Theatre translation: evolutions across time, space and tradition

This paper aims to anchor current research on translation of and for the theatre in the evolution of modern translatology. Both terms (translation of theatre seems to allude to a finished product, while translation for the theatre encompasses the multimodality and collectivity involved in the process), define the activity through which a play originally written in one language becomes accessible to an audience speaking another language, or even to an audience with diversity, who access through surtitles, signed languages or audio description the same theatrical product. Starting from a series of reflections on the phenomenology of theatre and the role of translation in its evolution, the authors address issues that are less explored by scholarship in order to draw a more inclusive and encompassing map of this dynamic, changing, and unfathomable field.