Compilative translation and the role of the translator in the Portuguese theater: the Case of Claudio Tolcachir’s A Omissão da Família Coleman (2017-2023)

The present article reflects on the experience of translating Claudio Tolcachir’s theatre play La omisión de la familia Coleman into Portuguese for the Artistas Unidos Company to showcase the complexities of translating for the theater. Through archival and ethnographic methods, data were gathered that suggest that the different target texts produced in both dramatic/literary and theatrical/performed translation are compilative in nature. Furthermore, the plurality in these target texts is approached as both a cause and a consequence of the indeterminacy of the translator’s role in the different rewriting phases that stem from the textual interlingual rendering of a source text to the performed translated version. At the end of the article, two translation problems are tackled that revolve around the translation of objects. These examples aim at demonstrating my own hesitations as to whether the translator’s responsibility is to render a text in which objects - mentioned in characters’ discourses and in stage directions that suggest the object’s presence on set - are not only recognized by audiences but also interpreted in a similar vein as by the source text audience.