Translation Breathes New Life into Hamlet
Society | April 20, 2006, Thursday
Prof. Alexander Shurbanov, a world-renowned scholar, translator and poet, presented the sixteenth Bulgarian translation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia News Agency)
Bulgarian audience will have the opportunity to rediscover Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with the new and astoundingly original translation of the tragedy by Prof Alexander Shurbanov.
This is the sixteenth time that Shakespeare's most popular, memorable and philosophic play is moved into the Bulgarian language. The book, which saw its premiere on Wednesday evening, challenges the Bulgarian translation of such key phrases from the play as "To be or not to be, that is the question" and "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
Prof. Alexander Shurbanov, the best Bulgarian scholar in Renaissance literature and Shakespeare's works, claims that unlike the comedies, there is room for improvement in the translation of Shakespeare's tragedies.
Experts say the latest Hamlet translation boasts fidelity to the writer's work, as well as extraordinary poetic compression of the language.
"There is no other writer like Shakespeare! Three hundred and ninety years after his death he continues to live and to inspire directors to reincarnate him," says Shurbanov, who is Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Sofia.
"In this sense Shakespeare will never be a classic writer - everybody talks about him and nobody reads his works."
Shurbanov's latest book contains impressions from his one-year stay in the United States of America in 2004, where he taught courses at the University at Albany.
Professor Alexander Shurbanov is best known for his publications, among which "Renaissance Humanism and Shakespeare's Sonnets", "Between Pathos and Irony: Christopher Marlowe and the Genesis of Renaissance Drama", "Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-European Appropriation" (with B. Sokolova).
Shurbanov has translated from English into Bulgarian Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Dylan Thomas's "And Death Shall Have No Dominion: Selected Poems", John Updike's "Gertrude and Claudius".
This is the sixteenth time that Shakespeare's most popular, memorable and philosophic play is moved into the Bulgarian language. The book, which saw its premiere on Wednesday evening, challenges the Bulgarian translation of such key phrases from the play as "To be or not to be, that is the question" and "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
Prof. Alexander Shurbanov, the best Bulgarian scholar in Renaissance literature and Shakespeare's works, claims that unlike the comedies, there is room for improvement in the translation of Shakespeare's tragedies.
Experts say the latest Hamlet translation boasts fidelity to the writer's work, as well as extraordinary poetic compression of the language.
"There is no other writer like Shakespeare! Three hundred and ninety years after his death he continues to live and to inspire directors to reincarnate him," says Shurbanov, who is Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Sofia.
"In this sense Shakespeare will never be a classic writer - everybody talks about him and nobody reads his works."
Shurbanov's latest book contains impressions from his one-year stay in the United States of America in 2004, where he taught courses at the University at Albany.
Professor Alexander Shurbanov is best known for his publications, among which "Renaissance Humanism and Shakespeare's Sonnets", "Between Pathos and Irony: Christopher Marlowe and the Genesis of Renaissance Drama", "Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-European Appropriation" (with B. Sokolova).
Shurbanov has translated from English into Bulgarian Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Dylan Thomas's "And Death Shall Have No Dominion: Selected Poems", John Updike's "Gertrude and Claudius".
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