Nicoline van Harskamp : Live translation event

18 Oct 2014

Overview

Over eight hours on Saturday 18 October, Kunstraum hosts a reading of George Bernhard Shaw's ‘Pygmalion’ with participants from around the world reading from scripts in their own language and translating live into English. By the end of the day the participants will have produced a new script for the play in English, which includes all the unique characteristics of the many “Englishes” which are spoken worldwide. The live translation event is one of a series of language experients, part of Nicoline van Harskamp's wider project to imagine and represent a situation where English speakers world-wide rid themselves from a single native-speaking standard of the language and co-opt multiple “Englishes” towards emancipatory or creative ends; utopian language projects of the past may be renewed; the simplification of English as a relay language may dissolve; the suffocating influence of professional jargon may disappear. The event is accessible at any time through the day, and visitors are welcome to participate in the reading. The play has been translated to many languages since its first staging in 1912. The event on 18 October includes every published translation which was available from around the world including Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.