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Nonfiction
Translating Shakespeare? This Be Madness — or Is It?
The translator Daniel Hahn makes the case that Shakespeare can be appreciated “even if we don’t hear a single one of his words.”
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Guillem Casasús & Javier Arizu, SMLXL Company
By
John McWhorter
John McWhorter is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.”
April 25, 2026,
5:00 a.m. ET
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IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
, by Daniel Hahn
A Japanese person once told me that Shakespeare productions are sellouts in Japan. To say that Japanese and English are different languages is an understatement, and given that Shakespearean English and Modern English are at least different dialects, I wondered just how translators rendered the likes of “King Lear” into Japanese. Or any other language, really. What makes the Bard’s language sublime would seem impossible to render effectively in any language but the one he wrote in.
The translator
Daniel Hahn
teaches us that this isn’t true. Shakespeare’s plays have long been translated worldwide, and Hahn has consulted countless translations both old and new. He has also interviewed what he calls his “flock” of over a dozen translators of Shakespeare’s work. His goal is to show us how diligent translation can give an audience what Shakespeare did (or at least almost) in any language. Or, as he puts it, Shakespeare “can be appreciated for all his qualities even if we don’t hear a single one of his words.”
If This Be Magic
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The upshot is often, in its way, a little sad. This translating achievement means that audiences hearing Shakespeare in other languages can understand the text more easily than Anglophones usually can. Shakespearean English is further from ours than we often know. The words are familiar, but the reason the text can sound in real time like a radio station poorly tuned in is that the meanings of so many of the words have so often changed so much. In Shakespeare’s time, “wherefore” meant “why” — Juliet wasn’t asking “where” Romeo was when he was standing right in front of her. “Wit” meant knowledge, not arch humor. “Generous” meant “noble.” “Light” could mean “sexually licentious.”
People at a Shakespeare play in other countries don’t have to deal with these false friends, because the translations are into the modern language rather than the language as it was centuries ago. As Hahn notes, “Meanings that would have been clear to a Globe audience four centuries ago, and that have faded into obscurity (because our English is no longer Shakespeare’s), are now clear again in Ukrainian or Korean.” An American linguist friend of mine once admitted to me that the first time he really understood a Shakespeare play was when he watched it in French, and in other countries Shakespeare translations have often been updated over the years as the language changes.
Alas. But Hahn devotes each of 38 of his chapters to one of the problems a translator of Shakespeare faces in lending audiences this comprehension of such subtle and complex texts. Topics include rendering wordplay, punctuation, word order, levels of formality, and how characters who speak different dialects or even different languages will talk. In a “Julius Caesar” in Latin — although frankly I’m not sure what the purpose of that translation is! — Caesar’s dying “Et tu, Brute” is in Greek, which is actually what some observers of the actual event recalled.
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