The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SUMMER 2025 The Linguist 19 FEATURES CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS A Kunqu opera celebrating playwrights Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, who both died in 1616 state of Denmark" was adapted by Jiao Juyin in 2016 as 天下大乱, 礼崩乐坏 ('all-under- heaven is in chaos, rituals and music are in ruins') under the late Qing Dynasty. This reflects Chinese concepts of disorder and moral decay, ensuring the line's impact is preserved while its cultural frame is shifted. 8 These adaptations illustrate the translator's role not just as a linguistic intermediary but as a cultural bridge, reshaping Shakespeare's works to speak meaningfully to a different audience. This blending of Eastern and Western elements allows audiences to connect with the stories on multiple levels, highlighting universal themes while celebrating cultural distinctiveness. To be or not to be: differing approaches Translators have developed creative strategies to address linguistic and cultural challenges. Translations of Hamlet's infamous worm-eating conversation by Zhu Shenghao 9 and Gu Zhengkun 10 provide a fascinating comparison. Both translators engage with food-related imagery to convey the tone and meaning, but their stylistic choices highlight different aspects of Shakespeare's universality and cultural specificity. Zhu leans heavily into formal and poetic language. He renders "Your worm is your only emperor for diet" as 蛆虫是全世界最大的 饕餮家 ('Worms are the world's greatest gluttons'), emphasising the worms' unbridled consumption and symbolic role as equalisers in death. His use of 饕餮家 ('gourmets' or 'gluttons') invokes a sense of literary gravitas, maintaining the philosophical undercurrent of the text without veering into overt social or political commentary. This approach preserves the universal message about the inevitability of death and the cyclical nature of life. In contrast, Gu adopts a more accessible and conversational style, embedding subtle political commentary into his choice of words. His translation, 蛆虫才是餐桌上的大王 ('Worms are the true kings of the dining table'), not only conveys the original's irony but also adds a layer of authority to the worms, presenting them as rulers over the ultimate feast. Gu's simpler version ensures clarity while conveying the core theme of mortality's levelling power. By adapting Shakespeare's works to fit the Chinese linguistic and cultural framework, translators and performers have demonstrated the universality of his themes across vastly different societies and historical periods. This underscores the adaptability of canonical texts, showing how literature can evolve and take on new meanings as it enters new cultural contexts. In turn, these reinterpretations enrich the global appreciation of Shakespeare, encouraging a more nuanced view of his plays, not as fixed relics of a particular time and place, but as living works that continue to inspire and challenge audiences worldwide. Notes 1 Huang, A (2009) Chinese Shakespeares: Two centuries of cultural exchange, New York: Columbia University Press, 2 2 Ji, R and Feng, W (2023) 'Shu Lin and the Earliest Image of Shakespeare in China'. In Saenger, M and Costola, S, Shakespeare in Succession: Translation and time, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 286 3 Joubin, AA (2021) Shakespeare and East Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press 4 Tian, M (2008) The Poetics of Difference and Displacement: Twentieth-century Chinese adaptations of Shakespeare, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press 5 Gu, Z (2016) The Complete Works of Shakespeare《莎士比亚全集》, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press 6 Liang, S (1994) The Complete Works of Shakespeare《梁实秋译莎士比亚全集(全40册)》, Beijing: People's Literary Publishing House 7 Li, X (2020) 'When Macbeth Meets Chinese Opera: A crossroad of humanity'. In Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, appropriation and performance, 21(36), 55-68 8 Ibid; and Zhang, Z and Robertson, CA (2023) 'Lyric Reflection: Translating the script of a kunqu Romeo and Juliet into English'. In Saenger, M and Costola, S, Shakespeare in Succession: Translation and time, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press 9 Zhu, S (1978) The Collected Works of William Shakespeare《莎士比亚全集》, Beijing: People's Literary Publishing House 10 Op. cit. Gu 2016 HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0/DEED.EN; 陈文 雪候鹰座

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