acougo, com’a ti (p.21)
FATHER HART. She’s lost, alas! (p. 79)
P. HART. Ela está perdida, santo Deus! (p.29)
The use of the Spanish ‘El Señor’ as opposed to ‘o Señor’ reflects the diglossic dissociation of Galician language from power strata and institutions, such as the Catholic Church. Their density is high enough as to instil in the text and the characters a new aspect that was not present in the English-language original. For instance, when Martiño Bruin calls for Maruxa, the replacement of ‘My colleen’ with ‘¡Ña filla en El Señor!’ causes not only the loss of a vernacular trait but also diminishes the endearing value of the vocative and adds a reproachful attitude to the utterance. The decision to insert these references can be seen as a character-building strategy, since they contribute to the recreation of orality and attribute religiosity to the types portrayed. Most of the insertions occur in Martiño Bruin’s dialogue, the head of the household, who together with Bríxida Bruin, his wife, embodies family
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and marriage. He is therefore presented as being in accordance with organised religion, represented by P. Hart, the old priest and representative of organised religion in the play. When it comes to Maruxa Bruin, the young bride, religious lexicon is replaced: ‘The unholy powers are dancing in the house’ (p. 76) becomes a much more benign ‘Os espíritos cativos andan a beilaren na casa’ (p. 27). This peculiar treatment of religious references accentuates the contrast between the magical, spiritual world longed for by Maruxa Bruin, and the world of institutions such as the family and organised religion, placing it in line with the overall strategy followed by Castro and Villar Ponte in the translation of this play.
5.3.Translation strategy versus dramaturgical viability
The translation of a dramatic text does not only generate a new dramatic text in another language but will often engender a performance text in the target context. Therefore, the interpretations made by the translator will have a continuation in the work of theatre practitioners and affect the reception of a play beyond the printed word. Those approaching O país da saudade to convert it into a performance text would find material that has shifted from Yeats’ original in more ways than its vehicular language.
Many of the translation choices present in the Galician text bear implications with regards to the characters’ behaviour and attitudes and, therefore, would affect the (re)creation of the dramatis personae. Of particular note is the translators’ treatment of verbs, specifically of modal verbs, since these provide attitudinal information. The auxiliary ‘would’, usually employed in the formation of the conditional tense, is interpreted as a verb of desire and its modal quality accentuated: ‘pois quero que ti alumees os derradeiros anos do meu vivire’ (p. 22; ‘For I would have you light up my last days’, p. 70). Similarly, the future tense meaning of ‘will’ is diluted in the following sentence: ‘¡quero falar crariño!’ (p. 23; ‘I will speak my mind’, p. 71). This strategy draws attention to the characters' wishes as the force behind their words and actions.
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The approach to stage directions in O país da saudade corroborates the performance focus of the translators, but their insertions together with other specifications limit possible interpretations on the part of future readers or directors: deictic components are replaced with specific instructions regarding interactions and gestures, or movements through the space.111
BRIDGET. And now – no, Father, I will speak my mind – she is not a fitting wife for any man (p. 71).
BRÍXIDA.- E
agora…(Respondendo a un
aceno do P. Hart) agora - ¡non,
Padre, quero falar crariño! – non serve pra sere muller de ninguén (p. 23)
Puts the crucifix in the inner room. (p.76)
Descolga o Crucifixo da parede, levándoo ô ban interior and’o deixa. (p.27)
The abundant explicitations and disambiguations found in the translation reflect a concern with clarity, which Berman considers inherent to the translation process.112 Paradoxically, these excessive clarifications not only result in a longer text, slowing down the pace of the action, but they also deprive the performance text of much of its potential meaning, in so far as by replacing the ‘empty signs’, the translator is eliminating the need for gestuality and the self-referential essence of the performance text and, in one word, its theatricality.
6. Conclusion
The Rexurdimento recovered the Galician language as a vehicle to portray the essence of Galician culture, preserved by speakers in rural areas, a move that echoes J.M. Synge’s travels to the Aran Islands in search of a unique repository of Irishness.
111 For a discussion of the treatment of deixis and the effects of filling ‘empty signs’ (‘signos vacíos’)
in theatre translation, see Pilar Ezpeleta Piorno, Teatro y Traducción. Aproximación interdisciplinaria desde la obra de Shakespeare (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2007).
112 Antoine Berman, ‘Translation and the Trials of the Foreign’, in The Translation Studies Reader,
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However, J.M. Synge’s and Villar Ponte’s work takes place under completely different circumstances. The aim behind the early twentieth century recovery of the language is not the preservation of a traditional form of expression because of its uniqueness; their goal is the legitimisation of Galician, its dissemination and its enrichment. The language is not a museum piece, a glimpse of rural authenticity presented to outside viewers. For the circles around the Irmandades da Fala, the use of Galician was indispensible to implicate the majority of the population in their political and cultural campaign for national recognition, for which a shift in attitude towards the language was essential.113 In order to broaden the contexts of use for the language, they embarked on cultural production.
For the Galician nationalist movement in the early twentieth century, Ireland fulfilled a legitimising role; as a ‘sister nation’, it provided historical justification to the pursuit of political autonomy and it offered prestigious literary and indeed dramaturgical models for cultural manifestations in Galician language. This emphatic utilisation of the Irish-Galician parallel inherited from the nineteenth- century Rexurdimento in the construction of national identity has continued to affect the perception of Irish cultural products in the Galician context. Specifically, in the incorporations of Irish dramatic works, we can find persistent signs that those first two translations established the parameters for future theatre productions: the almost inescapable rurality of the plays; the emphasis on identification, both in extratextual materials and in micro-textual choices in the translations; the attitude towards mediation, all these aspects show the impact of these foundational ‘folc-dramas’.
This influence can be seen not only in the treatment of imported texts from Irish culture but also the consideration towards an indigenous author: the way in
113 In many ways, this strategy recalls the aims behind the Irish Republican Government language
promotion policies. Over the decades, Galician became further established as the language of political activism, contributing to the contrasting sociolinguistic situation perceived by later authors which I will discuss in Chapter Four.
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which the afterlives of the pieces are later linked to commemorations of Antón Villar Ponte himself. In 1977, the year he was honoured on the ‘Día das Letras Galegas’, Castrelos published the translations under the title Dous dramas populares. Also that year, O país da saudade was staged for the first time by Ditea, together with another of his plays, Almas mortas.114 Almost twenty years later, the Centro Dramático Galego would produce Como en Irlanda.115 Under that significant title were brought together Villar Ponte’s Nouturnio de medo e morte and J.M.Synge’s Riders to the
Sea, a double-bill that Ponte himself would have no doubt approved of.
114 The Ditea staging is examined in Chapter Three.
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