Silesian into Scots: Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers

Abstract

It is commonplace in British theatre to find translations described as "translated by," "adapted by," "in a version by," or "from the original by." Such credits can be appropriately descriptive but they are also often used in an interchangeable and inexact manner. This is a reflection of the pragmatic attitude toward theatre-making that is characteristic of British theatre, where, so far as translation is concerned, the finished script is more important than preoccupations about the process of achieving it. It is a reflection, too, of the reality that there are relatively few playwrights who are fluent in a given foreign language, so theatres often supply a literal translation from which the commissioned writer fashions a performance script. The word "translation" therefore tends to be used in a relaxed and semantically loose manner in British theatre.