175
Witchcraft or Otherness:  
An English-Slovene Contrastive Analysis 
of Tituba’s Speech
Tomaž Onič
Abstract
Tituba, a supporting character in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible, can be associated 
with the concept of otherness in several respects. For one, she is not free like the rest of 
the population of Salem, Massachusetts, where the play is set, but was brought to the 
community from the island of Barbados by Reverend Parris as an enslaved woman. Being 
of Caribbean origin, she is also not an English Protestant like the rest of the village, and 
despite having accepted her master’s church, as was common for the enslaved throughout 
the British colonial period, Protestantism is not her first religion. Finally, the two most 
evident and immediately perceivable characteristics placing her in the category of the 
Other are her skin colour and her language, which also seem to be the main reasons that 
she was the first person to be accused of witchcraft in Salem. This paper focuses on Titu-
ba’s speech, particularly from the point of view of the possibilities as well as difficulties of 
translating her utterances into Slovene. The contrastive analysis includes Miller’s original 
play, its two Slovene translations, Lov na čarovnice, the published one (1964) and the 
unpublished theatre translation (1997/2019), as well as a brief insight into two theatre 
productions of the play at the Maribor National Theatre.
Keywords: Arthur Miller, The Crucible, Tituba, witchcraft, otherness
ACTA NEOPHILOLOGICA  UDK: 821.111(73).09-2Miller A.:81'255.4=163.6
DOI: 10.4312/an.56.1-2.175-188
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176 Tomaž onič
INTRODUCTION
As Arthur Miller suggests in “A Note on the Historical Accuracy of This Play”, 
included in the published version of The Crucible, the characters and the plot of the 
play are heavily reliant on the historical documents of the 1692 Salem witch tri-
als.1 Tituba, who is given a significant supporting role in this play, had already fea-
tured in several 19th-century works such as John Neal’s novel Rachel Dyer (1828) 
and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s play Giles Corey of the Salem Farms (1868), as 
well as appearing – quite prominently – in a more recent novel by Maryse Condé, 
I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (1986 French original, 1992 in English). D. Quentin 
Miller claims that the playwright’s decision to increase Tituba’s prominence in 
The Crucible compared to the trial transcripts contributed to giving the enslaved 
more visibility and a stronger voice. 
A comprehensive study attempting to give an overall account of Tituba’s 
role in the Salem witch trials as well as of her life before and after her arrival 
to Massachusetts was provided by Elaine Breslaw in her book Tituba, Reluctant 
Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies (1997). Our study takes 
particular interest in Breslaw’s comment on the authenticity of Tituba’s voice as 
recorded in the trial transcripts: “When asked during her examination about the 
form of the Devil she saw, Tituba replied with the proper use of pronouns and 
tense: ‘like a man I think’” (162). This reply addresses a crucial language-related 
issue about the representation of the non-standard language of (frequently) il-
literate speakers that has been “improved” or “made appropriate” by the writer(s) 
or note-taker(s) in various literary and non-literary texts. Breslaw herself doubts 
that the above-cited reply by Tituba was what she actually said: “But was this 
really Tituba’s speech pattern or was it that of the transcribers? These words 
were written down by the literate members of the community and it is possible 
that the clerks were distorting her syntax to conform to their own use” (162). 
This issue is tightly connected to the centuries-long exercise in the erasure and 
exploitation of otherness.2 
Even though the insight into the documentary files of the real Salem witch tri-
al transcripts, containing – among other documents – historical records of Tituba’s 
court testimony, is a closely related issue and a compelling one, this study focuses 
exclusively on the text of Arthur Miller’s play and the challenges encountered 
1 Facsimiled copies of the original witch trial transcripts are available in the online database (see 
Ray), while a detailed scholarly reconstruction of Tituba’s testimony was provided by Mary Beth 
Norton in her book In the Devil ’s Snare: the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692.
2 For more on this topic and a similar case that raises identical questions, see Gadpaille, in the book 
The Ethical Atlantic particularly the chapter on Mary Prince, an enslaved woman from Bermuda. 
For more on otherness related to Native American women, see Rožman Ivančič.
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177Witchcraft or Otherness
while rendering Tituba’s utterances into Slovene. This study analyses three written 
texts of The Crucible: the Penguin edition of Arthur Miller’s original play, the first 
(and only) published Slovene translation by Janko Moder (Kondor book series, no. 
65) and the 1997/2019 unpublished theatre translation by Alenka Klabus Vesel,3 
commissioned by the Slovene National Theatre in Maribor and used for the 1997 
and 2019 productions on the Maribor stage. Additionally, based on a brief insight 
into these two stage productions of The Crucible, accessed via two video recordings 
of performances (11 Nov 1998 and 26 Apr 2019), some observations referring to 
Tituba’s utterances are included.
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
Tituba’s stage presence in The Crucible is limited to three scenes or, more accu-
rately, their parts. She first appears briefly at the play’s opening, yet enough for 
the audience to notice her speech and to connect her non-standard English with 
her appearance.4 Her most prominent appearance is at the end of Act I when the 
first accusations take place and the mass hysteria begins. She finally appears at the 
end of Act IV, again quite briefly, at the Salem town jail. Although Tituba is not 
a character with many lines, her prominence for the plot is crucial, since in many 
ways she seems to set the plot in motion.
Tituba’s otherness in the play is apparent in several ways, one of the most 
prominent being her speech. She is not a native speaker of English, which can be 
seen in her poor command of the language. From the translation point of view, 
this is a crucial aspect, since the role of her utterances is not merely communica-
tive but also important in terms of characterization and social positioning. This is 
true for the language of drama in general; however, the more unusual the charac-
ter – particularly in terms of their speech – the more prominent the stylistic aspect 
3 The date on the translation, i.e., 1997/2019, suggests that the same translation was used for the 
1997 and 2019 productions. According to Zupan (146), reprinting old translations of various 
prose works, particularly novels, is still a common practice yet unapproved by many Slovene 
translation studies.
4 This, of course, depends on the directorial decision whether to cast Tituba as a person of colour – as 
is suggested in the stage directions at the play’s opening: “The door opens, and his Negro slave enters. 
Tituba is in her forties. Parris brought her with him from Barbados.” (The Crucible) – or whether to in-
dicate her origin in another way, usually by painting the actor’s face to indicate a darker complexion. 
In the Maribor 2019 National Theatre production that used the second translation, for example, 
there was no indication of Tituba’s darker skin colour. The item to differentiate her from the rest of 
the cast was a bright orange costume, while all other characters wore the attire in predominantly 
grey, brown and dark green tones (see photographs in the theatre program (Borin) or the video 
recording of the 2019 performance).
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178 Tomaž onič
of the utterances in their characterization.5 Since Tituba’s language is considerably 
marked, the stylistic aspect of her utterances is vital for her characterization and, 
consequently, the plot of the play. The attempts to render the stylistic characte-
ristics of the utterances into the target language must, therefore, be high on the 
translator’s priority list.
This section analyses a selection of non-standard elements in Tituba’s utte-
rances and studies the approaches the Slovene translators used in addressing the 
encountered translation challenges. Most examples are taken from the end of Act 
I, the scene in which Tituba’s stage presence is most prominent. In the follow-
ing excerpt, Abigail finds herself in the focus of Reverend Parris and Mr Hale’s 
questioning, and in order to redirect attention from herself she accuses Tituba of 
making her drink blood. The bold font in Tituba’s utterances is added to draw 
attention to the non-standard elements in her language:
ABIGAIL:  She makes me drink blood!
PARRIS:  Blood!!
MRS. PUTNAM:  My baby’s blood?
TITUBA:  No, no, chicken blood. I give she chicken blood!
HALE:  Woman, have you enlisted these children for the Devil?
TITUBA:  No, no, sir, I don’t truck with no Devil!
HALE:  Why can she not wake? Are you silencing this child?
TITUBA:  I love me Betty!
/…/
ABIGAIL:  She comes to me every night to go and drink blood!
TITUBA:  You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm—
There are two marked (and thus foregrounded) elements in Tituba’s first utte-
rance “I give she chicken blood”: the verb give is in the present tense, while the 
plot implies action in the past, and the pronoun she should have taken the form 
of the indirect object her. The Slovene translations are only partially successful in 
preserving the effects supporting the speaker’s characterization:
5 For the stylistic aspect of direct speech to prominently contribute to characterization, its marked-
ness needs not be limited to non-standard discourse – as in the case of Tituba in The Crucible or, 
for example, Old James in Munro’s View from the Castle Rock (see Mohar). It can also be seen in 
culturally marked expressions (e.g., Mezeg and Grego), stylistic patterns (e.g., Boase-Beier), ideo-
logical characteristics (e.g., Trupej) or manipulative language (e.g., Furlan and Kavalir); the same 
is true for non-literary discourse as shown by Plemenitaš. Characterization is not limited to genre; 
however, it is most effective if it stems from direct speech. In drama, this is always the case, while 
in prose it must happen within quotation marks.
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179Witchcraft or Otherness
MRS. PUTNAM:  My baby’s blood?
TITUBA:  No, no, chicken blood. I give she chicken blood!
 Ne, ne, kurjo kri. Jaz dala kri piščanca! (1964)
 Ne, ne, piščančja kri. Jaz ji dala piščančja kri! (1997/2019) 
The Slovene translation from 1964 introduces grammatical incorrectness by 
leaving out the auxiliary verb sem and omitting the indirect object ji. While 
the former attracts the audience’s attention because of the grammar-induced 
foregrounding, the latter represents a semantic shift that is only evident when 
compared to the original. As such, it does not highlight Tituba’s otherness, 
which is attributed to her through her speech in the original text. Moreover, 
this translation fails to preserve the salient repetition6 (epiphora) chicken blood, 
because it not only employs two different lexical choices (kurjo, piščanca) but 
in the second occurrence inverts the adjective-noun word order and introduces 
the possessive case kri piščanca (i.e., blood of the chicken) expressed through 
the genitive structure. Additionally, the latter suggests a higher register and 
tends to imply the speaker’s superior expressive ability, which is also not in line 
with Tituba’s character. Even though piščančji is a semantically more appro-
priate translation choice for the expression chicken than kurji (kura is a slightly 
lower register expression for hen), the latter choice still seems preferred because 
of its more colloquial character, but also because the two-syllable expression 
creates a more fluent rhythm for the utterance as a whole. In drama translation, 
the rhythmical aspect of an utterance is often a decisive criterion because of 
the fluency of the text and, consequently, speakability.7 Finally, the use of the 
nominative (piščančja) instead of the accusative case (piščančjo) seems a good de-
cision in the 2019 translation, since the incorrect use of noun cases is a common 
mistake committed by non-native speakers of Slovene and thus an indication 
of linguistically marked translation, which supports Tituba’s characterization in 
the target language. 
Finally, an insight into the density of non-standard language elements in the 
original and the translation shows that it is higher in the 2019 translation, where 
there are four such elements, while there are only two in the original and two in 
the 1964 translation. There is, of course, the additional issue of the intensity of 
individual elements; however, their number is at least a partial indicator. Consi-
dering these observations, a combination of the above versions seems to propose a 
good translation solution: “Ne, ne, kurjo kri. Jaz dala kurjo kri!”.
6 Repetitions suggest a simpler speaking style (see Onič and Prajnč Kacijan).
7 On the issues of speakability of the text on stage, see Podbevšek.
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180 Tomaž onič
The following excerpt contains double negation, which is a common English lan-
guage feature of lower register.8 In literary texts, its use usually indicates a spea-
ker who is either generally uneducated or simply not well-versed in the English 
language – as is the case with Tituba, who is a non-native speaker of English. 
Stylistically, this is a strong characterization element, which, in the context of this 
study, highlights Tituba’s otherness:
HALE:  Woman, have you enlisted these children for the Devil?
TITUBA:  No, no, sir, I don’t truck with no Devil!
 Ne, ne, gospod, jaz ne spečala s hudičem! (1964)
 Ne, ne, gospod, jaz nič imeti s hudič! (1997/2019)
Since in Slovene double negation is not a grammatical anomaly but a feature of 
proper language use in this type of sentence structure, its effect in the target lan-
guage utterance would not be equivalent to the original. Therefore, as expected, 
none of the existing translations features double negation, yet the negation – a 
single negation element each time – contributes to the non-standard language 
use, more visibly so in the 1964 translation. Here the correct use of an auxiliary 
verb (which in such cases takes the negative form) is replaced by the ungramma-
tical negative particle ne (Engl. no; in the sense “I no deal with the devil”). This 
non-standard use is further combined with two other ungrammatical elements 
producing a similar effect: one is the omission of the reflexive particle se, which 
would be needed because the Slovene verb spečati se (Engl. hook up with, have 
dealings with, pejorative use) is reflexive, and the other is the explicit use of the 
personal pronoun jaz (Engl. I) in the subject role, which is a necessary part of 
standard sentence structure in English, while it is omitted in the neutral use in 
standard Slovene since the subject is evident from the verb suffix. In this case (in 
fact, in both translations), however, it is needed, because none of the verb forms 
is conjugated (spečala is a past participle, imeti is an infinitive) so as to indicate 
the first-person speaker and thus replace the pronoun in the subject. This marked 
syntactic structure of the utterance, combined with other ungrammatical features 
is thus in accordance with Tituba’s language abilities and character; the only po-
tential issue remains the choice of the Slovene verb spečati se, which is a rather 
specific and low-frequency expression that may not be part of a narrow vocabulary 
of a character such as Tituba and may thus sound slightly artificial. 
The 2019 translation is lexically simpler and in this respect appropriate, but 
there is another linguistic feature that seems unconvincing: the use of the infinitive 
8 It is worth noting that the idiomatic expression “to have no truck with” is itself low in register. 
Tituba’s use, in which the noun truck has been changed into a verb, makes it additionally marked.
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181Witchcraft or Otherness
form of the verb (imeti) is rather unnatural, since this is a dictionary form that 
rarely appears in discourse (except, for example, in combination with modals or 
verbs like begin or stop, etc.), and is thus less likely for Tituba to have heard and 
acquired the use of the -ti infinitive. This is discussed in more detail in the Theatre 
Productions section. Finally, there is the nominative form of the noun hudič (Engl. 
devil), i.e., with the zero ending, in a structure that normally would take the suffix 
-em (i.e., s hudičem) required by the Slovene 6th case. This translation choice per se 
is not inappropriate for Tituba’s discourse; however, the density of non-standard 
language elements in this utterance seems to be too high: three salient language 
flaws, while the original contains only one. This issue is further debated in the 
discussion section. 
The density of non-standard language elements is again higher in the two 
translations, three in the 1964 and four in the 2019 translations, while there are 
only two in the original. It should be acknowledged that the markedness of jaz 
in both translations depends on the interpretation of the utterance since it could 
also be stressed and thus not non-standard. Therefore, again, a translation solution 
combined from the existing translations seems to appropriately address the issue 
of Tituba’s characterization: “Ne, ne, gospod, jaz nič imela s hudičem!”.
Although relatively short, the following utterance continues to display Titu-
ba’s non-standard discourse with the use of a possessive pronoun that takes the 
low-register variant me instead of the standard my:
HALE:  Why can she not wake? Are you silencing this child?
TITUBA:  I love me Betty!
 Jaz rada imela mojo Betty! (1964)
 Jaz rada moja Betty! (1997/2019)
In such cases, the possessive pronouns are omitted in the Slovene translation (cf. 
examples like “Eat your vegetables!” or “I pay my taxes.” become “Pojej zelenja-
vo.” and “Plačujem davke.”), yet the existing translations preserve it in the un-
grammatical form of the ordinary possessive pronoun mojo, while the standard 
use would require the reflexive possessive pronoun svojo. These two elements, if 
isolated, could probably be considered sufficient to preserve the equivalent to the 
original low-register me, but the translations contain more marked elements: both 
feature the explicit use of the personal pronoun jaz, while the 1964 translation 
uses past participle imela instead of the simple present form imam, and the 2019 
translation completely omits the verb imeti, and uses the nominative (moja Betty) 
instead of the accusative form (mojo Betty) of the possessive pronoun. A more 
moderate version with fewer but still sufficient non-standard elements could thus 
be “Jaz rada mojo Betty!” or even “Jaz rada Betty!”.
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182 Tomaž onič
Later in the same scene, Abigail continues to accuse Tituba, who still primarily 
defends herself but also claims that she was asked by Abigail to perform charms. 
In the first part of the utterance, she addresses Abigail directly, then turns to Mr. 
Hale and Mr. Parris:
ABIGAIL:  She comes to me every night to go and drink blood!
TITUBA:  You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm—
 Ti me prosila klicati duhove! Ona mene prosila coprati — (1964)
 Ti sama me prosila, da jaz čarala! Ona me prosila, da jaz 
 delam uroki — (1997/2019)
In her utterance, Tituba is referring to the event of the girls dancing in the forest, 
which is in the recent past, so the appropriate tense to use would be Past Simple. 
In both sentences in this utterance, she uses the present tense of beg – or rather 
the bare infinitive, the form which matches that of Present Simple. It is, however, 
unlikely that Tituba’s utterances are the result of a planned speech act, so both 
uses can be considered improper and imply a lower competence in English. 
Both Slovene translations imply the reference to the past tense by using the 
past participle, while the speaker’s lower linguistic competence is suggested by the 
omission of the auxiliary verb. After the main verb (reduced to past participle), 
the 1964 translation uses the infinitive in both sentences (following the English 
pattern), but the 2019 translation replaces it with a subordinate clause featuring 
yet another past participle without the auxiliary verb in each sentence. Syntacti-
cally, the latter version seems appropriate owing to closer consistency in the use of 
language structures without varying them (past participle + infinitive), while the 
1964 version is closer to the original semantically. The combination preserving 
the best of both versions would be “Ti me prosila, da jaz klicala duhove! Ona me 
prosila, da copram —”. Both ti and jaz must remain explicitly included in the 
utterance, since none of the verb forms is conjugated, and without the pronouns 
the referent is unclear.
DISCUSSION
An insight into Tituba’s utterances in the Slovene translations shows that both 
translators used stylistically marked language to indicate the character’s lower 
linguistic ability. Some of the significant low-register discourse markers can be 
found in both translations; some, however, are limited to one or the other.
In both cases, the non-standard discourse is created predominantly and most 
notably by omitting auxiliary verbs, so that the character is communicating with 
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183Witchcraft or Otherness
“dangling” past participles (e.g., “Ti mene ubogala, Tituba, in jaz tebe osvobodil”, 
or “Bila črna noč”, where boš, bom and je, consequently, are omitted). This phe-
nomenon almost invariably co-occurs with the explicit use of personal pronouns 
in the subject role, mostly referring to the speaker herself. Such use is neutral 
in English but not in synthetic languages such as Slovene since the subject is 
normally indicated by the verb suffix. If for any reason the conjugated (in this 
case auxiliary) verb is eliminated, the sentence without the subject is ambiguous. 
For example, “Ti mene ubogala” needs the subject ti, since “Mene ubogala” is too 
vague and would cause ambiguity, but also the audience might need too long to 
work out the relations, particularly in a sequence of quickly moving sentences – 
even in a concrete dramatic scene where the context should be clear, even more so 
since Tituba is incriminating herself. The grammatically correct sentences “Mene 
boš ubogala” or “Ubogala me boš”, on the other hand, can function without the 
pronoun in the subject as it has the conjugated verb. Since the explicit use of pro-
nouns in the subject is not standard in Slovene, it becomes – together with the 
omitted auxiliary – an additional element of markedness, which in Tituba’s speech 
is, in fact, welcome.
Another marker of non-standard discourse, also skilfully employed by both 
translators, is the use of the particle ne (or occasionally other ones such as nič or 
nikoli) in negative sentence forms (e.g., “Jaz ne imela nobena moč nad tem otrok, 
gospod,” “To jaz ne vedela, gospod,” “Gospod Parris nič dober človek”). The effect 
of such use is a considerably strong indication of poor language ability – and is 
thus appropriate for Tituba.
The use of uninflected nominative-case nouns where the syntax would require 
other noun cases predominantly features in the 2019 translation. These are formu-
lations like “Jaz ne sovražim tega človek”, where človek should be in the genitive 
case (človeka). This whole structure is not completely cognate with Tituba’s lin-
guistic ability, since the demonstrative pronoun tega is, surprisingly, in the correct 
genitive case form, often incorrectly replaced by the accusative case even by native 
speakers of Slovene. This could, however, be interpreted as a coincidental correct 
use, of which the speaker is unaware. Another example of such use is the sentence 
“Jaz ne imela nobena moč nad tem otrok”, where nobena moč should be in the da-
tive (3rd) case and otrok in the locative (5th) case.
Other more sporadic intentionally non-standard language uses include the 
speaker referring to herself with her name, e.g., “Bog varoval Tituba”; the use of 
numerals as premodifiers to nouns, e.g., “ponoči ena nevihta”; or incorrectly con-
jugated verb as a consequence of repeating the verb form from Mr. Hale’s ques-
tion, e.g., “In ljubiš Boga, Tituba?” “Jaz ljubiš Boga z vsem srcem.”, where ljubiš 
in her answer needs to be ljubim (1st person), yet the used form is an appropriate 
decision. These uses occur only once or a few times only but illustrate what can 
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184 Tomaž onič
be seen as useful translation strategies. The latter, i.e., partial repetition of Parris’s 
and Hale’s questions, is particularly believable when they ask Tituba a series of 
questions in a manner that resembles interrogation scenes that – owing to its 
hastiness – deprives Tituba of sufficient time to think about the answer, let alone 
formulate her utterances properly.9
The comments provided so far all refer to Tituba’s individual utterances, or even 
to individual linguistic elements within them. This paragraph, however, will look 
at the overall effect of Tituba’s discourse. This perspective of the synergic effect 
of individual non-standard translation choices shows that even though individu-
al elements are in line with Tituba’s character, their joint effect is stronger than 
that in the original. As shown in the above commentary on selected examples, 
the density within individual utterances is higher in the translations than in the 
original. In other words, Tituba makes more language mistakes in the translations 
than in the original. The observation can be generalized to the whole play: in the 
original Act I, there are 51 such elements, 65 in the 1964 translation and 81 in the 
1997/2019 translation. In Act IV, the situation is reversed (25, 14, and 18) but pri-
marily owing to the 8 cases where the pronunciation in the original is indicated as 
non-standard (e.g., goin’) and some deletions of the original non-standard words 
in the translations (e.g., pleasure-man). We can thus conclude that non-standard 
language elements are slightly excessive in the 1964 translation and considerably 
excessive in the 1997/2019 translation. 
We can see from the analysis of Tituba’s utterances, particularly if we look at 
their progression through each of the scenes in which she appears, that the num-
ber – or rather density – of the non-standard language elements she uses is lower 
in shorter utterances and gets higher when her utterances grow longer. Also, in 
Act I, her language mistakes tend to grow more frequent when she is under more 
pressure. Both observations are in line with Tituba’s characterization. 
In recreating Tituba’s speech in translation by means of non-standard lan-
guage elements, achieving the appropriate measure is just as important as find-
ing each individual translation solution. It is unlikely that the translator would 
be able to preserve the type or the exact number of the original non-standard 
elements, but equivalence in individual utterances and the overall effect of the 
speech in the scene should be aimed at. For the audience, it is usually enough 
that the character’s linguistic limitations are implied (after all, dramatic dis-
course is to a considerable degree a convention), since the text must still ensure 
pronunciation fluency.
9 The linguistic characteristics of utterances generated under pressure in interrogation scenes are 
dealt with in more detail by Onič and Prajnč Kacijan.
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185Witchcraft or Otherness
THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
A brief insight into the two stage productions of The Crucible by the Slovene 
National Theatre in Maribor (1997 and 2019) turned out to be a surprise as far 
as Tituba’s speech is concerned. The 1997 production, based on the translation 
by Alenka Klabus Vesel, opted for substantial changes in Tituba’s utterances: 
most of the past participles, analysed in the sections above, became infinitives 
(e.g., “Ti sama me prositi, da jaz čarati!”). This choice is problematic for at least 
two reasons. Firstly, such distorted discourse was used in children’s games (such 
as “Cowboys and Indians” or “Tarzan and Jane”) as a stylized convention for de-
picting Native American peoples or “uncivilized” and underdeveloped individ-
uals.10 This was a way of setting up a language-based division between the (core 
and right(eous)) entity and otherness, which today is a political correctness is-
sue, but at the time the awareness of the concept was minimal or non-existent. 
Many members of the audience would have remembered such games from their 
own childhood, and these can still be found in Slovene youth fiction or young 
adult movies from the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Sreča na vrvici). Secondly, such use 
of infinitives in place of conjugated verbs in Slovene is unnatural, since it sug-
gests that the speaker is familiar with basic grammar concepts. Obviously, this 
is an unrealistic assumption, since characters like Tituba acquire a new language 
through live language use and not from textbooks, where learning grammatical 
structures enables the learner to know concepts such as the infinitive. A better 
and more naturally sounding stylized non-standard discourse is achieved by 
dropping auxiliary verbs (e.g., “Ti mene ubogala”), as has been done in both 
Slovene translations. The 2019 Maribor production, however, offered a different 
kind of surprise: although the same translation as in 1997 was used, Tituba’s 
speech was changed to impeccable standard Slovene. This directorial decision 
neutralizes one of the most noticeable indications of Tituba’s otherness. With 
no evidence of her different skin colour, the question arises whether Tituba’s 
pivotal role as the main factor that sets the plot in motion is still liable to this 
interpretation. This observation opens the issue of introducing (more or less 
substantial) changes in the final versions of the translation, which is addressed 
by Zlatnar Moe et al., although not specifically for the theatre, where there are 
other specifics. Further research into this issue and the two theatre pieces was, 
unfortunately, impossible owing to the limitation of space,
10 For translation issues connected to racial discourse, see Trupej (2015 and 2017).
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186 Tomaž onič
CONCLUSION
As the selected examples and the pertaining comments demonstrate, the Slo-
vene translators were frequently successful in rendering Tituba’s individual ut-
terances into Slovene. The most visible issue seems to be overly intensive use of 
non-standard language elements in this otherness-marked character’s speech in 
the 1997/2019 translation, while other minor shifts include individual cases of 
structural or lexical inconsistency and lexical choices that appear too sophisticat-
ed or too high-register for a non-native speaker with little linguistic and gene-
ral training. Tituba’s otherness is an essential element in The Crucible that pro-
vides the main drive for the fatal chain of events to launch, and – apart from her 
appearance – her language is the main channel through which her otherness is 
communicated.
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Tomaž Onič
University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts 
tomaz.onic@um.si 
Čarovništvo ali drugost: angleško-slovenska kontrastivna analiza 
Titubinega govora
Titubo, stransko osebo iz igre Arthurja Millerja Lov na čarovnice (The Crucible) iz leta 
1953, lahko povežemo s konceptom drugosti v več pogledih. Prvič, Tituba ni svobodna kot 
ostali prebivalci Salema v Massachusettsu, kjer se drama odvija, temveč jo je pastor Parris 
pripeljal v skupnost z otoka Barbados kot sužnjo. Poleg tega v angleškem protestant-
skem okolju izstopa zaradi svojega karibskega porekla, in čeprav je sprejela veroizpoved 
svojega gospodarja, kot je bilo to običajno za sužnje v britanskem kolonialnem obdobju, 
protestantizem ni njena prva vera, kar jo ločuje od skupnosti. V kategorijo drugosti jo 
uvrščata tudi barva kože in jezik, ki se poleg dejstva, da je ženska, zdita glavna razlo-
ga, da je prav ona kot prva v Salemu obtožena čarovništva. Prispevek se osredotoča na 
Titubin govor, predvsem s prevodoslovnega vidika. Kontrastivna analiza njenega govora 
osvetljuje možnosti in težave prevajanja njenih replik v slovenščino, pri čemer vključuje 
izvirno Millerjevo dramo, dva njena slovenska prevoda, objavljenega (1964) in gledališ-
kega (1997/2019), na kratko pa se ustavi tudi pri Titubinem govoru v dveh slovenskih 
uprizoritvah drame v SNG Maribor.
Ključne besede: Arthur Miller, Lov na čarovnice, Tituba, čarovništvo, drugost
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