Conversational Implicatures in English Plays and Their Persian Translations : A Norm-governed Study

The present study attempted to describe in full detail the status of implicature translation in two 20-year time periods before and after Iran Islamic Revolution to provide a clear picture of the strategies applied by translators in the two eras and, as its main objective, to shed light on the translational norms of this linguistic element. To this end, it first sought to elaborate on the reasons and the ways they emerge in conversations. Accordingly, identifying the implicatures arose due to the violation of Grice’s (1975) four maxims of conversation, the researcher separately categorized the translations of the implicatures based on Desilla’s (2009) classification. As the last phase of the study, the strategies for implicature translation were thoroughly scrutinized with the hope to determine the dominant norms of implicature translation in light of Toury’s (1995) notion of initial norm. Based on the results obtained from both preand postrevolution data, preservation was revealed to be the most frequent strategy in both eras, attesting to the significance of the adequacy of implicature translation; modification and explicitation were the second and the third most frequent strategies respectively. However, the frequency of modification and explicitation increased in the post-revolution translations. It seems that the trend of the norm of implicature translation moves toward acceptability.


Statement of the Problem
People convey their meaning through linguistic elements; however, these elements are sometimes incapable of conveying some specific meanings for understanding of which we have to resort to the other intervening factors, e.g. the context in which an utterance takes place.In other words, when a speaker says something, the hearer's understanding of that utterance must go beyond what linguistic elements-syntax , lexis, etc.-convey.In effect, there is a great difference between what one says and what one implies.An American language philosopher, Paul Grice (1975) proposed some principles speakers and hearers share in their conversations.These maxims known as co-operative principle include quality, quantity, manner and relevance.Grice believed that any deviation from these maxims leads to the emergence of conversational implicatures.
As far as the practice of translation is concerned, it is worth noting that application and interpretation of the cooperative principles proposed by Grice are different in different languages and cultures; baker (1992, p. 238) posited that "…the interpretation of a maxim or the maxims themselves may differ from one linguistic community to another".So, conversational implicatures are universal features existing in all languages; however, their interpretations are not the same in different cultural and linguistic communities.Therefore, translators should understand both the literal and implied meanings of the source text and then convey the meanings in the target language.Furthermore, a shift in language, culture, and, subsequently, in context is inevitable during the process of literary translation in general and translation of dramatic text in particular.Literary genre has its own style and features, and subsequently translation of this genre requires specific considerations.Baker (1992) noted that an utterance may be open to several possible interpretations.She stated, "In either case, it complicates the task of the translators who may knowingly or unknowingly eliminate certain possible interpretations of the original from the target text" (p.228).It is worthwhile to mention that translators should pay attention to the way a message is uttered, i.e., directly or indirectly, since the way the message is conveyed is regarded as a part of the massage itself.Given the specific nature of literary genre and also the role of context and culture in the interpretation of conversational implicatures, translators have to cope with considerable difficulties when translating English sentences containing implicature into Persian.On one hand, they have to preserve the style of the source text, and on the other hand, they should convey the meanings, both literary stated and implied in the text, using elements preferred by the target language reader to create the same effect on them.Regarding the translation of literary genre, the process of translation from English into Persian brings about some inevitable shifts, these shifts become more pronounced when there are meanings indirectly stated in the text.Dramatic texts are replete with implicatures understanding of which is difficult due to their implicit nature.Thus, scrutinizing translator's decision on applying an effective strategy to deal with the implicatures observed in English plays is a problem to be investigated in the present study.As Abdellah (2004) pointed out, the problem for translators is how to convey these implicatures into another language that may use different linguistic or non-linguistic devices for conveying the same meaning.

2 Gricean Implicature
The concept of implicature was first introduced by P.H. Grice in the mid-70s.He is, in fact, the founder of indirect communication that is used for politeness, joking purposes, and so on.In this way, he distinguished between what the speaker says and what s/he really intends.Grice's notion of implicature has a wide range; some of them stem from the cooperative principle in which four maxims are embedded -Kleinke (2010) considered the cooperative principle as a guiding principle of human communication and stated that the development of this notion was the starting point for the emergence of implicature -and the others derive from textual and linguistic elements.As a matter of fact, Grice (1975) introduced two types of implicatures: conventional and conversational implicatures.He believed some implied meanings are conveyed conventionally and the others are expressed conversationally.As the name suggests, conventional implicatures are signaled by some fixed expressions, that is to say, linguistic elements give rise to this type of implicature.Baker (1992) mentioned conjunctions -"therefore, because, in spite of" (p.224) -and grammatical expressions as such elements from which conventional implicatures arise.The other group of implicature proposed by Grice has been more challengeable than the conventional type, and, to the best of the author's knowledge, more researches have been done on conversational implicature than the conventional one.As Grice (1975) put forward, conversational implicature not only has something to do with linguistic system, but also it is closely related to the general features of discourse.Gibbs (1987) stated that background knowledge, inference rules, and also pragmatic maxims are necessary for appreciating the implied meaning of the speaker's utterance.In this regard, Kleinke (2010) mentioned the context of utterance, background knowledge, and common cultural elements as the key factors contributing to the interpretation of conversational implicature.
Grice's outstanding contribution to the concept implicature is that he (1975) suggested conversational implicatures are deeply rooted in cooperative principle and the four conversational maxims, i.e., quantity, quality, relation, and manner.Before proceeding to scrutinize conversational implicatures and the way they emerge in an utterance, it should be mentioned that Grice made a distinction between the two types of conversational implicatures: generalized and particularized conversational implicatures.
Generalized conversational implicature is related to the certain form of words or the specific meaning the words attain when used in a certain form.Grice (1975, p. 56) cited the example of "X is meeting a woman this evening would normally implicate that the person to be met was someone other than X's wife, mother, sister, or even perhaps close platonic friend"; he further added "If I were to say X went to a house and found a tortoise inside the front door, my hearer would normally be surprised if some time later I revealed that the house was X's own".(56) Being the main focus of this study, particularized conversational implicature, for its interpretation, depends on the context of discourse.Potts (2006, p.205) stated that "conversational implicatures can be exquisitely sensitive to subtle changes in the context".Quoting from Grice, Baker (1992) reiterated some features of discourse and mentioned 'being a cooperative effort' as one of them.In effect, the cooperative principle along with the four maxims-quantity, quality, relation, and manner-are supposed to be observed by the participants in any normal conversation; that is to say, participants of a conversation expect their conversation to be informative, relevant, perspicuous, clear, brief, orderly, and so on.Grice (1975) suggested that speakers sometimes deliberately breach or flout the maxims; this ostentatious violation of the maxims leads to the emergence of conversational implicature.In practice, when speakers flout a maxim, they are actually observing it in an underlying level, i.e., when one of the participants violates a maxim, the other one starts to search for the conversational implicature in their conversation because they believe participants of a conversation should be cooperative.
In elaborating on conversational implicature, Baker (1992) cited the example of "Do you know what time it is?" (p.227) and explained that if it is asked as a genuine question, the person wants to know the time.However, if it is a kind of rhetoric question asked in a specific context, with a particular purpose, the meaning "you are very late" can be conveyed.She asserted this conversational implicature is achieved by violating the maxim of Quality since the question is not sincere.Grice (1975) included irony, metaphor, meiosis, and hyperbole in the category of the conversational implicature that emerges due to flouting the first sub-maxim of quality, i.e., 'Don't say what you believe to be false'.An example for the conversational implicature that arises from breaching two sub-maxims of quantity-make your contribution as informative as required and do not make your contribution more informative than is required-can be the following conversation derived from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (cited in Li-juan 2007, p. 65): "Do you miss me?"She cried ecstatically.
"The whole town is desolate.All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there's a persistent wail all night along the north shore." It is quite clear, as Li-juan (2007) stated, the response implies 'Yes', and the writer shows it by flouting the second submaxim of quantity, i.e., do not make your contribution more informative than is required.Moreover, since the response is a hyperbolic statement, the maxim of quality is violated too.
The example Gibbs (1987, p. 561) provided sheds light on conversational implicature derived from flouting the maxim of relation: He: would you like a piece of cake?She: I'm on a diet.
On the surface, it seems that her answer is not relevant to his question, however, at some deeper level it can be inferred that the participants are being cooperative and that "she does not want cake in virtue of her diet".(p.563) In a bid to elaborate on the conversational implicature which stems in flouting the sub-maxims of manner, Grice (1975) considered ambiguity, obscurity, and failure to be brief as factors that give rise to implicature.For the latter case, he compared two sentences "Miss.X sang Home sweet home" and "Miss.X produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score of Home sweet home."(pp.55-56)In explaining the example, Grice went on to assert that if someone prefers the second one and selects that, it can be indicated that Miss.X's performance is different from the normal singing action, that is, there is something wrong with her performance.Also worthy of note is the fact that, as Grice (1975) suggested, speakers ignore conversational implicatures due to different reasons.They may quietly and unknowingly violate a maxim; they may overtly and deliberately opt out a maxim; sometimes there is a clash between two maxims, so the speakers violate one maxim to fulfill the other one; and finally, the speaker may "blatantly fail to fulfill the maxim."(p.49)

3 Conversational Implicature in Dramatic Texts
As a feature of discourse, conversational implicatures are more seen in oral communication than in written texts and dramatic texts are steeped in dialogue in comparison with the other literary genres.Also, some of these dramatic texts are supposed to fulfill their destiny, i.e., being performed on stage.Newmark (1988) put emphasis on dramatic texts and highlighted the difference of this genre from the other literary genres; he also believed in a semantic translation for dramatic texts.Abdellah (2004) investigated the translation of the play Othello by Shakespeare.He first focused on the dialogues in which the four conversational maxims were violated.Comparing the English original one with the Arabic translation, he found out that different devices have been used by the translator to convey the implicatures in translation.
Above all, he realized that in the most cases in which the maxims were violated, translator tried to use techniques to make the implicatures more tangible for the Arab reader.He, therefore, came to the conclusion that the translator tried to be loyal to the target language reader rather than to the original text.

4 Conversational Implicature in Translation
The practice of translation which has a long history should communicate the exact meaning of the original text in the receptor language.Having in mind that some meanings are implied in the structure or wording of the original text, translator should be well aware of the implied meaning.Given that implicatures are signaled differently in different languages, Baker (1992) put emphasis on the problems that arise in the process of translating these linguistic features and criticized the literal transfer of form, which she believed doesn't correctly transfer the implied meaning.
By the same token, following Hatim and Mason (1990), different languages enjoy different linguistic systems which should not limit translators, that is, they ought to simply consider the communicative purposes and ignore the differences in the word and structure of the two languages involved.Therefore, as far as the concept of conversational implicature is concerned, the same rule can be true for the translation of the intended meaning.
One of the most important points in translating conversational implicature is the fact that Thomson (cited in Baker 1992, p. 233) stated, "A certain type of implicature, say quality implicature, is never used by the speakers of a particular language, or that the contexts in which a type of implicature will be used will differ from one language community to the next."Lotfipur Sa'edi (1992) argued that the way a message is conveyed is the integral part of the message, that is, it has something to say too; if a message is conveyed indirectly, intelligent decision should be made by translators to adopt the best way not only to transfer the exact message, but also create the same effect in translation.
In the same vein, Hatim and Munday (2004) distinguished between form and function and stated that 'how something is said' and 'what is intended by it' has been the focus of attention of translation studies over the last fifty years.
In line with what was said above, when a message is implicitly conveyed in the source text, translators can either directly or indirectly convey the implicature in translation.In effect, an adequate method should be applied on the part of translators to transfer the intended meaning of the writer.Needless to say that all conversational implicatures are context-bound and this makes the duty harder for translators; since they should take cultural and linguistic differences into account besides the discourse of utterance.Therefore, translators may choose to change some parts to make the text compatible with the language and culture of the target language.They may either omit some parts or add some information to the text.The latter is what Blum-Kulka (1986) referred to as explicitation hypothesis; and as Pápai (2004, p. 144) stated, "Explicitation is one of the features regarded as a universal of translated text".
As elucidated in the previous section, Abdellah's (2004) finding that the translator tried to use some techniques to make Shakespear's Othello more tangible for the Arab readers is an empirical evidence for what is mentioned above.Desilla (2009) attempted to propose a methodology for investigation of implicatures in subtitled films as well as their translation into another language.The methodology comprised three stages: multimodal transcription, pragmatic analysis, and testing of implicature comprehension.The proposed methodology was applied to a case study in which two films by Bridget Jones, Diary (2001) and The Edge of Reason (2004) as well as their Greek subtitled versions were scrutinized for construal, function, translation, and cross-cultural reception of the implicatures.The first findings revealed that implicatures were signaled both by verbal and non-verbal signifiers and they performed comedic and narrative functions.Finally, the study yielded the result that three types of implicature relay were identified: preservation, explicitation, and modification.Also, worthy of note is the fact that preservation was the most frequent strategy used for translation of implicature in the subtitled versions.Moreover, it was proved that those implicatures bound to British culture caused difficulties for the target language audiences.Shahsavandi and Davoudi Sharifabadi (2009) examined conversational implicatures in the stories of prophets Joseph and Moses in the Holy Quran and their Persian and English translations.In doing so, conversational implicatures and their related maxims, i.e. quality, quantity, relation, and manner were first analyzed in the original Arabic text.Then, the Persian and English translations of implicatures were compared to the original ones.The results indicated that translators resorted to different strategies to explicate the original conversational implicatures.

5 Translational norms of Conversational Implicature
Translators' decision on how to signal the conversational implicatures in the target text determines their adherence to the norms of either source language or that of target language.Hatim and Munday (2004) contended that fluency of translation has been of utmost importance throughout the history of translation practice and it has been mostly used by translators; "The translation usually explicates information implicit in the ST, and explains any cultural material normally retrievable only by the SL audience."(p.63) Furthermore, they remarked that the target language readers will be provided with the context of the source text; in doing so, translators have to give some additional information to the TL reader.
Considering the translation of implicature, Larson (1984, p. 455) raised the crucial question: "when may implicit information become explicit in the translation?"He further answered the question by suggesting two trends:" There are two extremes-making too little explicit and leaving the readers confused, or unable to understand the translation, making too much explicit and overwhelming the information rate by introducing too much information too fast."(p.455) Specifically, Baker (1992, p. 235) considered Grice's maxims as language-and culture-bound features that relate to the norms of discourse organization and rhetorical function.Thus, it is not surprising if one says that implicatures require different considerations in different languages, which makes translators' task harder.Abdellah's (2004) work limited to the two languages of English and Arabic can be cited as an example in which the translational norm moves in the direction of acceptability rather than accuracy.

6 Research Questions
In line with what has been discussed so far as the main content and purpose of this study, the following research questions are raised: 1.What strategies did translators use in translating conversational implicatures of English plays into Persian before Iran Islamic Revolution? 2. What strategies did translators use in translating conversational implicatures of English plays into Persian after Iran Islamic Revolution? 3. What is the translational norm of translating conversational implicatures of English plays into Persian before and after Iran Islamic Revolution? 1.7 Theoretical Framework As far as conversational implicature is concerned, the present study is based on Grice's (1975, pp. 45-47) co-operative principle.He identified four maxims of conversation each of which entails some sub-maxims.These maxims known as the principles underlying the successful conversation are proposed as follows: Quantity: 1. Make your contribution as informative as required.
2. Don't make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality:
1. Don't say what you believe to be false.

Don't say what you lack adequate evidence for.
Relation: Be relevant.Manner: 1. Avoid obscurity of expression.

Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be orderly Given that flouting the above-mentioned maxims gives rise to the conversational implicature, the maxims were used as apparatus to detect the implicatures in the English plays.In effect, the kinds of maxims flouted were determined according to Grice's principle.Then, translators' strategies were investigated based on Desilla's (2009) classification of the strategies for implicature translation, i.e., preservation (translation of implicature into the same implicature), explicitation (translation of implicature into explicature), and modification (translation of implicature into a different implicature).Afterward, as for achieving the main objective of the study, the translational norms of conversational implicature were examined in light of Toury's (1995) notion of initial norm which covers adequacy and acceptability.

Method 2.1 Corpus
In order to answer the research questions raised in this study, two English plays and their translations both before and after Iran Islamic Revolution were selected as the corpus of the study.The Persian translation of each play was once selected from among those translated in the era before Iran Islamic Revolution (1957Revolution ( -1977)), and for the second time, it was extracted from among those translated in the era after that cultural turn ; that is, the study is limited to two 20-year periods before and after Iran Islamic Revolution.Also, worthy of note is the fact that in order to avoid any subjectivity and have a random selection, the first act of each play as well as its two translated versions were examined.2.1.1English Plays: • Beckett, S. (1956).Waiting for Godot.New York: Chelsea House.

•
The above-mentioned original plays being written by two eminent dramatists were amongst the greatest plays that were both written and performed on stage.Furthermore, the Persian versions of the two selected plays have been welcomed by Iranians both before and after Iran Islamic Revolution; and in comparison to the other plays, the prerevolution translated copies of these two ones are more available in Iran.It is well worth mentioning that the books translated by Sirus Tahbaz and Ataollah Nouryan belong to the pre-revolution era whereas the plays translated by Mostafa Abedini Fard and AliAsghar Bahram Baigi belong to the post-revolution era.

2 Procedure
Given the last objective of the study, i.e. determining the translational norms of conversational implicatures, the first acts of the original plays were closely scrutinized.With respect to Grice's (1975) maxims of conversation, i.e. quality, quantity, relation, and manner, the parts of the text that contained conversational implicature were extracted.It goes without saying that flouting the maxims gives rise to the conversational implicature.Therefore, when one of these maxims was flouted by the speakers in the dialogue of the plays, the researcher treated it as a conversational implicature.Also, worthy of note is the fact that the process of identifying the conversational implicatures was based on hermeneutic method since it dealt with the interpretation of the textual elements and the language of the author.Next, the strategies observed in the translation of the implicatures were classified based on Desilla's (2009) categorization of the strategies for implicature translation.Accordingly, the translation strategies were put in three categories: preservation, explicitation, and modification.When the implicatures observed in the conversation of the original texts were preserved in translated versions, preservation strategy was believed to be used.Desilla (2009) posited that when what is implicit in the SL remains implicit in the TL, even if the translation is not literal, preservation strategy occurs.When the implied meanings in the dialogues of the English texts were explicitly stated by adding some new information to the Persian translations, explicitation strategy was considered to be applied.In this study, as Desilla postulated, both total and partial explicitness are regarded since implicitness/explicitness comes in degrees.Finally, when the implied meanings of the original play were modified and an implicature different to the original one was presented in translation, the researcher put them under the category of modification.As the last phase of the study, considering the translation strategies of implicature, translational norms of this linguistic feature in both pre-and post-revolution eras were investigated with respect to Toury's (1995) model of initial norm, that is, adequacy and acceptability.In this regard, the strategies in which translators tried to explicate the hidden meanings by adding new information to the texts as well as the ones that brought about changes in the pattern of the translated versions by applying different implicatures were considered to ensure the acceptability of implicature translation in Iran.By way of contrast, the translation strategies that simply preserved the conversational implicatures of the English plays were considered by the researcher as the apparatus to show the adequacy of the implicature translation.
In line with the goal of the study, that is, presenting a description on the specifications of implicature translation, the unit of the study went beyond the levels of word, phrase, clause, or sentence.That is to say, since the nature of the conversational implicature is context-bound, its interpretation demands the context in which they occur, whether it is phrase, sentence, paragraph, or a unit larger.Below are some examples of different types of maxim violation giving rise to conversational implicature, as well as the related description on the strategies and, subsequently, norms of translation in the two mentioned eras: 1. Willy: What's the matter?Charley: I heard some noise.I thought something happened.Can't we do something about the walls?You sneeze in here, and in my house hats blow off.(p.33)

Pre-revolution translated version:
‫ﺷﺪه؟‬ ‫طﻮری‬ ‫وﯾﻠﯽ:ﻣﮕﮫ‬ As the table shows, the maxims of manner and quality, each with the total occurrence of 33, are the most frequent maxims leading to the emergence of implicature.Also, the maxim of relation with the total occurrence of 19 was the least frequent maxim of conversation.The maxim of quantity with the total occurrence of 23 was the second frequent one.
Table 2 summarizes the descriptive (frequency and percentage) statistics for the data elicited from pre-revolution translations of the two corpora of the study.Following the table, most of the conversational implicatures arose from maxim violation have been preserved in the translations.That is to say, preservation strategy with the total occurrence of 74 (74%) was considered to be the most frequent strategy for implicature translation in the pre-revolution era.The second frequently used strategy was modification with the total occurrence of 14 (14%).The third frequently used strategy was found to be explicitation with the total occurrence of 9 (9%).As the table 2 shows, 3 cases of mistranslation were also observed, that were added to Desilla's (2009) category, however omission was never used in the translations of this era.
The statistical data on the strategies for implicature translation elicited from the post-revolution translations of the same plays are illustrated in table 3.As it is clear from the table, the most frequent translation strategy in the post-revolution era was preservation with the total occurrence of 60 (60%).The strategy that stood second was modification with the total occurrence of 20 (20%).The third frequently used strategy was explicitation with the total occurrence of 15 (15%).Mistranslation and omission with the total occurrences of 3 (3%) and 2 (2%), respectively, were also observed in the translations.The following figures compare the percentage of the usage of the translation strategies in both eras.Interestingly enough, the analyses revealed that there was mainly no statistically significant difference between the two different pre-and post-revolution translated versions of the plays in terms of the strategies used for implicature translation.In other words, the hierarchy of the most frequent strategy to the least frequent one for implicature translation is quite the same in the two eras.To put it more simply, having in mind Desilla's (2009) categorization of the strategies for implicature translation, the researcher found preservation and explicitation the most frequent strategy and the least frequent one, respectively, used in both eras.The second frequently used strategy was modification.There were also rare cases of mistranslation and omission which were added to this category.Applying Toury's (1995) notion of initial norm to the strategies for implicature translation in the afore-mentioned erasas the last objective of the study -the researcher found that since preservation was the most frequent strategy in the two eras, adequacy was considered to be the prevalent norm of implicature translation in both eras.However, worthy of note is the fact that the degree of adequacy of the pre-revolution translations in terms of implicature is different from that of the post-revolution ones.In other words, as the result of the study shows, 74% of the conversational implicatures found in the original corpora were preserved in the pre-revolution translations, however, a 14% reduction in the usage of this strategy was observed in the post-revolution translations; this fact strongly suggests that in comparison to the postrevolution era, translators had a greater tendency to preserve the implicatures in the pre-revolution era.The findings of the study confirm an increase in the frequencies of occurrences of explicitation and modification in the post-revolution era, which, in turn, guarantees a more tendency toward Toury's notion of acceptability.

Conclusion
The results show that in the pre-revolution era, translators had a low tendency to explicate the implied meaning; rather they subjected themselves to the style and linguistic features of the SL.It seems that in the pre-revolution era, translators were deeply affected by the circumstances surrounding the original plays.It can be claimed that the historical and social situations of that time necessitated preserving the features of the original text.In effect, translators tried to bridge the gap between the source and target texts.Quite surprising, the same results were yielded regarding the versions translated after Iran Islamic Revolution; however, the point well worth considering is that the frequencies of occurrences of the strategies in the post-revolution translated versions differ from that of the pre-revolution ones.To put it more simply, the researcher came to the conclusion that in the era after Iran Islamic Revolution, translators' tendency to preserve the implicatures decreased.In other words, in comparison to the specifications of implicature translation in the pre-revolution era, translators more attempted to either modify or explicate the text in the post-revolution era.It shows that readers' appreciation of the text was the focus of attention of the translators in the second era.Again, the influence of the socio-cultural circumstances of the time when the plays were translated can be regarded as a decisive factor.It can be concluded that the industry of translation in the case of implicature, tried to show its independence in the post-revolution era since translators' decisions were less conditioned by the features of the source text.
As far as translational norm was concerned, the strategies used for implicature translation were considered as a yardstick, since, as Baker (1993) asserts, those translation strategies that are repeatedly applied by translators in a given cultural system help identify the norm of translation.Therefore, in light of Toury's (1995) notion of initial norm, it can be concluded that adequacy of translation in the case of implicature was preferred by the translators.Nonetheless, a careful scrutiny and comparison of the data elicited from the pre-and post-revolution translated versions reveals that in the post-revolution era, translators had a greater tendency to either modify or explicate the implied meaning.As a result, it can be claimed that the norm of implicature translation in the era after Iran Islamic Revolution moves in the direction of acceptability.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Percentage of usage of strategies in the pre-revolution translations

Table 1 .
Conversational maxims flouted in the English corpora

Table 2 .
The descriptive statistics elicited from the pre-revolution translations of the plays

Table 3 .
The descriptive statistics elicited from the post-revolution translations of the plays