Looking through old press cuttings, programmes and published play texts, it is possible to chart the appearance, disappearance and all too occasional re-emergence of the name of the literal translator in press reviews and theatre programmes. The only conclusion one comes to is that the practice is an entirely arbitrary one, dependent on the goodwill of the particular theatre, director and playwright involved in each production. After 25 years and 12 translations, it is hard for me not to feel cynical and discouraged about the position of the much-underrated literal translator. It still galls me to open the paper, as I did in July 2002 on the opening of Ivanov at the National, for which I provided the translation, to read leading Times theatre critic Benedict Nightingale state (2002: 14): 'Who is translating Katie Mitchell's revival of Chekhov's early Ivanov, now in preview at the National? Why, David Harrower, the Scots author of Knives and Hens'. Harrower knows not a word of Russian. And whilst one might forgive theatregoers for being oblivious to the contribution translators make, why is it that the British critics so steadfastly refuse to acknowledge them? It has been my own sobering experience that, whilst critics might occasionally stop and question the occasional linguistic liberty taken with the text in new versions, when they do find some turn of phrase particularly arresting it never seems to enter their heads that the translator might have played some part in helping the author of the new version arrive at this.

We have now arrived at a point where the vast majority of critics view translation as being synonymous with adaptation, so much so that Benedict Nightingale, writing in the summer of 2002 about the Chekhov productions then running, talked of playwrights working on foreign texts 'with the aid of cribs' (Nightingale, 2002: 14), a less-than-generous attitude to the work of the literal translator. Of course, the irony is that Nightingale has a valid point. All the playwrights I have worked with have certainly admitted to drafting their versions from my literal translation, in consultation with up to half a dozen other published translations. Of our contemporary playwrights, only Russian-speaker Michael Frayn can translate without resort to a literal version. And he has very strong views: 'Translating's hard enough if you can understand the original. Trying to do it from someone else's literal translation would be like performing brain surgery wearing thick gloves'.

Such considerations have prompted David Lan to observe that translations of plays are 'like forgeries. All the time they're made', he argued, 'there's a chance they'll persuade their audience that they're the genuine article' (Lan, 1998: vii). Back in 1984 Billington had talked similarly of this trend as 'the parasitic practice of pseudo-translation in which a dramatist secondguesses what the original said.' He appealed for theatregoers to 'put more faith in the linguist-translator and a bit less in the name-dramatist' (Billington, 1984: 15). The RSC's 2003 staging of Ibsen's Brand, in a translation by the highly respected translator Michael Meyer, marks a renewal of interest in the work of the dedicated professional translator rather than the fashionable playwright.

责任编辑：admin