A Quantitative Analysis of the Romanian Translations of Shakespeare’s Bawdy Puns
A Quantitative Analysis of the Romanian Translations of Shakespeare’s Bawdy Puns
Author(s): Anca Simina MartinSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Romanian Literature, Translation Studies, British Literature
Published by: Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai
Keywords: pun; quantitative research; Romanian translation; Shakespeare; wordplay;
Summary/Abstract: This article proposes a quantitative analysis of the Romanian translations of 325 ribald Shakespearean puns, which originate in 20 plays and 71 renditions, with special focus on assessing the impact of translator-subjective and objective factors on the rendition process in the pre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods. The findings invalidate several widespread beliefs: Dragoș Protopopescu’s renditions, banned by the communist regime for their ‘modernizing’ approach to the Shakespearean text, bowdlerized more bawdy puns than ‘ESPLA’, which replaced it as the Party-approved Romanian edition of the dramatist’s plays; Adolphe Stern’s translations, harshly criticized in his period, fare better in terms of ribald pun rendition than Scarlat Ghica’s and Dimitrie Ghica’s, hailed as the most successful of their time; modern translations of Shakespeare display a heterogeneous distribution of target-text puns across the surveyed rendition strategies, despite enjoying similar availability of and access to pun translation studies.
Journal: Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory
- Issue Year: 6/2020
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 64-86
- Page Count: 23
- Language: English
