Dear Alan,
Martin Crimp's play 'Attempts on Her Life' features a
description of a television advert for a car -- 'the new Anny',
translated into 'an African or East European language
(in the first production, Serbo-Croat)':
-- When we arrive at our destination in the Anny
-- we will always be embraced by good-looking men and good-looking
women
-- we will not be betrayed
-- tortured
-- or shot [...]
-- As a testimony to our ongoing concern for a cleaner, greener
environment...
-- ...there are no filthy gypsies in the Anny [...]
-- The Anny streaks at dawn through North African villages...
-- ...where the veiled women can only gaze with wonder at the
immaculate rust-protected paintwork with its five year warranty.
-- No one ever packs the Anny with explosives to achieve a political
objective.
-- No man ever rapes and kills a woman in the anny before tipping her
body out at a red light along with the contents of the ashtray.
-- No one is ever dragged from the Anny by an enraged mob.
-- No child's pelvis is ever shattered by a chance
collision with the new Anny. [...]
In the play 'Annie' is a conceptual artist/ a
terrorist/a sociological type ('the kind of person who believes the
message on the till receipt')/a tour-guide/a character in a planned
film. Very Dada. Crimp shows the most interest in (interesting)
language on stage at the moment, I think. Even his translation of
Ionesco's 'The Chairs' (for the Royal Court/Complicite production
last year) had this sense of undoing contemporary cliche.
By the way, in Hungarian 'sz' sounds 's' (e.g. 'Sztar Cola') so it's
only a Sit Ron Sarah, a Doo Ron Ron. In Polish, 'sz' sounds 'sh',
and 'szary' (f. 'szara') means grey. So you can have lemons in any
colour as long as it's grey. Not that this matters -- it's
only the'exotic-language-look' we're after. Language as raw material,
not meaning, silly-billy.
Yours in the Other Languages section,
Eleanor
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