Interrogations
This is a short set of questions which can hopefully help if you are thinking about translating a piece of work from one form to another. None of them have single right answers, and some of them don’t have easy answers. These are questions about boiling your work down and making something from that stock, so be gentle with yourself, but also be honest. All of these questions are directly related to the work, and not the production or admin around it.
These can also be used to investigate any piece of work-in-translation that you are looking at.
- What are the key aspects of the work that need to be translated?
- How close do they need to stay to the original?
- What do you hope to gain from the translation?
- What do you want to convey?
- Who do you want to reach?
- Will the work be interacted with in a manner different from the original?
- Does the work have a different level of interactivity?
- Does the translation put the audience in a different position from the original?
- Is it a translation or a remake? What’s the difference and which did you set out to achieve?
- Can you take the translation one step further?
- Can you strip away any more of the original?
- Can you strip away any more of your own new work?