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English Translations of Shakespeare. | ||
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| Dario8015 Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6001 days ago 37 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 25 of 33 29 May 2009 at 12:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah but there's the difference between reading a Shakespeare play and seeing it in performance - as it was meant to be experienced in the first place - a modern audience will cope very well with the 'difficult' language on seeing a play performed - you don't have to be highly educated to appreciate the bawdy humour in, for example Henry IV I and II or to appreciate the power of the language in King Lear - can you imagine Lear's 'heath speech' rendered into modern English? It would lose all of it's power and pathos. Anyway, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.....but it opened up a fascinating debate, and I thank you for that.
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| Meadowmeal Pentaglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5711 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, French, English, German, Polish Studies: Romanian | Message 26 of 33 29 May 2009 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course, what does not need to be changed in order to produce its effect, can be maintained. If Shakespeare wanted his audience to laugh at a certain point in the play and the modern audience still laughs, so much the better. But there are many cases in which the original text does not produce its intended effect anymore.
And I don't consider modern English to be a so much poorer language than Shakespeare's, that a speech like that cannot be written in it. I'm getting sleepy now :) "To be up after midnight and to go to bed then, is early, so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 27 of 33 29 May 2009 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Russianbear - my English was at a very high level during my last year of secondary school. But when I was handed a copy of Macbeth it was like seeing another language.
Nobody understood anything and there was a big uproar in the class about Shakespeare being required for a class that was essentially English as a second language. I panicked as the teacher made it clear that those who didn't read and understand the book would not keep their As. One student (American) owned a set of "cheat-guides" to Shakespeare which saved him and a few others. But I was never able to borrow the book. I lost my A in English in my final year because of this. Big blow to my ego and GPA. The shock exposure to a totally incomprehensible text put me off Shakespeare for good. I don't even want to see a filmitisation of Shakespeare drama. The other book I came across which I couldn't understand in English was the Bible. Nobody had explained that the "King James" version is absolutely ancient English (18th century, perhaps) and that there are actually Bible translations available in contemporary English. Today I think I could *probably* read and understand the Bible pretty well in the King James format. But the I still can't shake my dislike for Shakespeare. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6775 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 33 29 May 2009 at 1:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ouch, sorry to hear that, cordelia0507. Your experience with Shakespeare is like a "Shakespearean tragedy" in itself :)
I once had to read Hamlet for a class. My English wasn't as good as it is now, and I didn't understand much, but somehow it wasn't a big deal, as the professor was cool (I am not sure he even counted it towards the grade). I guess I kinda wanted to go back to it to make sure I can tackle it, so when I saw this dual-language edition of Hamlet, I purchased it. I still think it is difficult, and while I could have maybe gotten the gist if I didn't have the modern English version available, I would certainly not understand many important details. Maybe it will get easier as I move along, though (I am only at Act II). It does seem like a different language, though - I think some modern languages that are considered to be separate languages may be closer and more understandable to one another than modern English is to Shakespearean English. Edited by Russianbear on 29 May 2009 at 1:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JBI Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5691 days ago 46 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, English* Studies: Italian, Mandarin, French | Message 29 of 33 29 May 2009 at 4:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Shakespeare, when "made easy", to me seems no longer Shakespeare. His difficulty, I would argue, lies not in his age, but more in his style - it is rhetorically dense, and linguistically creative. Tybalt's first line in Romeo and Juliet, for instance, contains three puns within the first line, "What, art thou drawn amongst these heartless hinds" - a fact that the majority of readers do not pick up on. In truth, after the first couple of plays I read on my own, Shakespeare began to make sense, to the point where I no longer need any footnotes, beyond etymological archaisms, and allusions. The problem though, is that people generally cannot read anymore - I know many native English speakers who can't read Charles Dickins, because he is too hard, or read Jane Austen. The problem seems more culturally related than anything else - Shakespeare isn't that difficult if you know how to read, and have some sense of understanding of English (which generally comes, or should come, naturally to a native English speaker, though perhaps does not come so easily to a learned speaker) than there should not be a real problem with Shakespeare, beyond a couple words on the page. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 30 of 33 29 May 2009 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The same double standards exist in TV/film.
If you write a historical drama in modern vernacular it's decried as "anachronistic" (never mind that the English of Robin Hood would be completely incomprehensible to most people) but if you write a drama set in a foreign country it's perfectly acceptable for the actors to speak English (and going back to Robin Hood, most of the bad guys would be Norman French speakers anyway -- Robin Hood was a tale of the ethnic/class struggle between Anglo-Saxons and Normans).... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Meadowmeal Pentaglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5711 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Dutch*, French, English, German, Polish Studies: Romanian | Message 31 of 33 29 May 2009 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Even in translation one could argue that Shakespeare should be translated into 16th century Dutch/French. Not an uninterresting exercise, and for French audiences this probably will not pose insurmountable problems, but to Dutch audiences you might as well present the original, when it comes to comprehensibility. Edited by Meadowmeal on 29 May 2009 at 11:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6120 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 32 of 33 30 May 2009 at 2:31am | IP Logged | |||||
Agreed. Everyone else gets to enjoy reading Shakespear in their OWN language, except for English speakers. I could never enjoy the books because they were too much of a hassle to read. When studying in middle/high school I depended more on the footnotes and the summaries at the end of each chapter to understand what was going on, rather than the text itself. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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