Ecologies of translation: Classical Chinese opera and Spanish Golden Age theater

Abstract

This article examines a key task of the translator, which is to identify the affordances of the new contexts in which the translation might flourish as an independent work. It proposes that our contemporary interest in the Baroque as a performance aesthetic provides a meaningful framework for realizing the full performance potential of both Spanish Golden Age plays and  Chinese classical operas in English. Both forms have, to a greater or lesser extent,  been caught in an impasse of notional uniqueness, in the way in which many critics, translators and, in the case of Chinese classical operas in particular, nationalist interpretation, insist on textual reverence rather than power in performance. At the heart of this power lies the sustained directional energy of emotion as the principal agent of audience engagement. Such emotion does not preclude thinking, but rather folds it into the overall affective power that the comedia and the Chinese opera undeniably exercise on stage.