“Translated” Shakespeare
Over the last several years editions of Shakespeare’s plays such No Fear Shakespeare have become increasingly popular among everyone under the sun who picks up Shakespeare to read. People love the simplicity of being able to read a “translated” Shakespeare play. These have been created to combat Bardophobia. But are these convenient little volumes the solution to heal the masses of their inability to understand Shakespeare?
It seems like a little bit of a double-edged sword to me.
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 ignore’s 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.
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.
No Fear Shakespeare doesn’t solve the problem of getting people to understand Shakespeare and overcome a fear of it. If used alone it is only a cover for the effects, not the problem.
If you like these versions, great! If you teach using these books, awesome! There is nothing wrong with using them. But whatever you do don’t fall into the trap of taking the “easier path” of looking at only the modern text. Shakespeare’s text isn’t simple without some experience first, but if you take the time it is a much more rewarding experience. Try to read the play in its original form as much as possible and glance over to the translation when you need it. In general when you want a short passage in modern English, spend a little time and try to do it yourself. Look up some words, spend some time with it. When you put Shakespeare in your own words you will understand it better, you’ll connect to it more easily, you’ll enjoy it more. When you need a quick answer use the translation, but don’t cheat yourself. It’s a puzzle – and always more rewarding when you piece it together yourself.
Ian Thal Feb 24
The fact is that most modern editions, are “translated” anyway with modern spellings that often change the meter and the pronunciation from the texts as they were published in the early 17th century. I blogged about the experience of rehearsing directly from the First Folio and what that revealed about the poetry of the play.
Instead of treating Shakespeare as archaic English that needs translation, why don’t we treat it as being written in dialect? We don’t publish “translations” of novels and poetry that are written in dialect: Would anyone consider a No Fear Huckleberry Finn or No Fear Collected Poems of Langston Hughes?
Gedaly Feb 24
Great points Ian! I smile in your general direction. The benefits of studying and rehearsing from the First Folio are numerous. I plan to make a full post about it sometime soon. In the post I mentioned looking to No Fear for help when needed. I would even go so far as to recommend to those with more experience to use the First Folio as a primary text and go to an edition with modern spellings for help when the words themselves are difficult to decipher.
I love your comparison to Huck Finn and treating it as a dialect piece, because it is! It’s early modern English. Elaborate poetry sometimes, yeah. But still a dialect understood in that time.
As I mentioned before, the No Fear series has its merits but I agree with you 100%.
Jen Feb 26
As I’ve been developing my school’s script for “Shrew,” I have referred back to the First Folio to double check punctuation and a variety of other mechanical bits and pieces. In addition, I use the Arden series now for my working copies of his plays because of the extensive notes and glosses – so much wonderful information to help bring these great words “off the page and onto the stage!”
john Mar 10
what does this mean.. hippolyta, i wooed thee with my sword and won thy love doing thee injuries, but i will wed thee in another key, with pomp..
Gedaly Mar 10
John, I replied by email. I hope you get it, you might get 2. I was having problems with mail as I was responding….
Jonah Aug 12
I see your point about not wanting to cloud the original wording and meaning of the ancient works, but I disagree.
Word meanings, in addition to many words themselves have changed a great deal since the time these volumes were written. This fact alone means that the meaning is already being obscured by our own knowledge of modern english; we are not the intended audience of these plays. 500 years have passed and with them, nuances of meaning, double meanings, and words themselves have fallen out of use or changed, and this is not the fault of the modern reader. As the language has changed, so have the meanings of the works written with archaic linguistics. Shakespeare was a brilliant writer, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that, but his work is no longer digestible by the modern masses, leaving us with the choice to either abandon them (not likely), translate them, or spend copius amounts of time learning the language before reading them.
Gedaly Aug 12
How then do you explain the thousands of theatres worldwide still using Shakespeare’s text and the millions of audience members viewing them? While it’s true that no average audience member will understand everything, if the play is well done, they will understand no less than the basic plot.
The language has changed but not so much that it is entirely unintelligible. The stories, the words, and writing style are dramatically potent that I think that we are not limited to the choice of translating or abandoning the texts.
Willshill Nov 12
Jonah wrote:”…but his work is no longer digestible by the modern masses, leaving us with the choice to either abandon them (not likely), translate them, or spend copius amounts of time learning the language before reading them.”
_____________________________________________________________________
By “translate” I believe you meant, into modern English. Why? The “translating” is already done–all that it takes is a glance across or down the page while reading any annotated edition; readily available to the masses.
Sure it takes a little longer to read Shakespeare–but “…copious amounts of time” ?
Spending copious amounts of time comes later–when you realize how much the little extra effort you spent, darting your eyes to find out what the hell ‘quietus’ means, has opened up an entire world of wit, philosophy, psychology, and insight into human nature quite like no other.
The Language and the way HE used it was The Way he created that World.
He IS the language and the Language Is HIM. Pull at the patchwork, the quilt unravels.
Any other type of ‘translating’ takes the tool of genius out of his hands and renders impotent the beauty and majesty of His Way of Communicating. It is his exact observance and his uncanny ability to record it that led him to the heights of his interpretive, dramatic, and Communication skills, enabling him to tell the story His Way. He needs no one to ‘explain’ him in Their Way.
Remove the language and you’ve buffed the facets off the diamond. Understanding His Wit with the language is necessary in order to really “get it’. We must go to the mountain. But the climb will be worth it. It’s the climb that transforms–the conversation (Communication) is much more interesting–and knowing– when we descend.
“Words, words, words.” They take a little Work, work, work.
Willshill Nov 13
Ian Thal wrote:”…the experience of rehearsing directly from the First Folio and what that revealed about the poetry of the play.”
____________________________________________________________
I find it both interesting and refreshing that a Poet is less interested in the rules of Poesy,the ostensible justification for ‘emending’(a less offensive cryptic-ism for ‘correcting’)Shakespeare for hundreds of years, than in how Shakespeare brilliantly hammered against the bulwark of acceptability.
For me, there is no replacement for the Folio when it comes to interpreting and ‘translating’ his work, either in the literary or dramatic realm. Understanding Shakespeare as the gifted Musician he most certainly was can happen only when his ‘phrasing’ is accepted at face value in what we have as the closest approximations to the original ‘voicings’. It’s only then that it truly opens itself to interpretation, much the same as when Mahler, for instance, ‘interpreted’ Beethoven when conducting Ludwig’s symphonies. Color, imagery, phrasing, tempo, rhythm, mood, tone–all there to be discovered–and chosen, interpretively, and then appropriately measured and shaded by the ‘Player’. HERE is where the translating begins–and belongs.
Davey Morrison Jul 8
I think to totally dismiss either approach is lamentable. The fact is, we don’t live in Elizabethan England, and what the audiences then got in an evening of theater requires today constant referrals to footnotes, which interrupts the dramatic flow, intellectualizes bits of humor that should make us laugh instead of merely acknowledging how they might be funny–not to mention, when you go to see a play, you don’t get footnotes (maybe a note from the director or dramaturg at best).
True, one can study the individual plays, reading them, re-reading them, reading the notes, learning about Shakespeare’s culture and his theater, and then attend an actual performance. But that’s not the way the plays were meant to be experienced. They were written to be experienced in live performance. Though some of us do, we can’t all devote this much time to Shakespeare studies–there are other things to learn about and experience in the world of the arts, and in the world of everything else.
On the other hand, as you say, the language is Shakespeare’s tool. Without the words, we’d have nothing, and much is lost–or, at least, altered–in translation.
But just as there are great writers, there are great translators. To say that one should never read or perform Shakespeare in translation is just the same as suggesting one should never see a movie with subtitles (ironically, both looked on as culturally “elite” activities). If one doesn’t read French, should one just ignore Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac”–or be required to learn French in order to enjoy it? What about Anthony Burgess’ excellent translation? A translation is a different work of art than the original, but it can still succeed in capturing much of the spirit, wit, characters, ideas, and emotions of the original, without needing an extra volume in order to understand it–in this way, a translation of a Shakespeare play is far truer to the immediacy of Shakespeare, which was as much a part of his work as the language.
That said, there is also very much a place for the study and performance of the texts as we find them in the Folio(s). The non-scholars among us still follow the story of a good performance and pick up on a good deal of the humor, drama, and intricacies of character that Shakespeare gives us. A good actor aided by a good director can make the language much more accessible and understandable, even if most of us are apt to lose a lot (unlike reading Shakespeare, performance is instantaneous and fleeting–there’s no time to go back and re-read a line for comprehension). The “music” of the language–and it is very poetic and very musical–remains entirely intact, and so does the meaning, to the extent that it is not lost on those watching and listening; after all, you just couldn’t ever, ever in a million years improve on some of Shakespeare’s perfect phrasing–Benedick’s “There’s a double meaning in that” or Hamlet’s “Methinks it is like a weasel” wouldn’t be half so funny or so brilliant if you changed any one of those words in any way imaginable, as vaguely archaic as the grammar or choice of words may be.
So let’s keep up the First Folio study and performances, and let’s lose this elitist attitude that only the folios will suffice and get some genuinely brilliant Shakespeare translators out there–we deserve some modern Shakespeare translations the equivalent of Burgess’ “Cyrano,” Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations of Dostoevsky, or Gregory Rabassa’s Garcia Marquez. Only when we have all these different ways of accessing and understanding Shakespeare’s genius will we approach truly “original practices.”
Davey Morrison Jul 8
Also check out http://www.globalclashes.com/2009/05/finding-shakespeare-in-translation.html
Kent Richmond Jul 18
Here are links to two relevant articles by John McWhorter on The New Republic Online
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/05/19/will-shakespeare-s-come-and-gone-does-the-bard-s-poetry-reach-us-like-august-wilson-s-come-on-really.aspx
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/mcwhorter/archive/2009/05/24/should-we-have-to-read-the-bard-before-hearing-him-more-on-shakespeare.aspx
McWhorter wrote an article back in the late 90s that influenced me to translate Shakespeare’s plays.
Kent Richmond