Prefabricated orality in theatre translations: An overview based on an English–Spanish parallel corpus

Abstract

Abstract Prefabricated orality is an inherent trait of dramatic texts, given their written-to-be-spoken nature. From the perspective of translation, it has been observed in the literature that rendering this specific mode of discourse into another language poses a major challenge (Baños & Chaume, 2009). However, scant attention has thus far been paid to how prefabricated orality is realised linguistically in translations of theatre plays. This article sets out to offer an overview of syntactic and lexical-semantic features that mirror spoken discourse in a parallel corpus of theatre texts. More specifically, by drawing on an analytical framework proposed for audiovisual texts (Baños, 2014: 414), it aims (1) to verify the presence and incidence of orality markers in the original plays and their translations, and (2) to identify tendencies in translation techniques. Our findings reveal that playwrights and translators resort to a wide range of linguistic features typical of spoken discourse, especially vocatives, repetitions, discourse markers, intensifiers and deixis. In addition, results bring to light the use of different translation options and a possible compensation strategy.