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YOSHIKO TAKEBE of Hirata are categorized as "guiet theatre" that emphasizes the presence of silence as natural, as realistic, to the contemporary audience. Ihey exclude dramatic consistency, opting instead for a plotless atmosphere. Put otherwise, Hirata seeks to impress his audience by deconstructing the three unities and by creating situations that are closer to our daily lives. This paper aims to explore the significance of translating silence from one language to another by focusing on the relationship between the aforementioned three playwrights; Beckett’s Come and Go and its translation into the style of Japanese Noh Theatre in order to demonstrate the intersemiotic translation strategy in play; how Beckett’s dramaturgy is influenced by Chekhov’s theatre, by comparing the theatrical structure of Beckett’s Come and Go and Chekhov’s The Three Sisters; and how Hirata adapted Chekhov’s The Three Sisters to Japanese android drama in order to reveal silence shared between humans and machines. TRANSLATING SILENCE IN SILENT MOVIES IN JAPAN When actors actually adapt the words in the text to their own voices and physical movements, they are required to be conscious of nonverbal elements as well. In the time of silent movies, they must have acted with non-verbal elements more in their mind, and how to convey such non-verbal elements shown in silent movies must have been an important element for Beckett in writing his plays. During his years at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett is said to have seen many Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films. As stated by Knowlson, the “love of old music hall and circus routines was to remain with him and resurface later.”* Before discussing Japanese productions of Beckett and Chekhov, this section briefly addresses a device unique to Japan for translating the aesthetics of silence in silent movies. When silent movies were imported to Japan in earlier days, Benshi played the role of translator and interpreter for understanding the content of silent movies. Benshi is “the famous screen-side narrator of Japanese silent film who both offered narrative commentary and mimicked the voices of the characters.”? Benshi stood next to the screen and told the story by looking at screen and audience by turns. Few subtitles were displayed in conjunction with each scene of the silent movies. Benshi wrote a script that summarized the content of the movie. He expressed through speech not only the actors’ words, but also various sound effects projected on the screen. When the actor in the movie cried, he too displayed a tearful face. He expressed and 2 Ibid., 57. 3 Abe Mark Nornes: For An Abusive Subtitling, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.): The Translation Studies Reader, 2° edition, New York, Routledge, 1999/2004, 454. + 116°
