Much repositioning in translation, and almost all repositioning in interpreting, is realized within the text or utterance. The range of devices available for effecting this reconfiguration of positions is open-ended in principle. Almost any textual feature can be renegotiated at the local or global level to reconfigure the relationship between participants within and around the source narrative. Mason and S¸erban (2003) offer a detailed analysis of systematic shifts in deixis in English translations of Romanian literature which result in reconfiguring the relationship between readers and the events

and participants depicted in the source narratives; in Mason and S¸erban's terms, these shifts 'continuously reshape the relationship between translator/text', allowing translators 'to create distance or, on the contrary, closeness between translations and readers' and 'position themselves toward the text they work on'(2003: 290).

The well-documented move from wenyan (classical literary Chinese) to baihua (Mandarin vernacular) in the translation of both literature and scriptures in early twentieth-century China participated in reconfiguring social relations as part of the larger narrative of modern, egalitarian, democratic society, as well as the relationship between the Christian God and His subjects. The use of the vernacular in theatre translation in Quebec since the staging of Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs in 1968 fulfils a similar function of repositioning participants, including readers and audience, in social and political space. Brisset (1989) explains that Québécois theatre translations 'are almost always marked by a proletarization of language' (1989: 17). This proletarization is realized by the choice of joual as the language of translation, as opposed to continental French. In Robert Lalonde’s translation of Checkhov’s Three Sisters, the choice of joual, the language of the working class, is accompanied by a series of shifts that contribute to ‘proletarizing’ the setting and participants within the play:

The house of Brigadier General Prozorov becomes that of a village physician. The ‘drawing-room with columns beyond which a ballroom can be seen’(Hingley 1964: 73) becomes a ‘salon modeste’ (a humble living-room) where reigns ‘une atmosphère très “familiale” et ordinaire’ (a typical and ordinary family atmosphere). The theatrical representation of Québec-ness often relies on the social degrading of the protagonists in the original work. This social degrading is directly related to the language since it allows the protagonists to use modes of expression in which phonetic, lexical and syntactic Québécois markers can be found.

(Brisset 1989: 17)

The ‘proletarization’ of source texts and the participants they depict in the Québécois context influences the positioning of participants in the larger narrative of Quebec. It serves to carve out a distinct position for the Québécois people, one that is separate from both the English and the French. This is because joual, a language heavily influenced by English, ‘symbolizes the condition of a colonized Quebec’ (Brisset 1989: 10). At the same time, joual ‘is also what gives the Québécois a distinctively North American feature and differentiates him from his French-speaking European counterpart’ (1989: 10).

Interestingly, Brisset notes that whereas joual is used in the translation of plays, stage directions – which ‘reflect the playwright’s own speech and, as such, bear no specific Québécois mark’ (1989: 17) – are translated into ‘educated French’ (1989: 17). This stratification of language/dialect choice further participates in delimiting the positions occupied by different participants in the reading/theatrical experience. Those positioned within the Quebec space, whether as readers or characters within the play, are associated with joual. The playwright, on the other hand, is linguistically and politically positioned outside that space. But in Mustapha Safouan’s 1998 Arabic translation of Othello, where ‘amiyya (the Egyptian vernacular) is used throughout, even the translator’s introduction is written in the vernacular. This is consistent with the positioning of translator and audience within the same social and political space:

The objective of the translation into the vernacular is clear: that one day Muhammad Ali Abdel Mula, and millions like him, would be able to read established writers in ours and other cultures in the language they were fed by their mothers, the language in and through which they live, and which they speak to their last breath.

(Safouan 1998: 5; translated and quoted in Hanna 2005: 119)

As Hanna explains, Safouan’s choice of the Egyptian vernacular as a vehicle for both his translation of Othello and his own meta-discourse on the translation is an explicit attempt to undermine the claim of a homogeneous collective Arab identity, a claim consistently made by numerous intellectuals and other translators of Shakespeare into Arabic, including earlier translators of Othello. Safouan thus positions himself in opposition to all these intellectuals and translators, and positions the Egyptian reader outside what he sees as the oppressive and debilitating homogeneity of the Arab World. Safouan further sees the choice of the vernacular as serving another important political purpose:

it bridges [the] … artificial gap between the masses and the intellectuals; this gap, Safouan asserts, has always been in the interest of political power, since it helps disempower both the masses and the intellectuals and makes them both

susceptible to manipulation.

(Hanna 2005: 119)

By narrowing the gap between the masses and intellectuals, the choice of the Egyptian vernacular increases the proximity of the two groups in social and political terms.

Like the choice of language and/or dialect, selective use of register identifies a participant with a particular social category and sets him or her apart from other participants in a narrative.29 Hale (1997) reports a tendency among court interpreters to raise the level of formality when interpreting into the official language of the court and lower it when interpreting in the direction of witnesses and defendants, as in the following examples: