Harold Pinter in Slovene Translation

Abstract

This article examines the translation of Harold Pinter’s most notable stylistic peculiarities into Slovene, illustrating its main points with examples taken from his play The Homecoming. The findings demonstrate above all a marked degree of non-observance of the special verbal pattern (special cohesion) of the originals, a failure to convey Pinter’s special configuration of meaning (special coherence), and a disregard for internal unifying coincidences. It argues that the Slovene translations of Pinter rely mostly on traditional theories of meaning and of language norms, thus preventing the reproduction of those emotional and psychological actions of Pinter’s characters which are usually not expressed by means of the rhetorical, informative elements of his dialogue, but by its form and sonority, i. e. the length, strength, and level of articulation of verbal expression. This blurs Pinter’s famous logic of emotion, narrows the proverbial openness and conceptual uncertainty of his plays, and limits their potential vitality in translation. Taking into account current drama and theatre translation practices in Slovenia, i.e. the rarity of published drama translation and the dependence on a translated performance text for subsequent theatrical productions, the article argues that in such cases the drama translation should be retrospective, i.e. aiming at a maximum reconstruction of all relevant linguistic, stylistic, and textual properties of the original, leaving expressly subjective interventions in the text to the theatre practitioners.