Considerations on the Translation of Shakespeare’s Titles into Romanian
Considerations on the Translation of Shakespeare’s Titles into Romanian

Summary/Abstract: This paper has emerged out of the conviction that the rendition of titles into the TL is one of the most exciting and difficult challenges the translator has to respond to while translating a literary work. As Christiane Nord (1995) claims, if titles are recognized as textual units forming a text-type which is intended to realize several specific functions, then the translator has to reconcile the conditions in thetarget culture with the communicative intentions of the source-title sender. In order to produce a functional title, the author and the translator are expected to fulfil the same functions, but both are limited by the further constraint of the number of words and the syntactic structures they can use in keeping with the type of text the title “labels”. If the text was produced for the stage, as in the case of Shakespeare’s plays, the length of the title was additionally affected by the actual size of the playbills and posters, of the flags hoisted at the theatres and by the actual possibilities of the participants in the drum processions. Upon the examination of Shakespeare’s titles in their Romanian translation, it becomes clear that, from the first versions proposed around 1840 to the most recent, the translators have been constantly striving for coming up with the optimal solutions. Through discussing the Romanian versions, this research highlights the importance of the translator’s linguistic and cultural competence in the SL and the TL when dealing with Shakespeare’s titles that comprise the essence of his absolute mastery over both language and human nature.

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