Work in progress

We are currently working on a project concerned with performance translation on the British stage from 1800 to the present. This has involved creating a substantial bibliography, which we intend to make available via the web and/or CD-ROM.

We started with a database of performances at the Hull Theatre Royal in the nineteenth century, identifying the English text of the plays and foreign language sources. This is now complete with 23982 records, covering performances from the 7th January 1800 to the closure of the theatre, on the 20th February 1909. If you have Microsoft Access 97 or later, you are welcome to download a copy from here. Right-click the link to save the file "db1.mdb" to your hard disk, then open the file from within the Access program. A similar database has been completed for more recent performances at certain London theatres, the Gate Theatre in Covent Garden from 1925 to 1940 and the Royal Court from 1870 to 1956. You can download a copy from here. Right-click to save the file "db2.mdb" to your hard disk, then open from within the Access program. Table 1 shows performances at the Gate Theatre, Table 2 shows those at the Royal Court.

The project is also concerned with the qualitative and technical evaluation of translations for the stage. In particular, we are interested in the intercultural procedures involved in performance translation, and we hope to make a significant contribution to the development of translation theory.

Publications

Amid our Troubles, Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, edited by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton, was published in the UK by Methuen in June 2002, and appeared in the USA in December. This collection of provocative essays reveals how some of the great Irish dramatists of the past and present have drawn on Greek myths, which have travelled across three thousand yearsto bring new insights on the world in which we now live.

That so many Irish playwrights should return to the Greek classics can not really be a surprise. Drama in Ireland is still a means of exploring the issues of family and state; of gender, class and race; of the oppressors and the oppressed. It is political in the broad sense in which the Greeks understood the word, involving everyone — immediate but concentrated through parallel and parable.

Amid our Troubles examines the work of such writers as Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Brendan Kennelly, Frank McGuiness and W.B. Yeats, and includes new essays by Athol Fugard, Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Helen Vendler, and others.

Price £25.00/$29.95 . Orders to:
Methuen Publishing Ltd, 215 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EJ, United Kingdom
or
National Book Network, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 2076, USA .

Details of further publications by Professor J. Michael Walton

Read our article 'Translation and the British Stage; or How to Deform Esmeralda', dealing with initial findings resulting from a survey of playbills from the Hull Theatre Royal.

The first example of a translation with links to and from its source is now available on our Hypertext Translation Page.