Translaptation (translation + adaptation)
A “translaptation” is a work that is both a translation and an adaptation of the original. Playwright David Ives popularized the term in 2010 with his “translaptation” of the French play The Liar.
However, Eric Marchese’s review of Marat.Sade in the Orange Country (CA) Register, on May 13, 2005, stated:
“Better still, this is an all-new ‘translaptation’ of the play being called ‘Marat.Sade.’ Jeremy Gable has retranslated Weiss’ original text, then adapted it, adding rhyming couplets, and he and P. Matthew Park have composed original music and lyrics.”
Wikipedia: David Ives
David Ives (born July 11, 1950 in Chicago) is a contemporary American playwright. Ever since All in the Timing, his evening of one-act plays, premiered off-Broadway in the early 1990s, he has been known as an author of wildly funny and sometimes comically absurd one-act plays. He is a “maestro of the short form”, as the New York Times expressed it. But Ives has continued to write extensively, including full-length plays both serious and comic, musicals, screen plays, dramatic adaptations and narrative fiction.
The Hunger Artists Theatre Company (Fullerton, CA)
Friday, May 13, 2005
‘Marat.Sade’ provocative as ever
Review: New ‘translaptation’ makes the brilliant original work more relevant to today’s world.
By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register (Orange County, CA—ed.)
(...)
Further blurring that line, at Hunger Artists Theater Company, is the audience’s close proximity to the “actors” in Sade’s play and the presumption that we, the viewers, are wealthy aristocrats there to take in Sade’s play as a trifling diversion. Better still, this is an all-new “translaptation” of the play being called “Marat.Sade.” Jeremy Gable has retranslated Weiss’ original text, then adapted it, adding rhyming couplets, and he and P. Matthew Park have composed original music and lyrics.
Twitter
Emily Brauer Rogers
@Ylimemarie
@Stagesiren I wish—I haven’t read that yet, but it’s sounds like a great translaptation for HA to do.
1:31 AM - 23 May 2009
Twitter
Beatrix Kiddo
@Btrixxkiddo
Cast Announced for David Ives’ “Translaptation” of Corneille’s The Liar in DC http://ping.fm/XicMT
4:57 PM - 8 Mar 2010
NPR
Playwright Adapts French Play ‘The Liar’
APRIL 20, 2010 3:00 PM ET
All Things Considered 8:20
Robert Siegel talks to David Ives about his English adaptation of the French play The Liar. The play is about a man who can never tell the truth. Ives has not only translated it, but has added modern concepts.
(...)
SIEGEL: Bonjour. And you actually use a word other than translator or translation to describe what you’ve done here.
Mr. IVES: Yes. I call this a translaptation.
SIEGEL: A translaptation.
Mr. IVES: Which is a portmanteau word - just to call on the French for a second - between translation and adaptation.
SIEGEL: And how would you distinguish, for people who haven’t seen the play, where Corneille ends and you begin as transladaptor?
Mr. IVES: Transladaptators? Yes. Well, Corneille was in the room with me, that - I can say that. Where he lets off and I begin is hard to say since I took a lot of Corneille. I took the fundamental structure of the play. But I embellished here and there, I cut when I needed to, I added things
Twitter
ShakespeareTheatreCo
@ShakespeareinDC
Translation + Adaptation = Translaptation!
We have quite the lineup for AsidesLIVE on Sunday, Feb. 8.
Join! —-> http://goo.gl/A8sziF
2:53 PM - 29 Jan 2015
Broadway World—Los Angeles
Photo Flash: First Look at THE HEIR APPARENT at ICT
June 17 2015 11:27 AM
by BWW News Desk
Raucously witty and devilishly ribald, love and money are at stake in David Ives’’ hilarious, rhyming “translaptation” of The Heir Apparent by Jean-François Regnard. Comedic director extraordinaire Matt Walker directs the Los Angeles premiere of Regnard’s newly rediscovered 18th century comic masterpiece for a June 19 opening at International City Theatre. Two low-priced previews are set for June 17 and 18.
(...)
A “translaptation” - according to Ives, who coined the word - is a translation with a heavy dose of adaptation. In The Heir Apparent, he explains, “the farce is turned up all the way to 11. And what could be more up-to-date than Regnard’s characters’’ almost feral obsession with money? The off-color jokes made me howl even while I marveled at his facility at rendering them in such graceful couplets. I needed only a single reading to know I had to take on the piece.”