Rocket German Community

I'm interested in something my German friend said to me. He said that he studied Shakespeare at college in Germany. I'm confused. I cannot understand how Shakespeare can be translated into German because it would lose the essence of Shakespeare's writing style.

With Shakespeare it is not just WHAT he wrote but HOW he wrote it. For example, he used a type of paragraph structure in English called "Iambic Pentameter". It is a poety style which refes to the rhythm that the words establish in each line. Surely a direct translation would lose the poetic nature of Shakespeare.

I imagine that you could study the stories told in Shakespeare's plays but surely you can only truly study Shakespeare in English. Am I wrong about this? Has anyone here studied a translated Shakespeare?

Hi there,

yes, some of the uniqueness of the writing style would certainly be lost. However the richness of the language is still there and of course the stories.

It's the same with Goethe. I had a look at some translations and they are a lot more basic. Lost in translation!

P.S.: Wenn Sie einen Schlumpf erwürgen, welche Farbe hat er dann? - blau??