At the moment I'm working on a subtitle translation of Pintér Béla's forthcoming drama A soha vissza nem térő ("that which never returns"; title translation yet to be finalized). Translating drama represents a specific challenge for the translator, as where poetry, prose, and novels are written chiefly for reading (at least nowadays people read them in silence more often than they read them out loud), drama is a dynamic audio-visual experience (lighting, stage props, sound effects etc.) in which the actors make a significant contribution. The success of a theatre production often depends on the play's performance in a particular place at a particular point in time, and the audience is also familiar with the play's socio-historical environment. Thus, the language and culture of the "here and now" interacts with and reflects on the language and culture of the past, and this affects every element, from the production to the performance of the play. It is for this reason that theatre plays are so often adapted, to enhance the "performability" of a work and disregard the alterity of the source culture.
For a translator, this problem of context and culturally-specific content is compounded by the fact that there are no annotations in a stage play - the "here and now" effect of the drama may easily lose its effect (think about explaining jokes to foreigners; sometimes the joke works, sometimes it falls flat on its face). Uttered words cannot be deleted, and "undoing" a statement is only possible through the addition of yet more words...
The title of Béla's play is particularly apt in this respect; it literally translates as "that which is never to return again". More on this subject later...
