The metre Shakespeare employed is common in literature and his metaphors and similes recognisable by most people, but as many modern English readers can struggle with his 16th century mannerisms this possibly limits translation. Or contrarily makes adaptation easier. I quickly translated the beginning of Henry 5th into French. A doddle!

Translating literature, certainly, pauses challenges. If your question is about translating to Arabic, then, there had been excellent translations of Shakespearean tragedies. They are far easier than his sonnets. In plays, Shakespeare used Blank Verse which is unrhymed iambic Penta meter. The challenge in sonnets as it is in poetry in general, rhythm and rhyme are the main difficulty. That does not lessen the excellent works of translators like Jebra Ibrahim Jabra, Mohammed Annani and others. One outstanding translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is translated the excellent Moroccan poet-translator Fatinah Al-Na'ib who managed to come up with a translation of the most famous sonnet with rhythm and rhyme.

Thank you for your very interesting feedback. The topic is thorny, I have come across versions of Shakespeare in Tunisian dialect and I found that interesting. I am happy to share this article entitled "Is Shakespeare “Translatable”?Cinematic Adaptations" by King-Kok Cheung, University of California, Los Angeles

Ahmed T. Hussein I am grateful to you. I have read some very good translations of Shakespeare in Arabic. I am actually working on Mohamed Driss's adaptation of Othello.

Stanley Wilkin Your contributions are always very insightful and inspiring. Thank you.

Lamis Ismail Omar

I came across this Doctoral dissertation entitled Domestication Vs. Foreignization in Translating Shakespearean Drama by S. Tulba. Just sharing it with you.

In a sense that any translation is an interpretation Shakespeare, like any other author, is translatable, but no interpretation can claim to be unique in its truth. The best way to appreciate its solvency is to prove how adequate (this is the right word for translation) it is.

If the aim is absolute authenticity, nothing is translatable. But we all know there are better and worse translations, depending on their different aims. Some try for literal accuracy, others set out to capture the poetic effects and atmosphere of a work. It took a poet of the calibre of Seamus Heaney to render Beowulf in modern English, and while not the most accurate translation, it is wonderful poetry. Having studied BB Mdledle's Xhosa translation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the actor John Kani said that when he read the English version (i.e. Shakespeare's) he felt it failed to capture the beauty of Mdledle's writing! Translations should be regarded as works of art in their own right.

I definitely agree Pr. Wright. There is something transmigratory in the act of translation. Plus, translation is an art with an aim.

Laurence Wright

Igor Shaytanov Thank you for your input and I can not say more indeed.

Physically yes, but culturally? No. I don't think any great work can be translated and fully convey the nuances of the original language.

In case there is anyone else out there who is translating texts from metaphysics, philosophy, as well as psychoanalysis - from German into English -, who would be interested in some concrete problems of translation, from a 'hands-on' point of view, I'd be much obliged.

My answer would begin with a question: why did you added quotation marks to the word translation? it looks like a kind of implied answer (?).

Dear Christine. Between inverted commas because I borrowed it from an article. The body of my discussion includes my statement of the purpose with the phrase "I have my own idea". Best and welcome.

Thank you for your answer. OK. I thought that it was because the question of translatability is one of the more frequent discussion we can meet in attempts to define translation. Personally I agree with Laurence Wright's answer.

Welcome and thanks for insightful contribution.

Shakespeare peut être traduit, dans la mesure où la traduction est une équivalence approximative.

Yes. If works like The Bible and The Qur'an can be translated, then Shakespeare's works can not be an exception.

Maria Luísa De Castro Soares ,

Maria Luísa De Castro Soares added a reply to this ResearchGate discussion question thread 4 days ago on March 11, 2021, as follows:

" Shakespeare peut être traduit, dans la mesure où la traduction est une équivalence approximative. "

Translation from French into English, as follows: "Shakespeare can be translated, to the extent that translation is an approximate equivalency."

Best regards.

Definitely, yes, when there is a talented competent translator.

Like so many questions on RG, this one is formulated as if the binary yes/no logic is the only appropriate one. Having had Shakespeare at school, in English, I couldn't imagine him to be half-way as impressive in some other language. I was wrong. I've seen/heard German productions - Hamlet, especially - that just blow you away. I've written about this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338107175_Adornos_Hamlet

It is always difficult to translate a literary text from any language into any language, i.e. to reproduce faithfully, including all the nuances, everything that is meant by the author. This is not unique to Shakespeare and not to English. A text as a rule, especially a literary one, contains more than the strict meaning of the words. It contains explicit and implicit, conscious and unconscious fragments of cultural references that are hardly possible to transfer when the text is translated.This is why a humorous line may disappear in translation, and this is just one example.

The composition of a language reflects the culture behind it. It is no coincidence that some words in one language do not have their equivalent in another. It is also no coincidence that word-by-word translation does not always convey the intended meaning.

And then there are also "translations" of Shakespeare that are fictional qua translation (hence the scare quotes):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Klingon_Hamlet

Another problem (call it the Pierre Menard Problem): What if we had definitive proof that one of Shakespeare's plays was actually written by another author who also had a sizeable oeuvre? Would that not have consequences for interpretation and translation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote

Any text can be translated. Shakespeare's plays are not exceptions. Either through a domesticating perspective, a foreignizing practice or hybrid project, Shakespeare's plays and poems have been translatet all over the world into many different languages and processes. I myself have created concept for each of these three way of translating texts, shakespeare's as well: Paralatio, Similatio, Translatio.

thanks for your absolute excellent question

1/seeShakespeare's blank verse is not an easy task to be rendered into Arabic language by lay translator

2/rendering of blank verse الشعر المرسل needs a translator to be a poet himself/herself,

3/the blank verse needs to be explained in footnotes

4:translators of Sharspeare’work should employ some translations strategies such as couplet,transposition and other similar things for better comprehension

Shakespeare's poetic and dramatic works can be translated from the Renaissance English in which they are written, but a significant loss would occur with respect to both linguistic features and aesthetics.

To translate Shakespeare would require an excellent writing ability no less exceptional than his own.

The meaning is lot in translation

if you find the spring no need to drink from the jar

Just a helpful reading maybe: Ilha do Deserto, revista da Universidade de Florianópolis, 36, jan.-jun. 1999 (in English)

A lot depends on what is to count as translation. I favor a very broad view. If oratorial or theatrical performance is not at issue, if what's important is comprehension and appreciation, and if circumlocution and explanatory footnotes are allowed to count as part of a translation, then almost full understanding is in principle achievable, provided there has not been a significant disconnection from the language as there is in the case of some dead ancient languages. One can appreciate a lot about the original just by having allusions, deviations, etc. explained in footnotes even if they can't be simply and directly captured.

Puns for example in Shakespeare’s work cannot be rendered by the lay translator because of cultural divergences and gaps hence the translator of this kind of work should be bicultural . Paying attention in translation we translated culture not languages and languages are the tools to convey culture and culture is a fragile phenomenon exists only in our minds

it is of course , preferable that the poetic tropes of Shakespeare in general and blank verse should be rendered by a poet who not only masters both languages but also maters two literatures of both English and Arabic but is also acquainted with the social , cultural and historical background of both languages of English and Arabic.

bearing in minds the fact that most of the Shakespearean sonnets rendered into Arabic these days are prose translation in which the meaning is lost.

Yes, why not!