Abstract: This chapter investigates the special features of the translation of theatrical texts and the additional dimension of the spoken word and live performance.Here elements sometimes termed 'speakability' and 'playability' loom large, and matters which are important in translating literary prose acquire heightened salience when spoken for a theatre audience. Plays for the page, and for the stageThe translation of drama has been an important sub-field in the work of literary translators over a long period, since, in Western culture at least, theatrical texts constitute a central part of that culture; the theatre as an institution, after all, along with the plays performed in it, predates the novel by a matter of centuries.Translations of classical Greek and Latin drama, as well as Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine, have a long history in many languages, yet, as Susan Bassnett and Terry Hale, among others, have pointed out, there has been less theoretical investigation of these than of the translation of prose and verse (Bassnett and Lefevere 1998: 90, 107; Hale 2000: 65). Translation Studies and dramaThe translation of theatrical works has generally been held to be fundamentally different in nature from the translation of other texts and from other genres such as prose fiction and poetry, just as drama itself differs in self-evident ways from those other genres.As a field, however, drama is not entirely homogenous.One commonly applied distinction separates plays written primarily for stage performance from those intended as much for readers as for the stage.The German tradition, for example, has its Lesedramen by Schiller, Lessing, and Goethe.Other theatre traditions, and indeed more modern drama in German, may display an affinity with the novelist's art and be marked by extended, 'literary' stage directions, à la Dürrenmatt or Bulgakov, whereas French classical drama, for example, kept these to the barest minimum.So striking are the stage directions in Mikhail Bulgakov's Flight that in a Moscow production in 1967 they became part of the performance: one of the protagonists was given the additional role of narrator and read out the stage directions at the beginning of each scene (Wright 1978: 131).It is fair to say, however, that the prototypical play has the stage as its raison d'être, that is, the dramatic work is conceived and written for the entertainment of an audience of more than one at a time, hearing the lines spoken by actors.The verbal text thus acquires a different status and the written word a new dimension, as but one of several vital components in the theatrical performance.The spoken word and the manner of its delivery combine with movement, gestures, mimique, silences, the interplay of the performers, lighting, shadow, sound effects, and everything else that goes to make up the theatrical experience.