Literary translation sometimes modernises the source text (Eco, 2001, 22), which brings the text forcefully into the cultural register of a different era. 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). In what follows, we shall consider literary translations in their own right and in relation to one another and other texts. Translations, as they age, also serve as useful historical documents of past exigencies and cultural conditions (Hoenselaars, 2009, 278-279). Following the footstep of the English director Geoffrey Kendal’s travelling company in India, we see the country’s ambiguous attitude towards Shakespeare and England. In contrast, the Merchant-Ivory’s metatheatrical film Shakespeare Wallah interrogates this sense of entitlement and prestige. Luis was praised in 1877 for bringing honour to his country by “giving to the Portuguese Nation their first translation of Shakespeare” (Pestana, 1930, 248-263). When his translation of Hamlet was published, King D. Does translating Shakespeare empower those for whom English is a second language, or reinforce cultural hegemony? There is no simple answer. Translating Shakespeare into Zulu produces very different cultural prestige than translating Korean playwright Yi Kangbaek into English. Shakespeare remains the most canonical of canonical authors in a language that is now the global lingua franca. In terms of its symbolic and cultural capital, literary translations always reflect the global order of the centre and the peripheral. To think of translation as a love affair does not eliminate the hierarchies that are part of the historical reality. It highlighted and put to productive use the space between cultures, between individuals with different perspectives, and within one’s psyche. As human civilisations developed and intersected, translation emerged as a necessary form of communication and a way of life.
Translation involves artistic creativity, not a workshop of equivalences. Or an eclectic combination of any of these events. In other instances it could be unrequited love, and still others a test of devotion and faith.
Depending on the context, it could be love at first sight or hot pursuits of a lover’s elusive nodding approval. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much English, canst thou love me? Tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. King Harry: No, faith, is’t not, Kate: but thy speaking of my …Ĭatharine: Sauf votre honneur, le Francois que vous parlez, ilĮst meilleur que l’Anglois lequel je parle. King Harry: … I will tell thee in French … Je quand sur le possession de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi,–let me see, what then? … It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French.
Mark Thornton Burnett, Adrian Streete, and Ramona Wray. Bradley's other works include: Poetry for Poetry's Sake (1901), A Commentary on Tennyson's in Memoriam (1901), and A Miscellany (1929).Excerpted from “Shakespeare and Translation.” The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, ed. By the mid-twentieth century his approach became discredited for many scholars often it is said to contain anachronistic errors and attempts to apply late 19th century novelistic conceptions of morality and psychology to early 17th century society. Though Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people, his book is probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published.
Bradley's pedagogical manner and his self-confidence made him a real guide for many students to the meaning of Shakespeare. All of his published work was delivered earlier as lectures. Bradley's two major works, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), and Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909). The outcome of the five years as Professor of Poetry in Oxford were A. Andrew Cecil Bradley (1851-1935) was an English literary scholar, best remembered for his work on Shakespeare.