Lina Abraitienė

ABSTRACT

The theatre being so dynamic and significant in its forms of expression is recognised as an exclusive form of art worldwide. Theatre is a stage for mixing and revealing a number of cultures, their diversity, and peculiarities, as well as the use of a number of languages which happens to be a primary form of expression in theatre. Thus, the phenomenon of multilingualism is invoked. The use of more than one language is induced by the processes and changes of globalisation, making the theatre adjust to them while touring globally. As multilingualism in theatre reflects the theatre-goer’s needs and establishes strong connections between cultures, the means of rendering multilingualism and meeting the audience’s needs are introduced. Thus, surtitles, a mode of audiovisual translation, are employed as a tool of multilingual theatre accessibility and comprehensibility to any foreign audiences. However, having in mind the constraints of surtitling, the rendition of multilingualism is challenging. The issue, which arises concerning the case of multilingualism in translation, is the transference of multilingual features without losing the initial purpose and aimed effect of their inclusion. Therefore, this study aims to identify translation strategies selected by the theatre translator to deal with multilingualism. Moreover, the presentation of multimodal elements in the surtitles is considered as well. Descriptive and analytical methods of analysis are applied while examining the selected staging of Kaunas State Musical Theatre and National Kaunas Drama Theatre.

Keywords

AVT; multilingualism; surtitles; theatre; translation

References

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