The APGRD's Translating Ancient Drama project explores the essential role played by translation in the reception of ancient Greco-Roman tragedy and comedy.
The project began in 2011 with a particular focus on collecting data on early French translations of ancient drama, while also hosting a series of research seminars, conferences, and public engagement events on the theory and practice of translation, and its dynamic intersection with reception studies.
Our scope has since expanded to look at the early modern period's complex network of European vernacular translations of ancient drama. A primary focus of the project is the distribution of early printed editions, but it also encompasses manuscript translations, marginal notes to critical editions, and, more generally, cross-cultural textual and performance exchanges.
Early modern translation
The early modern period is the project's most prominent strand, which aims at understanding the early modern reception of ancient drama from a cross-cultural, multilingual, and transnational perspective. A series of conferences and research workshops, which fed into the project's major publications, approached the early modern reception of ancient Greek drama as a European phenomenon.
In such an approach, Latin translations are particularly emblematic: translators, commentators, scholars and theatre practitioners from all over Europe latinised Greek drama and, as they did so, developed networks of translators and practices of translation that could transcend national borders.
Publications
- Translating Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (15th-16th centuries), co-edited by Malika Bastin-Hammou, Giovanna Di Martino, Cécile Dudouyt, and Lucy Jackson; Berlin: De Gruyter (2023).
- Memory and Performance. Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals, co-edited by F. Bortoletti, G. Di Martino, E. Refini, Skenè Vol. 10 No. 1 (2024).
- Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe: Theory and Practice (17th-18th Centuries), co-edited by Giovanna Di Martino, Cécile Dudouyt and Carla Suthren; Berlin: De Gruyter (forthcoming 2026).
A practice-based methodology
Integral to the project's development has been our commitment to a collaborative practice-based methodology that uses performance for the analysis of early modern and contemporary translations, as well as the production of new translations.
The idea behind this approach is based on the understanding that any translation of a dramatic text has an inherent dramaturgy, specifically the creative (re)arrangement of dramatic meanings and structures found in the ancient source texts, which will emerge fully through performance.
A series of practice-as-research and performance pedagogy workshops have brought together students, academics, writers, translators for the stage, and professional actors. You can read Giovanna Di Martino's blog about the Chickenshed workshops on the UCL website.
See details of all the Translating Ancient Drama project's workshops and related events [forthcoming].
Translations Database
With the generous support of the Mellon Foundation and the University of Oxford's John Fell Fund, the APGRD was able to create an online catalogue of French translations that sat within the Modern Productions Database.
It is our goal to upgrade, expand, and relaunch this catalogue as a separate Translation Database, which will provide information about translators, publication histories, and the availability of extant texts. Crucially, the Translations Database will be cross-referenced against the Scripts recorded in the Modern Production Database, indicating when a particular translation was adapted into performance, providing an unprecedented way of following textual transmission in conjunction with performance reception.
What is translation?
Public engagement resources that were created in the first phase of this project include, Cécile Dudouyt's An introduction to... Translation and four 15-minute dialogues exploring translation with Oliver Taplin and Lorna Hardwick.