5 ms·

Very cool article. For those who didn't read and might wonder why someone is arguing that Shakespeare isn't a genius, the title is a play on words. The article

Very cool article. For those who didn't read and might wonder why someone is arguing that Shakespeare isn't a genius, the title is a play on words. The article argues that Shakespeare's unusual use of language ("nonsense") is what makes his work genius.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
Thanks. I have a hard time defending Shakespeare well enough, but now I don't have to. I wonder what translation of Shakespeare, to Italian for example, Booth prefers. Translators can make the archaic stuff accessible again, and so maybe the italian crowd gets the jokes that are lost on the english one.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Interesting idea. What would it look like if a one of the works is translated to Italian (which might improve its ability to be understood) then translated back to English? What would it look like, and how accessible would it become?
  - TillE 12y ago
    Probably something completely different, but I think what you want is Shakespeare in modern English, which is a thing that exists: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/ http://nfs.sparknotes.com/ I've heard bits of Shakespeare in German, and I think it was pretty well done. Any good translation is going to effectively be a whole new work of art that tries to capture something of the essence of the original. But the beauty of Shakespeare is the language.
    - bjterry 12y ago
      That translation is pretty terrible. It's not a translation of the musicality and beauty of Shakespeare into modern English, it's a translation of Shakespeare into poorly written literal statements. When foreign translators are doing Shakespeare, they are trying to capture the whole essence, not just a literal extraction of what it's referring to. Example: Yes, as sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannons overcharged with double cracks, So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe. "Translated" to: > The new challenge scared them about as much as sparrows frighten eagles, or rabbits frighten a lion. To tell you the truth, they fought the new enemy with twice as much force as before; they were like cannons loaded with double ammunition.
      - hyperpape 12y ago
        That is halfway to Orwell's conversion of Ecclesiastes to bureaucratic English. Absolutely painful.
- chrismealy 12y ago
  Yep, that's it. Shakespeare's dialect is full of false friends. Indeed, the irony today is that the Russians, the French and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that unlike us, they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak. Shakespeare is translated into rich, poetic varieties of these languages, to be sure, but since it is the rich, poetic modern varieties of the languages, the typical spectator in Paris, Moscow or Berlin can attend a production of Hamlet and enjoy a play rather than an exercise. In Japan, new editions of Shakespeare in Japanese are regularly best-sellers—utterly unimaginable here, since, like the Japanese, we prefer to experience literature in the language we speak, and a new edition of original Shakespeare no longer fits this definition. In an illuminating twist on this, one friend of mine—and a very cultured, literate one at that—has told me that the first time they truly understood more than the gist of what was going on in a Shakespeare play was when they saw one in French! -- http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm
  - bane 12y ago
    The flip side is that English speakers get to enjoy a treasure trove of 500 years of stories that are basically riffs on his works and a vast collection of day to day sayings and words which color our everyday language. We actually get to live intimately with his works even if we can barely understand the originals.
    - bhaak 12y ago
      So do you when you speak German and French. Shakespeare isn't just an English classic, he is an European and a World's classic and in Europe, many countries have lived intimately with him for centuries as well. Granted, not all went as far as the Germans and Klingons, but thinking that only the English people have a long lived history with Shakespeare is false. I looked at what Wikipedia had about Shakespeare's influence in non-English countries and was surprised that this is hardly mentioned. Is this really an obscure fact that for example in the 19th century Shakespeare was widely more popular in Germany than in Britain or that Goethe and Voltaire were avid admirers of Shakespeare?
mvgoogler 12y ago
Agreed. The article exhibited it's own bit of genius. As I was reading I kept waiting for the big "..BUT.." that would talk about how Shakespeare wasn't a genius. It wasn't until I got to the section on garden path sentences that the purpose of the title clicked. The author of the article was employing one of the very "tricks" he talks about in the article!

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago

Thanks. I have a hard time defending Shakespeare well enough, but now I don't have to. I wonder what translation of Shakespeare, to Italian for example, Booth prefers. Translators can make the archaic stuff accessible again, and so maybe the italian crowd gets the jokes that are lost on the english one.

freehunter 12y ago
Interesting idea. What would it look like if a one of the works is translated to Italian (which might improve its ability to be understood) then translated back to English? What would it look like, and how accessible would it become?
- TillE 12y ago
  Probably something completely different, but I think what you want is Shakespeare in modern English, which is a thing that exists: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/ http://nfs.sparknotes.com/ I've heard bits of Shakespeare in German, and I think it was pretty well done. Any good translation is going to effectively be a whole new work of art that tries to capture something of the essence of the original. But the beauty of Shakespeare is the language.
  - bjterry 12y ago
    That translation is pretty terrible. It's not a translation of the musicality and beauty of Shakespeare into modern English, it's a translation of Shakespeare into poorly written literal statements. When foreign translators are doing Shakespeare, they are trying to capture the whole essence, not just a literal extraction of what it's referring to. Example: Yes, as sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannons overcharged with double cracks, So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe. "Translated" to: > The new challenge scared them about as much as sparrows frighten eagles, or rabbits frighten a lion. To tell you the truth, they fought the new enemy with twice as much force as before; they were like cannons loaded with double ammunition.
    - hyperpape 12y ago
      That is halfway to Orwell's conversion of Ecclesiastes to bureaucratic English. Absolutely painful.
chrismealy 12y ago
Yep, that's it. Shakespeare's dialect is full of false friends. Indeed, the irony today is that the Russians, the French and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that unlike us, they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak. Shakespeare is translated into rich, poetic varieties of these languages, to be sure, but since it is the rich, poetic modern varieties of the languages, the typical spectator in Paris, Moscow or Berlin can attend a production of Hamlet and enjoy a play rather than an exercise. In Japan, new editions of Shakespeare in Japanese are regularly best-sellers—utterly unimaginable here, since, like the Japanese, we prefer to experience literature in the language we speak, and a new edition of original Shakespeare no longer fits this definition. In an illuminating twist on this, one friend of mine—and a very cultured, literate one at that—has told me that the first time they truly understood more than the gist of what was going on in a Shakespeare play was when they saw one in French! -- http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan10/shakespeare.cfm
- bane 12y ago
  The flip side is that English speakers get to enjoy a treasure trove of 500 years of stories that are basically riffs on his works and a vast collection of day to day sayings and words which color our everyday language. We actually get to live intimately with his works even if we can barely understand the originals.
  - bhaak 12y ago
    So do you when you speak German and French. Shakespeare isn't just an English classic, he is an European and a World's classic and in Europe, many countries have lived intimately with him for centuries as well. Granted, not all went as far as the Germans and Klingons, but thinking that only the English people have a long lived history with Shakespeare is false. I looked at what Wikipedia had about Shakespeare's influence in non-English countries and was surprised that this is hardly mentioned. Is this really an obscure fact that for example in the 19th century Shakespeare was widely more popular in Germany than in Britain or that Goethe and Voltaire were avid admirers of Shakespeare?

mvgoogler 12y ago

Agreed. The article exhibited it's own bit of genius. As I was reading I kept waiting for the big "..BUT.." that would talk about how Shakespeare wasn't a genius. It wasn't until I got to the section on garden path sentences that the purpose of the title clicked. The author of the article was employing one of the very "tricks" he talks about in the article!