Process, practice and landscapes of reception: An ethnographic study of theatre translation

This article discusses the reception of translated literature in the theatre by reflecting on an innovative theatre translation project. Drawing on the notion of landscapes as spaces of cultural flux (Appadurai 1996), the authors offer an analysis of the multiple agencies that mediate such reception. By reflecting on their own experiences of translating Rani Moorthy's play A Handful of Henna for the Italian stage, the authors propose a view of translation as a social dialogue making visible the multiple negotiations and conflicts that characterize the process of translation. While there is ample precedent of reflective accounts of translation practice (Booth 2008; Venuti 1998) and ethnographic approaches in translation studies (Buzelin 2006; Sturge 2007), this article brings together for the first time self-reflection and ethnography offering “a view from the agent” (Simeoni 1995, 457) that acknowledges and foregrounds the scholar's own “participation and involvement” (448)