Any translation suggests an act of violence, transfer, or change. Dictionary definitions of the term “translation,” suggesting changes of form, medium, or use, do not aid in ascertaining with any degree of certainty whether a translation is either wrong or inaccurate. The problem is confounded when the object or text being translated is imperfect in its original form or, allegedly, simply a version – or at best some sort of hybrid – of a lost archetype whose paternity itself is merely putative. When the translated text is dramatic, there is an additional change or transfer from the playtext (the text that undergoes the act of translation from one language to another) to the performance text (the text that is subsequently decoded and interpreted by innumerable agents) (Rozik 13, 15). When the translated text is the progenitor of other texts (other Don Juan types in the case of El burlador de Sevilla), additional problems ensue. Should the Ur-Text be altered to suit the tastes of a modern theatre audience? Or should the original form – poetry in this case – be retained precisely to try to preserve a whiff of the “unvisitable past […] where they do things differently,” as Jonathan Miller would state? (Afterlife 44). If the first choice is made, the translated text would be further removed (i.e., transferred) not only from its original language or lexicon but also from its pristine form of expression; if the latter is chosen, the text's structure might be preserved but, inevitably, the original lexicon would be altered. Subsequently, regard-less of whatever choices are made, a translated text would always reflect a departure, a divergence, or a repositioning from an original order of stasis.

Having said this, one may judge that a dramatic text has been well translated, not only into another language but also into another medium, if the following four points are observed: