultures;
• translation of other Restoration theatre genres (dramatick opera librettos, jigs and drolls etc.);
• drama and theatre translation theory.

We welcome a variety of paper formats, from short interventions and notes, to full conference papers. We expect that accepted papers or paper theses should be pre-circulated to seminar participants in advance. The format of the seminar will be a moderated discussion based on the pre-circulated contributions and short (up to 10 minute) presentations of their main thesis on the day.

Please send your abstract (of no more than 250 words) to Pavel Drábek (p.drabek@hull.ac.uk) by September 15, 2020.

Registered, non-presenting auditors are welcome.