English Translations of Shakespeare. (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

English Translations of Shakespeare.
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

33 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5

anthox
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Message 33 of 33

03 June 2009 at 7:47am | IP Logged

JBI wrote:

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.

I absolutely agree with this. A big part of the 'difficulty' of Shakespeare owes itself to his verbal dexterity, which often entails syntactic arrangements that tease out subtle connotations, ambiguities, double/triple meanings, etc. Understanding on this level requires no more than an eager attentiveness and, perhaps, a level of familiarity with poetic language overall. On the level of pure vocabulary, there are of course archaisms and such, but where they cannot be deduced by context, most if not all editions will have annotations defining less accessible words. Breaking off from the text to read these may seem tedious or intrusive at the beginning, but with time you will find yourself understanding more and more on your own.

Even the medieval English of Chaucer or Langland can be read by a modern speaker, albeit with a bit more effort. The vocabulary is much more unfamiliar, and made quite complicated also by the fact that many words still current in English are 'false friends' with their counterparts in middle English (eg. 'sloth', which now simply means 'laziness,' then meant specifically a sort of inaction or lack of initiative toward attaining salvation for oneself, or a neglect of one's rightful 'station' in life). I would argue, however, that while one would need to resort almost constantly to annotations at the start of the reading, it does not take long to pick up commonly used vocabulary and expressions, and the reading will flow much more smoothly in a relatively short period of time. Also, I think (and this is probably debatable) that Chaucer is somewhat less poetically 'dense' than Shakespeare, making him comparatively easier to read once the obstacle of vocabulary is overcome.

I really see no excuse for a modern, native English speaker to use a modernized rendering save for the desire to get a 'quick fix' of the material without having to make a studious effort. If one prefers to do that, I won't moralize against it, but I personally think it is a half-assed way of going about it, especially if one is interested in languages. These texts are windows to the past of the language, and for me it is quite interesting to note what has been modified, retained, added, or sloughed off over time.

Edited by anthox on 03 June 2009 at 7:49am

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