Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation: A Practitioner's View by Phyllis Zatlin

Abstract

I92 Reviews Throughout thebook, Buell works hard toestablish the scholarly credentials of his field of enquiry (though on occasion his approach is rather heavy-handed, e.g. the eco-ing of Jameson and Foucault in the section titles 'Ecocentrism and itsDiscon tents' and 'TheWorld, theText and theEcocritic') and to rid itof the spectre of 'what superficially seems an old-fashioned propensity for "realistic" modes of representa tion' (p. 3 i).Here he provides an equable and reasoned reply toDana Phillips's recent attack on his work, but although his illustrative exposition of ecocritical analysis in Chapters 2 and 3 encompasses an exploration of how literarygenres not tradition ally addressed by environmental critics (such as utopian narrative and science fiction) imagine theworld and particularize environmentality, the canon upon which he draws most heavily throughout-Carson, Leopold, Dillard, and Berry-does demonstrate a bias towards a literalmode of representation. It is in the discussion of the emergence and evolution of the discipline that the real strength of thebook lies and where Buell is most successful in achieving his goal of providing 'a concise, accessible road map of trends, emphases and controversies within green literary studies more generally' (p. vii), a discussion amply comple mented by thebook's comprehensive and lucid glossary. The finalchapter provides a particularly illuminating survey of current polarizations within the movement: taking as his point of departure thedivergence between the first-waveessays ofCheryll Glot feltyand Harold Fromm's The Ecocriticism Reader (Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, I996) and JoniAdamson, Mei Mei Evans, and Rachel Stein's corrective up date, The EnvironmentallJustice Reader (Tucson: University ofArizona Press, 2002), Buell charts the rapid progress of the discipline through a three-step development fromdeep-ecology toecofeminism and, finally,environmental justice before turning, ostensibly, to address the future of the field inhis short conclusion. Here, rather than a prophecy about the futureof environmental criticism promised in the title,Buell offersan even-handed interim report on the state of the discipline, concluding that its legacy will lie not in the field ofmethodological innovation, nor in theproduction of a titanicwork of criticism, but in its success in establishing en vironmentality as a permanent concern for thehumanities. One cannot help thinking that a better title,and one consonant with other volumes in theBlackwell Manifestos series,would have been The Idea ofEnvironmental Criticism. For what Buell's work offers is an extremelymethodical, accessible, and timely introduction to the fieldof environmental criticism forspecialists and non-specialists alike, a teasing insight into ecocriticism atwork, and an excellent exposition of the development and evolution of the discipline in its most recentmanifestations. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL RUTH GLYNN Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation: A Practitioner's View. By PHYLLIS ZATLIN. Clevedon, Buffalo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. 2005. xii+ 222 pp. $89.95; ?49.95 (pbk $39.95; ?I9.95). ISBN 978-I-85359-833-3 (pbk 978-I-85359-832-6). Helping to redress the relative paucity of critical texts available on the translation of drama, Phyllis Zatlin's new study is, as its title implies, two delightful and informa tivebooks inone: the first,a practical guide to thecontext-specific strategies involved in the translation ofworks for the stage; the second, a consideration of the discrete modes of adapting drama to or from narrative, film, and television. Managing to embrace both prescriptive-productive and descriptive-historical approaches to these arts,Zatlin stands unequivocally on the side of drama translation for thepurposes of performance, showing impatience with the more 'academic' exercise of rendering the atrical textsprimarily for reading.This will come as little surprise to thosewho know MLR, I02. I, 2007 I93 Zatlin as the formergeneral editor of theESTRENO Plays series of contemporary Spanish drama in translation and as the tireless translator ofmore than twentyplays fromSpanish and French. The author takes themajority of examples illustrating her views on translating theatre from Spanish-language texts, though these have been carefully chosen to reflect larger issues involved in the enterprise. Zatlin firmly proposes thata translation should read-that is,play-like an original text,and that a theatre translatormust attend to questions beyond those of interlin gual transfer.This entails, for instance, attention towhat Susan Bassnett has called the 'gestic text' ('Still Trapped in the Labyrinth...