The Transparent Style: Or, Is It Time to Translate Shakespeare by Robert I. Katz

The Transparent Style: Or, Is It Time to Translate Shakespeare by Robert I. Katz

Years ago, I read an excellent book by John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist. Gardner was the author of Grendel, Nickel Mountain, Jason and Medea, and many other highly regarded works. He was also a literary critic and a university professor. Gardner advanced the thesis that the purpose of the words is to convey the sights, the sounds, the action and the plot directly into the reader’s awareness…but that the words themselves should be unobtrusive. They should in no way interfere with the immersive, sensory experience of the story. This is generally known as the “transparent” style. This is what Samuel Johnson meant when he said, “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Nobody thinks it strange when a work written in German or French or Ancient Greek is translated into English, and there is a generally accepted awareness that no translation is perfect. There are always nuances and subtleties beyond even the greatest translator, but nobody objects to the attempt, and an excellent translation certainly (probably?) conveys most of what was there in the original language. But what about translating English into English? There is also a general awareness that Old English, a language closer to Old Norse and German than modern English, can no longer be understood unless you are an academic in the field. Many people have read Beowulf. It’s a great story, but only scholars read it in Old English.

We often make the attempt to read Middle English, in college, at least. I read some Chaucer in High School. It was a translation into Modern English but in college, I read Chaucer in the original. I no longer remember how much of it I understood. I suspect that the professor spent a lot of time simply translating. What, after all, is the modern reader to make of this?

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the Yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, I can get glimmers of the meaning, but glimmers only. It is possible that I don’t understand it at all.

And what then, of Shakespeare, or Christopher Marlowe, or Thomas Kidd? It’s a contentious subject. When Shakespeare was writing his plays, most of his audience was not well educated. Many could not read but they all understood the language as it was spoken at the time. I recently read an article outlining the pros and cons of translating Shakespeare. There were a lot more cons than pros, most arguing that Shakespeare’s language was so glorious and distinct that it must be preserved verbatim. Well, I suppose you could say the same thing about the language of Sophocles or Aeschylus or Homer but if you want to

understand it, you need a translation. Shakespeare, simply put, can no longer be understood, not easily at least, and not without tremendous thought and concentration, which certainly detracts from the immersive experience that the transparent style is supposed to provide. Not only are the meaning of many words that Shakespeare used obscure, but even worse, many words whose meaning does seem clear, had a different meaning in Shakespeare’s day. Most of us could figure out that “multitudinous seas incarnadine” means “rough, red seas,” but how many would recognize, “hour by hour, we rot and rot” as a commentary/ joke on venereal disease?

Consider, for instance, these lines from Hamlet: If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tonge:

I can figure it out, but I don’t think that I should have to. I think, instead, that the need to ‘figure it out’ detracts from the experience the words are intended to convey. No, sadly, I stand with those who say that it is time to translate Shakespeare. It’s too bad, but if we want the works of Shakespeare to once again become what they were meant to be— popular entertainment for the enjoyment of us all, to live beyond the classroom and the highly devoted elite, then I think it is necessary.

Robert I. Katz, MD, was Professor and Vice-Chairman for Administration, Department of Anesthesiology, Stony Brook University, and Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Florida. He is the author of the Kurtz and Barent mystery series, including Surgical Risk, The Anatomy Lesson, Seizure, The Chairmen, Brighton Beach and If a Tree Falls. He is also the author of eight science fiction novels: Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future, The Cannibal’s Feast, and the five books in The Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind (The Game Players of Meridien, The City of Ashes, The Empire of Dust, The Empire of Ruin and The Well of Time). His most recent novel is The Towering Flame, the first book in a new science fiction series, the Survivors.