Translating Pascal Rambert

Abstract

The translation you are about to read is unfinished. A translation for the stage does not find its final form until it has been spoken by actors and through them is transformed. This is particularly true with Pascal Rambert's plays, most of which eschew punctuation to invite the actors to create their own rhythms and find the meanings within them. Though the many references in his dense texts are absolutely specific, Rambert loves to allow for ambiguity about where a thought ends and the next one starts. Let the actor decide, or the audience. And let the translator try his best to honor those ambiguities, while being as precise as Rambert is in putting down every word of texts that at first glance appear like torrents, words spewing onto the page from a generous source. This makes particular sense in the apocalyptic context of 3 Annunciations: time is running out, and there remains so much to say. The play suggests that Rambert's prognosis for the human race is not optimistic, but we never lose sight in his work that there is much to cherish in being alive. There is loving another person, of course, and always, making theatre.Rambert has been writing and directing plays for several decades. I have translated ten or eleven of the plays to date, though primarily my translations have been used by international programmers who don't speak French to keep up with his prodigious output. Below the title of each of Rambert's scripts, one finds a list of the cities where the play was composed. In cities as far-flung as Tallin and Tokyo, Rambert writes every morning, regardless of jetlag or rehearsal glitches. I didn't set out to emulate him, but I’ve translated many of his plays on trains and planes. My destinations are less colorful than his, but I’ve found that the Acela from Washington to New York or an economy seat with extra leg room from New York to Paris was a perfect place to surrender to the flow of his language. I say flow because my job is the opposite of the actors’: I need to leave every option open.In that sense, the first draft is deceptively easy, with few of the structural headaches French-to-English translators encounter in adapting the language of Proust into the language of Hemingway. Once back at my desk revising, I need to weigh every word, and the illusion of ease vanishes. That's when I start asking Rambert questions. We often laugh about the problems that recur with every play, and in every language of translation, like how to convey the many shades of the French jouissance in a language that gave us neither the Marquis de Sade nor Jacques Lacan. There is no jouissance in 3 Annunciations, but I struggled mightily with the frequent use of the word parole. “Speech” is the obvious translation, but in a play consisting of three monologues, I worried that “speech” in the sense of the expression of thoughts through language, which is what I think Rambert intends, might be confused with “speech” in the sense of a formal address to an audience. I opted for the less natural “words spoken.” I hope we’ll have the opportunity to one day stage this translation, so an actor can tell me whether I did well.