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hello Graciela

I have read your articles since a few weeks ago and I was happy to read them. From your articles, I could see you are a person who really keen on learning cultures and literature, right?
I love learning cultures and history of different countries.

Anyway, back to your article. I have watched some plays of Shakespeare. I remember once I watched "The Taming of the Shrew" when I was a little boy. (maybe 10 or 12 years old, I don’t quite remember)
Absolutely i did not understand what does it mean at that time. However , even now I watched his plays that I did not feel or get so much for them. I think those translation of plays may be lost some exact emotions or feelings. Also, the way of how actors or actresses play is a main factory of why you think the emotion would get lost or changed in translation.

Hi Graciela,
Very interesting your blog and like you I´m intrigued about how much emotion we can lose with the translation but I think that the voice expression in the case of music, plays or films can transmit all the feelings that we, humans, express despite the language.
Probably we can´t appreciate a lot reading the classical authors at school, but living, getting mature we get emotional and enjoy those readings we didn´t appreciate during our school age.
With reference to feel all the emotion of a word in different languages I dare to say that it´s not only how the word sounds but what they express and how they are expressed. The point may be in the translation or when the translator chooses the literal meaning of the word instead of the feeling or emotion the original author wants to express.
Thanks a lot for your posts and for your patience.
The best for you.
Beatriz.

Hi Graciela!
I like reading your blog and I agree with you about how much emotion is lost in translation. Like a native speaker of portuguese I can say that there are other words apart from "love" and "amor" that fell a bit different. For example, "miss" and "saudade". Mainly because "saudade" can not be translated to any language. It only exists in portuguese!

Dear Graciela,

Hi, Graciela, I'm so happy to read your post again. This time you've expressed more your feeling and thinking about Shakespeare's plays. Frankly, I'd never watched any of his plays but after your introduction of his works; I flipped my iPad screen to Youtube and searched the word "Hamlet". I watched the original Hamlet clip and another one with modern translation. Actually, I could barely understand 30 percents of Hamlet after I watched the original one but a lot more with modern translation. Surely, I won't give up to self-learn English literatures even these are hardly understand. In contrast, it's the reason to lit up my passion to learn that. Only one thing that I can tell Hamlet it's a great story but I still have to spend more time to understand the deep meaning and the culture of that.

Graciela, I'm totally agree with you about something we cannot tell the same in different languages. That's why there have so many languages in the world. People need communication, and communication interchanges our thinking and culture. For me, it also is one of the most attractive things to make friends all over the world.

Please forgive my poor expression on my wordy write-up. And thanks Graciela for leading me to learn more English eagerly and voluntarily. I look forward to reading other readers to comment Graciela's blog, too.

Blessings,
Sai-fung (Hong Kong)

i want to improve my English.is anyone here to help me?

Hello,

It is really difficult for me to write something about this subject, infact myself don't know much about Shakespeare's play. Only Romeo & Juliet I just know it through theatre, the other Hamlet I don't even know what is the story talkin about. In term of language using that lead to build emotion for all the reader, frankly speaking I think most of the people don't get that much. Due to all the play or even Hamlet has reproduced to broadcast in theatre, all the emotion express through the face of each actors alreadly. I think due to limit technology when the time of Shakespeare, language used in a play need to be selected and emphasized so that the reader can actually know which emotion the author expect to communicate.

^ ^

What a great question you made Graciela. Well, Obviously I'm not an expert but I think that every language has its own structures given by the way of thinking of the societies who speaks those languages.

I will always remember a confusing conversation that I had with my grand-mother. She was an Aymara and Quechua native speaker while I speak Spanish. That time she said me (in spanish) that during her childhood she was taught by her parents that the "future" is not in front of us but it is actually behind of us. That was the concept that her community had . At the time I totally refused to agree with her concept. But she said that we don't "see" with our eyes what the future will bring us, but we can "see" what the past brought us instead, therefore we walk backwards over the time. We "see" the things that have happened. She compared it to Michael Jackson's moon walk: it just looks like we walk forwards but in fact we walk backwards. For her, it doesn't matter the road you freely chose because the future is not totally under our control. Everything could happen and you may end in a place that you didn't ever imagined, so it was like "moon walking".

We had not the same concepts associated on the word "Future". It's a little bit confusing to explain it and I wish I could do it better.

Generally, people I know thinks about the future as it was in front of them. And I used to think like that until my grandmother decided to confuse me. Now, I don't know where the future is, nowhere maybe, but I like to think that althought I can't see it I can imagine it and work to make it happen at least even if I walk backwards like making a "moon walking".

Greetings Graciela :)

Hello Graciela,

you said you're a portuguese speaker... I'm a portuguese speaker myself so I was wondering where you are from.
About the post I've always found Shakespeare's work impossible for me to understand. I remember reading something of "midnight summer dream" and then I though to myself: "my, what is this all about?"
And ever since I've always thought it's something only academics can understand.
Maybe it's just like you said in your post. It's a work that must be acted out. Well, anyway, I'm a bit less discouraged to try again since you said even english native speakers have difficulty reading it.

Thanks for this nice post.

Regards,
Mauricio.

Hello Graciela,
Good questions.Don't want to be too much pathetic, but in the translation there is only 10% percent of the original writing and emotions,even may be less.I can say that, because of what makes book,poem or writing special....not words,that were used,not gist that was putted....It's pure energy makes book famouse and it's impossible to translate it,unfortunately or fortunately. Because we speak about art,about writing art and as each art, it become special and fascinating by energy,special,divine one which can not be reached by others in the same frequency.
Sofiko

I see your point Gabriela. I'm Brazilian and I love reading Shakespeare's sonnets in English. I've already tried to read them in Portuguese, but it's not the same thing. To my mind translations turn into another work of art that brings some resemblance of the original text, but they don't bring the same feeling.