Theatre Translation: An Italian Version of the Musical ''Wicked''

Introduction    The aim of this dissertation is on one hand to analyze the main issues 
involved in the translation of a particular theatre genre, i.e. the musical, and on the 
other hand to present a practical application of this analysis in the translation from 
English into Italian of the musical “Wicked” by Stephen Schwartz.
Accordingly, the dissertation has been structured into two chapters. Chapter 1 
deals with the theoretical aspects concerned with the translation of a musical, 
starting from a general overview of theatre semiotics (1.1) and then moving on to 
analyze the particular features of musicals (1.2). The last part of the chapter (1.3) 
deals with theatre translation in general and then focuses on the particular 
problems and difficulties encountered in translating musicals. The deductive 
process (starting from general aspects of theatre and literary translation and 
narrowing down to the special case of musicals) has proved to be necessary due to 
the lack of theoretical studies focusing specifically on the translation of musicals. 
However, in expounding the strategies employed for the translation of the lyrics, 
an inductive method has been used too: generalizations have been drawn from the 
author's concrete translation experience. On the whole emphasis has been placed 
on the dimension of performance, seen as the ultimate purpose and full realization 
of theatre texts and therefore a determining factor of influence on the translation 
of any kind of play. 
Chapter 2 focuses on the musical chosen for the translation. After an 
introduction to the musical in terms of production history, structure, plot, main 
themes, choreographies, set, costumes and music (1.2), the translation itself has 
then been inserted. It is an original translation by the author of this dissertation 
and it is presented alongside with the English text (for further details see pages 
50-1). The text is followed by a comment on the translation (2.2), which focuses 
in particular on the problems posed by the adaptation of the lyrics and the 
influence of the dimension of performance on the translation choices.
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Chapter 1. Translating a musical: theory 1.1 Theatre Semiotics   
Semiotics  is the science that studies the production and communication of 
meaning through systems of signs. Of all human activities theatre is perhaps the 
one characterized by the richest communicative systems. As the Polish 
semiotician Kowzan puts it, “in theatre the sign appears in its greatest richness, 
variety and density” (Bassnett, 1980: 48). But what are the actual signs used to 
convey meaning in theatre? And how do they come to perform their 
communicative function?
1.1.1 Theatre Signs For centuries the written text has been thought to be the core element of any 
theatre play. Already in the 1930s, however, Veltruský , belonging to the Prague 
school of semiotics, stated that “all that is on stage is a sign” ( Veltruský, in 
Nikolarea, 2002), and Zich recognized that theatre consists of heterogeneous but 
interdependent systems of signs, none of which is predominant over the other 
(Elam, 1980: 5-6).
A first structured classification of theatrical signs was attempted in the 1960s 
by Kowzan, who distinguished 13 types of signs, which can be schematically 
presented as follows (in Bassnett, 1980: 49):
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1   Word
2   Tone
3   Mime
4   Gesture
5   Movement
6   Make-up
7   Hair-style
8   Costume
9   Accessory
10 Decor
11 Lighting
12 Music
13 Sound 
Effects
 Spoken text
Expression of 
the body
Actor's external 
appearance
Appearance of 
stage
Inarticulate 
sounds
 
Actor
Outside the 
Actor
Auditive signs
Visual signs
Auditive signs
 Time
Space and Time 
Space 
Space and Time 
Time
As can be seen from the table, the play-text ("Word") turns out to be just one 
component of theatre, combining (and sometimes even in conflict) with other 
equally important extralinguistic (spatial or proxemic, gestural or kinesic, scenic, 
musical) elements, either of auditive nature (music, sound effects) or of visual 
nature (actor's and stage appearance, body movements), either situated in the actor 
(tone, body movements, external appearance) or located outside the actor (stage 
appearance, inarticulate sounds), either taking place  in time only (auditive signs), 
or only in space (actor’s external appearance), or both in time and space (body 
movements and stage appearance). Starting from these basic elements, more 
complex semiotic combinations can be recognized, such as the effects deriving 
from the immobility and silence of actors, the contrasts and juxtapositions of signs 
(e.g. colours), the grouping or isolation of characters on stage, the creation of 
spaces through the use of light, the acting pace and the degree of tension, the 
symbolic or “typifying” function of costumes in characterization (Link, 1980: 42), 
the  realistic or symbolic-stylized nature of the setting as a whole.
What is common to all theatre signs is their being artificial (Kowzan, in 
Nikolarea, 2002) , i.e. they always stand for something else, performing a 
communicative function which is “deliberately intended” and which basically 
consists in either advancing the dramatic action or characterizing it (Zich, in 
Bassnett, 1980: 48). Sometimes they even perform more than one function 
simultaneously: e.g. a costume may be indicative of a character's nationality as 
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well as of his/her social status. 
The value of theatre signs is closely connected with theatre conventions, and 
as these change in space and time, also conventional signs appear to be 
characterized by high flexibility and dynamism in the signifying function they 
perform. 
Finally, the audience's ability of perceiving and deciphering signs adds “an 
extra-dimension of complexity” to theatre signs (Honzl, in Nikolarea, 2002), as 
more attention may be paid to certain signs at a given moment, whereas other 
signs may be pushed into the background.
1.1.2 The Dimension of Performance   
The performance of a play is defined by Jansen as a succession of dramatic 
situations, which are in their turn compounds of successive-simultaneous nature 
of dramatic elements, i. e. of theatrical signs (Bassnett, 1980: 50). It is in the 
frame of a performance that the various semiotic systems of theatre come to carry 
out their signifying functions through a multiple interplay with one another.
The meaning of each dramatic unit of performance depends on both linguistic 
and extralinguistic factors. The performance in fact can be seen as what actually 
establishes a relationship between the different signifying systems involved in a 
theatre work- the written text, on one hand, and the staging, that is “all that is 
visible and audible on stage” (Pavis, 1990: 25), on the other- within a determined 
space and time, for an audience. According to Ubersfeld (1978: 24), what has 
given preeminence to the written text (and consequently involved underestimation 
of the other sign systems) in theatre studies has been the erroneous widespread 
perception of performance as a “translation” (in its basic definition of “semantic 
equivalent”) of the written text into auditive and visual equivalents, a mere shift in 
mode of expression but not in form or content. This perception has led to 
considering the written text as a sort of recipe book which needs to be followed to 
the letter, as the true deep structure of performance, its normative pattern. 
 The dominant view among theatre semioticians is now that performance is 
not already included in the text and cannot be reduced to a development or 
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transposition of this (Bassnett, 1980: 50); what is transferred from the text into the 
performance is just the fiction  of the play itself, i.e. the possible fictional world 
and story which in a first moment comes out from the simple reading of the 
written text, and in a second moment is given shape through the performance of 
the play on stage (Pavis, 1990: 29-32). The creation of the dramatic fiction is 
verbal and symbolic in the text, non-verbal and iconic in the staging: the staging 
operates a sort of scenic rewriting of the text, which is not written but in the form 
of stage choices (scenery, pace, lighting). The union of the two dimensions 
generates the performance, which enriches the text, by adding a physical 
dimension to it in terms of images, movements, gestures, sounds, lights, which 
can from time to time stress, emphasize, understate, modify, complete, clash with 
what is written in the text. The performance  is in fact in its own nature 
polysemous and ambiguous, as it addresses not only the rational perceptive sphere 
(through the spoken verbal material) but also the irrational dimension of senses 
and sensations (through all the visual and acoustic non-verbal signs) (Gostand, 
1980: 1-10). What is created through the performance cannot therefore be the 
objective realization of the referent of the written text but just a simulation of such 
reality by means of conventional signs (Pavis, 1990: 31).
The relationship between text and performance turns out to be one of 
interdependence and reciprocal influence, rather than one of subordination of one 
dimension to the other. According to Pavis (1990: 33), in fact, the performance 
creates a “situation of enunciation” on the basis of the written text, which in its 
turn will make sense only within that situation . A “hermeneutic circle” (Pavis, 
1990: 29) is in this way established, and within it sometimes the staging clarifies 
the ambiguities of the text or offers an interpretation of it, sometimes it is the text 
that plays a major role in disambiguating a scene staged. 
The performance is also equally influenced by the physical characteristics of 
the stage,  by the actors, by the director's and the stage manager's choices (which 
may opt either for keeping as faithful as possible to the text or to determined 
aesthetic principles- “autotextual” staging-, or for giving the political, ideological, 
cultural, social , psychological subtext predominance over the text- “ideotextual” 
staging-) as well as by the audience's reception (Pavis, 1990: 39-40). The role of 
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the audience in particular is of crucial importance. The audience's response to a 
play can be counted as an active component of performance itself, which in fact 
exists only insofar as the audience perceives it, it is also, in part, the audience's 
“creative projection” (Pavis, 1990: 34).
1.1.3 Theatre Texts Theatre texts fall into the category of texts which have been written to be 
spoken, or, better, performed. Their function is to provide the verbal material for 
the play, in the form of dialogues or monologues of characters. Unlike what 
happens in novels, in playtexts there is no mediation of a narrator who introduces 
the background of the story and gives his/her interpretation of it, but characters 
and actions are directly “shown” in what is called a “linguistic contemporaneity” 
(Link, 1980: 25). The text of a play is therefore characterized by the simultaneous 
or successive unfolding of speeches and their interplay and presents typical 
features of spoken language: the I-you interaction, the use of different registers, 
slang terms, dialects, vocatives, terms of abuse and endearment, courtesy forms, 
interjections, discourse markers, perlocutionary and illocutionary expressions. The 
degree of closeness to realistic spoken interaction varies however from play to 
play, and it is also linked to the form chosen for the written text: most 
contemporary plays are written in prose, but sometimes a poetic form, diction and 
imagery are adopted too (whereas verse is the typical form in classical literary 
theatre). 
Another aspect linked to the spoken realization of theatre texts are the 
paralinguistic features they carry (pitch, intonation, inflection, loudness, speed of 
delivery), which contribute greatly to modify the meaning and the expressive 
force of the texts themselves. In some cases a melodic structure is generated 
through the combination of pitches, volume, stress distribution and pauses, and 
non-verbal elements such as laughs, coughs, sighs, cries may be as well integral 
parts of the dialogues.
Peculiar to theatre texts is also the fact that dialogues unfold both in time and 
space and the text is therefore integrated in the extralinguistic situation (i.e. the 
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speakers and the things around them), which provides the subject matter of 
speaking and interferes with the dialogues in various ways, leading and 
interrupting them: a clear example of this constant interaction with the physical 
reality of the stage is provided by the widespread use of deictic expressions 
referring to objects and characters and depending on their reciprocal spatial 
positions. At the same time the dialogues illuminate the stage context and modify 
it. The story itself advances through the situations of dialogues and the events are 
mainly reduced to spoken interactions between characters: this is made possible 
by the dramatic quality of language, its being able to perform actions through 
words. Sometimes even actual objects and elements of the  setting are not to be 
seen concretely on stage, but they come to life only thanks to the descriptive and 
evocative power of words- even if nowadays technical and mechanical 
innovations have actually “relieved the text of the necessity to provide for 
imaginary scenery” (Link, 1980: 40). Verbal descriptions and specifications often 
help also the expression of moods, feelings and states of mind, as “subtleties of 
facial expressions” are not allowed by the nature of stage acting (Gostand, 1980: 
8). Moreover, the rhythm of an utterance influences the gestures and movements 
made by the actor (the so-called “gestural understructure” of a text, which has not 
to be confused with stage directions), (Bassnett, 2002: 132).
Stage directions, i.e. instructions on how to enact a scene in terms of actors’ 
movements, gestures, attitudes, as well as descriptions of the imagined setting (in 
terms of props, scenery, music, lighting, costumes) are another constituent of play-
texts, directly linked to the dimension of performance. The textual statute of stage 
directions is however unclear: they could be considered either as a sort of 
“extratext” (which can be used or not for the purpose of performance), or as a 
“metatext”, determining the dramatic text to some extent, or as a “pre-text”, which 
represents the attempt on the part of the author of the play to fill the narrative and 
descriptive gaps left by the text considered in terms of dialogues alone, and at the 
same time to gain some control over performance (Pavis, 1990: 28).  Stage 
directions remain nevertheless merely suggestive, they are not essential for the 
transposition of the play from page to stage and they can undergo major changes 
according to the director's staging choices when the play is acted out (in this 
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respect it has to be noted that a change in a stage direction may also involve a 
change in the text: when for example an object is referred to with a deictic, the 
deictic expression would make no sense if the object is not seen on stage). 
As a consequence of the interdependence with performance, it frequently 
happens that a play-text does not see its final form until the opening night, after 
having undergone a long, dynamic process of selection and rejection of possible 
alternatives at both macro-and microlevel during rehearsals and the setting up 
(Bassnett, 1980: 48) in what can be considered as a sort of multiphase translation, 
starting from the text and ending with the audience's response, after having gone 
through the director's interpretation, the actors' and designer's contribution, the 
conversion into visual and aural signs (Gostand, 1980: 1).
Finally, any theatre play always has also a (more or less specific and deeply-
rooted) cultural,  ethnological  (i.e. referring to the influence that social, religious 
and linguistic features of an ethnic or national group at large have on theatre 
conventions) and ideological subtext (Pavis, 1990: 149).
         
 
    1.2 Musicals : Main Features    
      
     A musical can be defined as  a theatre production in which the action on stage 
is advanced through the combination of acting, music, songs and dancing 
numbers. It is a relatively recent theatrical genre: the first musical comedies date 
back to  the beginning of the 20
th
 century, when they made their appearance on 
Broadway stages.  Though presenting a series of distinctive features of their own, 
musicals derive many of their components from earlier forms of musical theatre, 
such as operas and operettas, vaudeville and cabaret shows, music-halls, revues 
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or, going back through the centuries, Renaissance masques as well as ancient 
Greek tragedies.
Besides the author's first-hand experience, the principal source for the 
following analysis of the main features of musicals has been Venturino's practical 
and exhaustive guide, Musical: istruzioni per l'uso (see Bibliography for further 
details).
 
1.2.1 The Polysemioticity of Musical Plays    
    It is perhaps in musicals that the interplay of multiple semiotic systems which 
is characteristic of theatre finds its best expression. Not only does a musical rely 
on the three main components of dramatic theatre according to Kowzan's 
classification of types of performance, i.e. “man, words and a story-line” 
(Bassnett, 1980: 48), but it integrates these basic constituents with other 
expressive media (music, singing and dancing, as well as scenery, lighting and 
stage effects and any other means specifically required), all of which play a 
central role within the performance. Adopting a Wagnerian terminology, a musical 
could be defined as an example of Gesamtkunstwerk , of “total theatre” (Venturino, 
2000: 17), where different forms of artistic expression and communicative 
systems are merged together in an integrated whole in order to involve the 
spectator. As far as theatre conventions are concerned, this means of course that 
the spectators are required to accept music, singing and dancing as “normal 
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