희곡 재생산과 번역 — 로르카의 희곡 『피의 결혼』(Bodas de Sangre)을 중심으로 —

Abstract

Based on the recognition that a theater play is often re-translated and re-produced multiple times over time in a target culture, this paper aims to explore distinct characteristics evident in the reception process of a play. To achieve the goal, this paper compares a range of translated and reproduced renditions of a play titled Bodas de Sangre written by Federico García Lorca, a renowned Spanish playwright. Theater play is a unique genre of literature in the sense that it can be read as a printed book as well as being enacted on stage as a script. Due to the dual nature of drama, once a play is published, it tends to be reproduced over time into various scripts for stage presentation. In addition, when translation is involved, a play may also be reproduced through the means of re-translation. However, previous research on translation of a play for theater has been approached mainly in terms of performability while translation of a play for general readership has been studied together with other types of literature such as novels and poetry. In other words, there seems to be a lack of a unified framework for the study of drama translation that can be commonly employed by theater researchers and translation researchers. Against this backdrop, this paper examines how Bodas de Sangre has been reproduced into multiple scripts for stage performance since its first stage production in 1982 and how this piece of literature has been re-translated four times since its first translated publication in 1998. The comparative analyses of these processes of reproduction and retranslation are followed by a discussion of distinct characteristics of drama translation from social, cultural and linguistic perspectives. This paper finds that the play has been translated via other languages such as English and German and adapted in various ways to be performed in theater. With respect to the retranslation process for publication, since its first direct translation from Spanish into Korean, the play has been retranslated by various individuals, including a playwriting major and a theater major. With these findings, this study is expected to make a meaningful contribution in the field of translation studies by identifying a unique reception process of a play in a target culture through rounds of reproduction.