Bringing the work of legendary Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca to the stage is much more than simply making appropriate lexical choices, but how do we translate Lorca?
In short, it’s not an easy task. Much of Lorca’s work is saturated by strong imagery. For the translator, the cultural resonances associated with such imagery may seem completely unfathomable to foreign audiences. This was demonstrated when the first ever translation, Blood Wedding, Lorca’s arguably most translated (and so his most famous) work, was virtually laughed off stage.