When Performance is not a Metaphor: The "Performative Event" as Translation

This article analyses the practice of sign language interpreting in popular music as a translation and performative event. Theories on translation and performativity in Translation Studies have historically been developed from Linguistics (as in Robinson 2003) or from Performance Studies (as in Aaltonen 2013; and in Marinetti 2013). The work of Performance Studies scholars such as Richard Schechner (2013, 2003) and William Worthen (2003) often serves as a starting point to theorise performativity in translation. Perhaps less known among Translation Studies scholars is the work of performance theorist and philosopher Stuart Grant (2015), who recognises the need for a clearer definition of terms related to performance theory and practice. He therefore draws a clear distinction between “the performative event, performance, the moment of performance, and the theatrical as opposed to the performative” (Grant 2013, 127, original emphasis). These concepts provide a starting point for my theoretical analysis of sign language interpreting of popular music and live concerts. While a new generation of sign language interpreter-performers translates songs and live music events to provide access to music to Deaf and hard-of-hearing signers (e.g. Clementi 2020, among others), very few Translation Studies scholars have analysed the phenomenon (Desblache 2020; Tarantini Forthcoming). With this study I demonstrate that in the work of sign language interpreter-performers, the performative event as intended by Grant (2013, 2015) is itself the translation, and the moment of performance is itself performative not in a metaphorical sense, but in its tangible embodiment and in its very essence.[1] I will then look at how Grant’s theories can be functional to Translation Scholars to theorise translation as an event. [1] This study is part of a larger project titled “When Accessibility Becomes Performance: Sign Language Interpreting in Music and Live Concerts as ‘Performative Rewriting’”, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101024733.Pre-print. This article has been accepted and will be published in Issue #3 of the Yearbook of Translation Hermeneutic