“Creating Value” in the Retranslation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Romanian – Case Study
The paper aims at briefly outlining some of the most important and challenging linguistic particularities in retranslating Shakespeare’s sonnets into Romanian by Constantin Manea. The method employed involves selecting various sonnets and analyzing them from a quantitative and qualitative perspective, which provides a clear and large coverage of syntactic and semantic manifestations in operating a translational transfer from English to Romanian. The main purpose of the study is therefore not to compare the collected data to older retranslations of the sonnets, but to pinpoint some of the exact linguistic nuances involved in retranslating Shakespeare into Romanian in the 21st century, which can ultimately help readers better understand Shakespeare’s originality. The overarching idea behind this paper draws on Lawrence Venuti’s three essential principles in retranslating literature, agency, intertextuality and history, which are used to determine the level of value that Constantin Manea created in retranslating Shakespeare’s sonnets into Romanian.
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