On average, the human body completely replaces all its component cells every seven years. Which begs the question, are you still . . . you? Similarly, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but would it still be a rose? Would it still have thorns? Would it still be red (and violets blue)? More importantly, would it still be Shakespeare? That is the question Daniel Hahn examines in If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation.
The book takes a deep dive into past and present translations of many Shakespeare works into languages as diverse as French, Swahili, Japanese, Danish, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Welsh, and Brazilian Portuguese, examining how the translators’ choices affect each play or sonnet. These choices go far beyond what many would imagine; if you write or speak a word, what that word “means” is only one part of the effect it has on the reader or listener. Every word has its own texture, rhythm, sound, and shape, and all words operate within a context. In translation, these qualities often matter more than the definition of any single word.
As Hahn describes, the translator’s job is “to preserve the source text, alert to references and nuances and effects and rhythm, to keep the voice lively . . . and make sure that when you’re done with it, the jokes are still funny.” In other words, they must change absolutely nothing about the original piece of writing. Except, of course, all the words. Let’s look at some examples of how they do that.
NEITHER RHYME NOR REASON
Much of Shakespeare is written in verse. One of the translator’s first decisions, then, is about structure—whether to prioritize the writing’s meter or meaning. Here is the speech between Romeo and Juliet at their first meeting in Act I:
Romeo. [To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
English speakers immediately recognize the familiar rhythm of iambic pentameter, with its 10 syllables per line broken into five iambs: ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM. English speakers may not know that this rhythm is uniquely suited to our language; most others use different rhythms. French, for instance, uses Alexandrine meter, with two half-lines of six syllables each, for a total of twelve feet. Polish verse most often contains 13 syllables per line. And there are many other styles of verse in other languages. Do you, as a translator, sacrifice sound for sense? Keep rhythm and reduce meaning?
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES
Hold that thought while we ponder another predicament—what to do about the ambiguity of Shakespeare’s language. If you doubt that’s intentional, take it from Richard III: “I moralize two meanings in one word.” Ambiguity allows Shakespeare to insert humor, reveal an intention, give insight into a character, or perhaps all of this, economically. But for translators, it means making yet more choices between which to prioritize—meaning or effect.
Hahn gives this example from Macbeth. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband, “Are you a man?”, the context of the scene makes clear that she is not asking a question. She is demanding to know her husband’s makeup—is he a macho macho man? The Hungarian word for “man” has no similar meaning; rather, the choice is “man” as in human, not animal, or “man” meaning male, not female. So the Hungarian translation reads thus:
Lady Macbeth: Have you got balls?”
Macbeth: “Yeah, I’ve still got ‘em.”
Mission accomplished.
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
As seen above, what a text does matters more than what it says. Remember that with Shakespeare, the play’s the thing, so the choices translators make affect not only readers, but actors and audiences, as well. Consider the opening lines from Richard III:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York
At least, those are the lines according to the Poetry Foundation. Check Folger’s and you’ll find this:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York
Which word (sun or son) Shakespeare “meant” to write—still a topic of hot debate 400+ years after he wrote it—becomes irrelevant for actors and audiences, who cannot see but only hear the lines. And what an audience hears is likely to depend on the actor’s presentation. Recall that as the play begins, Richard is the Duke of Gloucester. The newly ensconced king is Edward IV, eldest son of the house of York. An actor might choose to turn and face Edward or gesture toward him as he speaks his lines, inferring the meaning “son.” Or he might not; it is the actor’s choice.
In other languages, it becomes the translator’s choice. The dual meaning of the single syllable sound “sŭn” is a quirk of English. To reproduce the second line in Hebrew, German, Japanese, or any other language, the translator must first choose between the two word meanings. In Spanish, for example, “sun” becomes sol, while “son” is hijo. The word on the page will be spoken on stage, and audiences will take away that meaning and no other.
These are just a few of the challenges translators face when rendering Shakespeare’s work into other languages. Each choice may seem small, but over the course of an entire play, the effects do add up. As an exercise, let’s suppose we are tasked with translating As You Like It into French, beginning with the play’s famous opening lines:
All the world’s a stage
And all men and women merely players
We can’t substitute word for word—“tout le monde” for “all the world”—because the phrase “tout le monde” in French means “everybody.” A better translation might be “Le monde entier” (“the entire world”), but that changes the rhythm; the English version is monosyllabic, and the verb(s) just a single letter. Replacing “all” with “entire” also loses the poetic effect of the parallel construction between “all the world” and “all men and women.”
But the second line presents its own problems. “Et tous les hommes et femmes simplement des acteurs” sounds darn close to the original until we remember from high school French that French (and Spanish, and German, and many other languages) assign genders to nouns, adjectives, verbs, and even indefinite articles. All those parts of speech in a sentence must maintain gender agreement; masculine nouns must be modified by masculine adjectives and so on. This leaves us with “tous les hommes et toutes les femmes” and now the rhythm is just shot. Merde.
Translators can and do spend days working and reworking lines like these, privileging first sound, then shape, then other effects, until it’s as they like it. And then—only 25,000 more words to go.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Hahn’s scrupulous scholarship aside, few would disagree that Shakespeare is a great writer. What the book argues—convincingly—goes far beyond such simplistic sentiments. With copious examples and deep analysis, the author communicates clearly that “Shakespeare with every word changed can still be great, and still be Shakespeare.” His plays can and do survive full-text transplants into dozens of other languages and remain intact. Because a good translator turns gold into gold.
