Translation Convention / Theatre

The Translation Convention in theatre.

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• In Chess, presumably when the Russian characters are alone they're actually speaking Russian to each other. In Broadway-based productions this seems particularly implied, since they will sometimes actually speak Russian amongst themselves in front of American characters, but only ever speak English when no English-speakers are around.
• Gilbert and Sullivan:
  • In The Grand Duke, set in the German state of Pfennig-Halbpfennig, the characters all speak perfect English. Gilbert lampshaded this by having the only English character, Julia Jellicoe, speak in a comically bad German accent, at one point even complaining that German is a difficult language to master.^note  The part was written for a Hungarian actress.
  • The Mikado, set in Japan, has a moment where the chorus sings, "The Japanese equivalent for Hear! Hear! Hear!"
• Common in opera. For example, Lucia Di Lammermoor's libretto was originally in Italian; a version in French also exists. The story is set in Scotland, so presumably the characters are "really" speaking English. But before English-speaking audiences it is always sung in French or Italian with English captions. ^note Virtually every major opera has at least one English-language version—English National Opera and small amateur or provincial groups tend to sing in English to increase audience appeal outside the high-culture niche—but very few classic operas have an official English version, so English versions tend to be regarded as substandard. Moreover, some operas tie the music so closely to the words as to make the libretto effectively untranslatable.
• Les Misérables takes place entirely in France, and while the French pronunciations of names are held intact (such as the silent "t" on the end of "Javert"), most versions have the accents of wherever the show is being performed, with the bizarre exception of Thenardier and Gavroche, who usually have Cockney accents no matter where the show is being performed (England or America). This was taken to its very extreme in the movie, where Australian Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, American Amanda Seyfried, Aaron Tveit and Anne Hathaway, British Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Samantha Barks and Daniel Hutchinstone, and Sacha Baron Cohen doing a dodgy French accent were all put together, many of whom performed the movie in their native accent (which, save Cohen, tended to all come off the same anyway).
• In the stage production of Once, the actors playing Czech characters speak accented English when that is what the characters are understood to be speaking. The actors speak the same accented English when the characters are understood to be speaking Czech, but at these times Czech subtitles are projected onto the stage.
• The Phantom of the Opera is set in nineteenth-century France, but the characters speak and sing in English. Since we never hear any other languages, it's safe to assume that they're all actually speaking translated French (and most likely singing translated Italian).
• Similar to the above example, Spring Awakening is set in nineteenth-century Germany, but all characters speak contemporary-style English complete with modern slang.
• Any William Shakespeare play set somewhere other than England uses this trope, sometimes with one or two easily-translated words left in the original language (such as "mi perdonata" ^note  pardon me in The Taming of the Shrew).
  • Even some English-set Shakespeare plays would have foreign dialogue in a strictly realistic telling. The court scenes in Henry V would be in French, while King Lear takes place in a Bronze Age Britain whose language linguists can't even form a consensus on.
  • The Merchant of Venice pokes fun at the convention, with the Italian Portia complaining about not being able to speak with "the young Baron of England":
  You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him. He hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you will come into court and swear, I have a poor pennyworth in the English.
  • It's also fairly clear from the script that Macbeth is not intended to be spoken in Scots. (A Scottish accent would be acceptable, going full dialect wouldn't work.)
  • In Julius Caesar, the characters are presumably speaking Latin, which becomes English for our, the audience’s, benefit. But when does what they are speaking become (again for our benefit) Latin? It seems that just as when they seem to speak English it represents them speaking Latin, when they seem to speak Latin, it is to show that they are really speaking Greek. Caesar’s anguished “Et tu, Brute!” on the Elizabethan stage represented his Greek fifteen hundred years before. (from the other Wiki): The phrase evidently follows in the tradition of the Roman historian Suetonius, who reports that others have claimed Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase "καὶ σὺ τέκνον;" (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon", meaning "You too, my child?" in English or "Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi" in Latin). Caesar is known to have spoken excellent Greek and there would be nothing strange in this. Suetonius himself claims Caesar said nothing as he died.
  • In Pericles it's explicitly stated that "By you being pardoned, we commit no crime to use one language in each several clime where our scene seems to live."
• Brian Friel's play Translations plays on this. The play is set in Ireland in 1833, so all the Irish characters should be speaking Irish, however, they all speak English (and sometimes Latin or Greek.) This was done mainly to open the play up to a non-Irish-speaking audience, but also to highlight the 'History is written by the winners' sentiment of the play. It creates the slightly amusing situation of having two actors speaking perfect English and having to pretend not to understand one another.
• War Horse has scenes where characters are speaking German or French while the actors are speaking Englsh. The dialogue makes the failure of comprehension clear. It does seem strange that no English or German soldiers know any foreign languages and that no communication is possible even if the words spoken would be almost the same in English and German.
• In West Side Story the Sharks speak almost exclusively in English aside from the occasional phrase ("si", "Te Adoro", "Baila", etc.) despite the fact they had just moved to America from Puerto Rico. The 2009 revival of the show attempted to avert this by having the Sharks speak much more Spanish, even changing the lyrics to several songs. However this was later changed since a good majority of the audience didn't understand them and for some reason the director decided to put them in scenes that are key to the plot.

Exceptions

• The Light in the Piazza completely averts this with the Italian characters who all speak and sing in Italian unless they are trying to communicate with an English speaking character (or, in one scene, learning to speak English). There is nothing to help the audience understand, so non-Italian speakers have to guess at what's going on through body language, context, tone and what words they can pick out.
  • Hilariously subverted in the song "Aiutami": The Italian characters proceed to freak out in Italian with lyrics that no-one understands. Halfway through, Signora Naccarelli suddenly turns to the audience and interrupts the song, explaining what the other characters have been singing about.
    Aiutami means "help me" in Italian. I don't speak English but I have to tell you what's going on.
• The musical version of Thoroughly Modern Millie averts this for the most part with the characters of Bun Foo and Ching Ho. Instead of straight Translation Convention, the two speak in subtitled Cantonese. (This is done via a small projection screen above the stage.) However, everyone seems able to understand everyone else via musical numbers for some reason.

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