Conceptualización de creatividad

John Willett’s aims mean that in the case of his TT more than that of the others it is worth examining the text on the lexical level before moving beyond that to consider broader aspects of linguisticVerfremdung, comedy and politics in the text. This will provide a useful departure point for later comparison with MacDonald’s performance text, where we may also expect attention to linguistic detail. The significance of the first scene in establishing the tenor of the rest of the play is self-evident. The decisions made by the translator here are especially pertinent and thus it is appropriate to take this scene as a case study in order to consider the rendering of some of the finer linguistic points.

In the traditional sense of translation as a faithful act of transferring meaning, Willett is often accurate in his choice ofTLphrasing, and is attuned to possible unwanted connotations, such as avoiding translating the Chaplain’s comment about war, “Es ist ihnen was Neues” (10) as: “It’s a novelty”, which is too positive for this context. Instead, he writes: “It’s something new to them” (4). In addition, there is evidence that despite not having been written for a specific performance, some sections of this TT would allow for a Brechtian style of delivery. This is partly due to the degree to which Willett has maintained the form and metre of Brecht’s language. Although the songs are not included in this analysis, since Willett’s TT was not written for a specific performance, he translated the songs assuming the original score would be used in any potential performance. Therefore, the translation of the songs is faithful to the ST and in line with his objective to retain the form, metre and sound of Brecht’s poetic language. Thus Willett’s replication of rhythm can clearly be seen clearly in the translation of theCourage-Lied, where remarkably, he manages to retain the rhythm, meter, rhyme and much of the content, though the latter often suffers so the form can be retained, as the extract from the second verse below attests.

Ihr Hauptleut, eure Leut marschieren Euch ohne Wurst nicht in den Tod. Laßt die Courage sie erst kurieren

Mit Wein von Leibs- und Geistesnot (6:10).

Captains, how can you make them face it – Marching to death without a brew?

Courage has rum with which to lace it

And boil their souls and bodies through (4-5).

Willett’s choice of where to place his priority on what can be sacrificed and what retained suggests what he felt was most characteristic of Brecht’s language. Of the rhythm of Brecht’s language, Willett said:

Even in Brecht’s unrhymed, rhythmically irregular verse the form is more impor- tant than some translators appear to think. As he himself explained, the caesuras determine the emphasis and direction of what he is saying – the ‘gest’, to use his technical term for it. This isn’t something to be copied exactly, but the translator needs to follow the same principle, using the rhythmic breaks in such a way to give weight to the word, images or ideas that Brecht wanted stressed. (Willett, 1998, 260-1)

The rhythm is often rendered at the expense of finer subtleties of content or even style, despite Willett’s professions of fidelity outlined above, leaving us with a text which is not always as close to theSTas might be expected. Willett does not, for instance, translate many of the modal parti- cles which are a characteristic defining feature of Brecht’s innovative stage language. Admittedly, these do not always have a semantic value, often indicating an attitude to what is being said, but their most important role here is to mark the language as typically oral rather than written: to differentiate gutter from Goethe. Taking the Recruiting Officer’s opening speech as a case in

point, there are three occurrences of ‘schon’ in the initial sentences which are omitted or dis- torted. When used with a verb in the present tense in German, ‘schon’ indicates that something has already begun and is still ongoing. The rendering of “ich denk schon mitunter an Selbst- mord” and “er hat schon unterschrieben” (6:9) respectively as “I’ve been thinking about suicide” and “he signs on the line” (3) illutrates that not only is the modal particle missing in each case, but that the tenses have been changed. The resulting shifts in meaning may be subtle ones, but an accumulation of numerous similar changes in a concentrated area renders the overall impres- sion more fluent than the original. Willett also relies upon the standard subject–verb–object pattern of English, rarely varying it even by placing a participle or adjunct phrase at the begin- ning of the sentence. These elements combine to give the speech a significantly more fluent feel than the rather pedestrian and deadpan diction of the original. This linguistic smoothing can also contravene the principle of epic theatre in which an emphasis is placed upon situation rather than character: “Bis zum Zwölften soll ich dem Feldhauptmann vier Fähnlein hinstelln” becomes: “Here I am, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month”, whereas ‘by the twelfth I’m to get the Commander four companies together’ would

5.1 John Willett’sMother Courage and Her Children retain the emphasis on the whole situation rather than highlighting the individual predicament of the Recruiting Officer himself.

In addition to the tense, fluency and focus shifts which result from Willett’s translation choices, the language is normalised to a certain degree thanks to two factors. The first is his tendency to use idiomatic phrasing where there is none in theST, and the second is his use of a northern English dialect. The idiomatic phrases often introduce humour where there should be political irony, thus obscuring the audience’s access to political criticism.

Hab ich endlich einen aufgetrieben, und schon durch die Finger gesehn und mich nix wis- sen gemacht, daß er eine Hühnerbrust hat und Krampfadern, ich hab ihn glücklich besoffen,

er hat schon unterschrieben, ich zahl nur noch den Schnaps, er tritt aus, ich hinterher zur Tür, weil mir was schwant: Richtig, weg ist er, wie die Laus unterm Kratzen. Da gibts kein Manneswort, kein Treu und Glauben, kein Ehrgefühl. Ich hab hier mein Vertrauen in die Menschheit verloren, Feldwebel. (6:9)

S’pose I get hold of some bloke and shut my eyes to his pigeon chest and varicose veins, I get him proper drunk, he signs on the line, I’m just settling up, he goes for a piss, I follow him to the door because I smell a rat; bob’s your uncle, he’s offlike a flea with the itch. No no- tion of word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. This place has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant. (3)

The German “austreten” is a colloquial expression, but it is not a crude one. It is possible that Willett aimed to replicate some kind of ‘military speak’ and so opted for the coarser English rendering, or that the shock value Brecht’s ‘gutter’ German would have had in its time could be replicated only by using stronger language for a contemporary British audience. Neverthe- less, such terminology is more likely to provoke laughter than surprise, and “bob’s your uncle” familiarises. The effect makes the audience comfortable, whereas the opposite should be true.

It is not only such idiomatic adjustments which distort the replication of the simplicity of Brecht’s language. If his use of a low register and ‘gutter’ diction is to be replicated, words with a Latin or Greek root, which are a marker of formal language in English, should be passed over in favour of those which derive from Old English. Willett’s earlier choice of “suicide”4 _{as a} rendering of “Selbstmord”, for example, would be better rendered as “killing myself”.5 _The more formal Latinate base also has the effect of ‘softening’ the language, as do certain other lexical choices. For example, “shattered my confidence” creates a more delicate image than the ST phrasing, and ‘lost’ would work equally well in English. There are numerous other cases where Willett raises the register of the Sergent’s speech: “Jeder frißt, was er will” becomes “Everyone eats just as he feels inclined”, and “Ich seh” is translated as “I observe”, to mention just a few. In contrast, he has the Recruiting Officer refer to Kattrin and Mother Courage as

4_{From the Latinsui-meaning ‘of oneself ’ and-cidium, ‘a killing’.}

“two tarts” (“zwei Weiber”), and the Sergent calls them “trash” (“Bagage”) thus here making the language more coarse than in theST. There are shifts between register in the original text; the Sergeant should conduct the discussion on more of a philosophical level than the Recruiting Officer, for instance. In Willett’s TT, the discrepancy between modes of expression is more apparent within a speech rather than between sections of dialogue by different speakers, which undermines register as a means of characterisation. Peaks and troughs of register become mixed together throughout.

If we now consider Willett’s use of a local dialect in hisTT, it is worth remembering that he appeared adamant that the translator should not remove decisions about the play’s performance from directorial control. It is perhaps therefore surprising that he chooses to replace Courage’s Southern German accent in the original with what he describes as:

a kind of artificial North Country English, which I don’t think really anglicises it but does correspond to Mother Courage’s character and mode of speech, and does capture the kind of verbal dynamics necessary to keep this long, often flat, play moving. (Brecht’s language does this but his translators don’t). (Willett, 1983, 5)

As thisTTis not a performance text, it is faced with a difficult task: as many options as possible

should be left open to any potential director who may want to perform it in the future, and it should also convey a sense of the dialect and sociolect texture of the original for an academic reader who does not have an aural indicator. There are indeed marked northern English over- tones in Willett’s text, especially in the language of Courage herself: “Talk proper to me, do you mind, and don’t you dare say I’m pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, ‘tain’t decent, I got no time for you” (6). The problems inherent in translating any STwritten in a regional dialect have been discussed elsewere (see 32). There, it was noted that translation using an equivalent local dialect may result in distortion thanks to cultural and social markers being different in the two cultures. There are no significant cultural markers which cause obstruction

here, but there are some social differences, although these work in Willett’s favour. Since British society has a more prominent class structure than Germany had even in the 1940s, a northern English accent will tend to be associated with the working classes. It is no longer unusual to hear regional accents on the stage, thus the shock effect is lost, but the association with the language of the lower levels of the social hierarchy remains.

It is perhaps ironic that it is a dialect of northern English, namely the Yorkshire dialect and that of some neighbouring counties, in which we find the only remaining incidence in English of a distinction between the polite formal and familiar informal pronouns. In making the controversial decision to use an equivalent regional dialect in his TT, Willett could have made use of this in order to replicate the ‘Sie’/‘du’ distinction by replacing them with ‘you’ and ‘thou’ or ‘tha’’ respectively.6 _{Instead, he neglects the ‘Sie’/‘du’ distinction even in places where}

5.1 John Willett’sMother Courage and Her Children it would be possible to render some approximation of the different power structures suggested

by the Sergeant addressing Courage as ‘du’ and her responding with ‘Sie’. Consequently, the relationship between Courage and the Sergeant is distorted as he does not talk down to her as much as in the ST, and likewise, her teasing of him sounds more familiar than in Brecht’s original. It is only when the two soldiers genuinely threaten to take away her eldest son that Courage switches over to addressing them with ‘du’ to indicate a lack of respect. Without the different pronoun use, it is almost impossible to convey this in English. Prior to this, Willett

occasionally has Courage use the vocative ‘Sergeant’ as an indication of feigned supplication and obsequiousness. This does now disappear, but is barely noticeable.

All of these elements affect the communication of the socio-political message of the play, which is conveyed through elements of epic theatre in both the mise en scène and the language, and it is to these elements of linguistic Verfremdung in Willett’s TT that we will now turn our attention as the first of the more general points of linguistic discussion. The mise en scène in Brecht’s language is probably the least transparent and least common type of linguistic

Verfremdung. One example of the announcement of emotion as fact is mentioned above as the Recruiting Officer reports his suicidal thoughts in the opening speech of the play. Similar to Yvette’s pronouncement that she is “ganz verzweifelt” (6:27) in scene 3, the description of the character’s frame of mind allows the actor to ‘narrate’ the following text without having to act the emotion, thus allowing for the necessary distancing Brecht sought in epic theatre. Willett renders Yvette’s ‘Verzweiflung’ as “and me at my wits’ end” (23). This is more an idiomatic rendering than the statement of fact of the original. Willett’s text is not a performance one, though the familiar tone of this phrase would be difficult to disguise even in the most neutral

of delivery styles, so on the page, it appears to be much more emotional than theST.

The translation of modal particles has been discussed above, and is appropriate again here as we consider the use of doch andaber, in theFixierung des Nicht–Sondern. It becomes no less difficult to render the subtleties of these words here. Courage admonishes the soldier who tries

to push away the cannon as the Catholics attack in scene 3: “Laß sie doch stehn, du Esel, wer zahlts dir?” (6:33), where the ‘doch’ is a clear indication that the soldier has a choice, and on hearing her words, he chooses to follow her advice. Willett’s “Leave it, you fool, who’s going to pay you for that?” (28) still results in the soldier walking away and saving himself, but the linguistic indicator of choice in the situation is lost, and Courage’s words sound like an order, which he obediently follows. In other cases, however, Willett replicates the flavour of ‘doch’ well, such as later in the same scene, where Courage tries to hint to Swiss Cheese that he should reveal where he has hidden the regimental cash box: “Er würd sie doch herausgeben, wenn er sonst hin wär” (6:39). This becomes: “Of course he’d give it over rather than be a goner” (35). However, ‘doch’ is easier to replicate here in ‘of course’ as its use is more for emphasis, and

Modern audiences tend to assume ‘thou’ is formal rather than the opposite, and thus where in Shakespeare, for example, a change of pronoun can convey a significant change in tone and attitude which audiences at the time would have noted, today it is lost on many.

the conditional tense is what suggests the element of choice. The replication of ‘aber’ is easier, since it has more direct semantic equivalents in English in ‘yet’, ‘but’, ‘however’ and thus on the whole, Willett’s translation of it is reliably faithful and need not be detailed here, especially as the use of ‘aber’ is relatively rare in the play, and ‘denn’ even more so.

The second category of linguisticVerfremdung is semanticVerfremdung, which aims to make the audience consciously aware of the use of language. One way in which Brecht moves lexical awareness into the foreground is by creating neologisms, and these present a special challenge to the translator. One example occurs in scene 8, where the Cook describes the Sergeant as “ein Schmalger” (6:64). The GBFA describes this as “Neubildung Brechts. Vermutlich abgeleitet von bairisch schmalgen: mit vollem Mund unreinlich essen” (6:407). That the precise meaning of ‘Schmalger’ is not clear is underlined by the fact that it was exchanged for “Aufschneider und Schmierlapp” in the 1951 production (6:407). Willett renders “Schmalger” as “all piss and wind, he is” (80), which replicates the braggadocio meaning of “Aufschneider”, but does not show the linguistic innovation of the original and adds a vulgarism not present in the German. Since a phrase such as ‘he’s all hot air’ would be an acceptable equivalent for Willett’s ‘piss and wind’, the vulgarism must be a deliberate addition. Willett’s approach is not as strictly ‘what the author wrote’ as he claims.

InMutter Courage, the deliberate use of language of a particular register outside of its usual context commonly seen in the use or abuse of religious discourse. Courage’s mockmater dolorosa

lament is a case in point. Willett replicates the parody well: Oh, ich unglückliche Mutter, ich schmerzen-

sreiche Gebärerin. Er stirbt? Im Lenz des Lebens muß er dahin. Wenn er ein Soldat wird, muß er ins Gras beißen, das ist klar. (6:16)

Oh, wretched mother that I am, o pain-racked giver of birth! Shall he die? Aye, in the spring- time of his life he is doomed. If he becomes a soldier he shall bite the dust, it’s plain to see.