Writing in both English and French, Beckett has long been regarded as a quintessentially bilingual author, his self-translations challenging conventional hierarchies of original and translation. Yet documents from the Tophoven Archive in Straelen, presented here with generous permission from Erika Tophoven, illustrate his close involvement in the German translations of his work as well.
Beginning with Waiting for Godot in 1953, nearly all German translations were produced by Elmar and Erika Tophoven, in close collaboration with Beckett. During regular meetings in his Paris apartment, Beckett listened to draft translations, focusing especially on intertextual references, repetitions, and echoes— elements central to establishing leitmotifs not only within individual texts, but also across his oeuvre.
Elmar Tophoven worked from both English and French originals, using color-coded annotations to mark issues of grammar, vocabulary, and prosody. He collected problematic passages and variants, documenting the translation process in detail. This method of “transparent translation” served both as a tool for self-reflection and as a framework for exchange among translators.
Beckett’s German publisher Suhrkamp recognized the multilingualism of Beckett’s oeuvre, publishing bilingual and trilingual editions of his works. Suhrkamp also understood translation to be an iterative process; revisions made, for instance, in the context of stage productions were incorporated into later editions.
The objects on display document the translation process of That Time/Cette Fois/Damals (1976) and Company/Compagnie/Gesellschaft (1979), illustrating Elmar Tophoven’s working method as well as Beckett’s own involvement in the process.
Documents from the translation process of That Time/Cette fois/Damals, Tophoven Archive, Straelen
A solitary head appears suspended in darkness, listening to three disembodied voices recalling fragmented memories, each from a different life stage, imbued with a sense of isolation, regret and mortality. Written in English between 1974 and 1975, Beckett’s one-act play That Time premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1976. James Knowlson described it as a play “on the very edge of what was possible in the theatre” (602).
Elmar Tophoven began his first German drafts of That Time working with Beckett’s English typescript, collecting variants for problematic passages on index cards and marking questions he wanted to discuss with Beckett with “SB”. His annotated typescript breaks the text into smallest units, capturing its rhythmic, almost musical structure with precision. A first bilingual edition of That Time/Damals was published by Suhrkamp in 1981.
Documents from the translation process of Company/Compagnie/Gesellschaft, Tophoven Archive, Straelen
In Company, a solitary figure lies in darkness, accompanied only by a voice that evokes fragments of memory and thought. The text circles around the question of who is speaking – and to whom. Is the figure merely attempting to construct company for himself?
Although Beckett originally wrote Company in English, the French version (Compagnie) was published first, in January 1980. Elmar Tophoven drew on both for his German translation, pioneering the use of a computer to juxtapose the three languages. Particular attention was, as usual, paid to the title-word, with “company” rendered in the text as either “Gesellschaft” or “Geselligkeit”, depending on the context. Beckett himself suggested the subtitle, unique to the German edition: Gesellschaft. Eine Fabel.
Further reading/sources: Friedman et al. 1987; Fries-Dieckmann 2007; Garforth 1996; Sievers 2005; Elmar Tophoven 1975, 1984, 1988a, 1988b; Erika Tophoven 2011; van Hulle/Verhulst 2018.