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2.3 Shakespeare’s text translation

Translations into a different language always lose something, you can never say exactly what is meant in another language. One problem with «translating» Shakespeare’s text is that it isn’t another language, it’s still English! Any time you substitute words for other words the meaning is not going to be the same. Yes, the English isn’t modern and can be hard to understand but the language didn’t evolve to give a modern substitute for everything. When you change the words, the meaning is changed. Each word has a distinct meaning, sounds, feeling. Accept no substitutes.

Now I’m not saying that there is no merit in these books. I am saying that the translation is not a substitute for reading the play. The modern English is there as tool, not a crutch. When one ignores Shakespeare’s text in favor of the modern you aren’t reading Shakespeare. Often Shakespeare’s words have a double meaning. That doesn’t happen when the words are changed. Sometimes footnotes in other editions are more useful in this respect. In other places, the translation may not be the most accurate words to use in place of the text.
With all of the unique challenges presented by the language and content of Shakespeare’s plays, translating them is nothing short of a monumental task – and those who create successful translations of his work into foreign languages are worthy of a sonnet or two of their own.
To think of translation as a love affair does not eliminate the hierarchies that are part of the historical reality. In terms of its symbolic and cultural capital, literary translations always reflect the global order of the centre and the peripheral. Shakespeare remains the most canonical of canonical authors in a language that is now the global lingua franca.
One of the most thought-provoking cases of literary translation is Shakespeare, the most widely translated secular author in the past centuries, with several editions in many languages (e.g., the Complete Works has been translated into German a number of times beginning with the German Romantics, and into Brazilian Portuguese by Carlos Alberto Nunes in 1955–67 and by Carloes de Almeida Cunha Medeiros and Oscar Mendes in 1969). Literary translation sometimes modernises the source text (Eco, 2001, 22), which brings the text forcefully into the cultural register of a different era. As such, Shakespeare in translation acquired the capacity to appear as the contemporary (and ideal companion) of the German Romantics, a spokesperson for the proletarian heroes, required reading for the Communists, and even a transhistorical icon of modernity in East Asia. Even new titles given to Shakespeare’s plays are suggestive of the preoccupation of the society that produced them, such as the 1710 German adaptation of Hamlet title Der besträfte Brudermord (The Condemned Fratricide) and Sulayman Al-Bassam’s The Al-Hamlet Summit (English version in 2002; Arabic version in 2004). While Western directors, translators, and critics of The Merchant of Venice tend to focus on the ethics of conversion and religious tensions with Shylock at center stage, the play has a completely different face in East Asia with Portia as its central character and the women’s emancipation movement in the nascent capitalist societies as its main concern, as evidenced by its common Chinese title A Pound of Flesh, a 1885 Japanese adaptation of The Merchant of Venice titled The Season of Cherry Blossoms, the World of Money, and a 1927 Chinese silent film The Woman Lawyer.
Shakespeare’s oeuvre is present on every populated continent, with sign-language renditions and recitations in Klingon in the Star Trek to boot. Hamlet is one of the most frequently translated and staged plays in the Arab world (Mohamed Sobhi’s 1977 version in Egypt, Khaled Al-Tarifi’s version in Jordan, and more). Since its first staging in Copenhagen in the early nineteenth century, Hamlet has both visceral and historical connections with Denmark (Hansen, 2008, 153) – thanks in part to the famed «Hamlet castle» Kronborg. King Lear has a special place in Asian theatre history and Asian interpretations of filial piety. Romeo and Juliet enjoys a global renaissance in genres ranging from punk parody to Japanese manga. The Sonnets and The Merchant of Venice have been translated into te reo Maori of New Zealand and hailed as a major cultural event. By 1934, Shakespeare had been translated into over 200 Indian languages using Indian names and settings. Shakespeare has come to be known as unser Shakespeare for the Germans, Sulapani in Telegu, and Shashibiya in Chinese.
Again, the modern is to be used as a tool to help you understand what is being said when it is tough. In that respect these books can be a GREAT help. Some passages in Shakespeare just are too weird to comprehend right away and looking it up in one of these is a wonderful and painless way to get an «Aha! So THAT’S what that means» moment.
Theater translation is an art in itself, but translating the works of William Shakespeare takes a real virtuoso. Tricky enough in English, Shakespeare’s language presents some serious translation challenges above and beyond those routinely involved in translating plays.
Difficult as it may be, Shakespeare’s timeless classics have been translated into dozens of languages, and summer 2012 promises a whole slew of these translated productions from all over the world.
The program, collectively titled Globe to Globe, will be held at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London as part of the Cultural Olympiad’s World Shakespeare Festival, which is being celebrated in anticipation of the 2012 London Olympics.
From the Henry VI histories in various Balkan languages to Love’s Labour’s Lost in British Sign Language, 37 of Shakespeare’s best works will be presented in 37 different languages – quite an accomplishment when you consider all of the following factors that must be taken into account when translating such iconic and intricate text.
Of course, in translating and localizing Shakespeare plays for modern audiences of non-English speakers, one doesn’t want to make the language too approachable either. The antiquated, ornate language is central to Shakespeare’s plays. It is uniquely his and one of the major factors that separates him from other playwrights.
The language is dense even for native English-speakers, so it shouldn’t be watered down in translation. The trick is to find turns of phrase in the new language that, even if not exactly equivalent to the English, give a sense of the heightened, archaic language of the original. After all, «to be or not to be» doesn’t have quite the same effect when rendered as something in the vein of «should I kill myself or not».