Perng Hamlet: One Of The Prince Hamlet

Hamlet is the longest play and also one of the four famous tragedies written by Shakespeare. It is a story about the Prince Hamlet’s revenge. It is well-known that Shakespeare wrote his works with his remarkable language. The sentences are sometimes separated into two lines and some of them are placed on the right hand side. Besides, some expressions are quite abstract and difficult to understand. The following parts will discuss about the strategies applied in the three versions translated by Perng Ching-his, Lin Tongji and Zhu Shenghao respectively.

First of all, Lin added ‘王后的內房’ as a title and Zhu added ‘王后寢宮’ as a title, but Perng just followed the original text and wrote ‘第四景’. Adding a title gives readers an impression that it is similar

In the original text, it is an expressive text, the language is aesthetic and it is form-focused. Shakespeare did not write in a normal way, instead, he sometimes cut the sentences in two lines, just like poetry. Also, the dialogues are not aligned to left. That is the reason why his works are remarkable considering the form of the play.

In the translation versions, Perng and Lin followed the form of the play whether Zhu translated it just like reading a novel, one sentence is following another sentence. The original form of the play is cutting sentences into different lines so it will not be to long and it is more reader-friendly. Zhu’s approach makes the dialogues become paragraphes. When Hamlet was blaming on his mother, his dialogues are compiled into paragraphes and it seems to be very long. It is something about the readability. As it is a play, the dialogues should be short and easy to read. Shakespeare’s approach is to shorten the word count of each line so readers can go through the play quickly. If it is written in the way just like novel, readers may find it long and they are not willing to read the long

Comparing these three translations, ‘冒犯’ and ‘開罪’ shows the status of the King but ‘得罪’ is rather common in daily usage. ‘冒犯’ is still common in the modern society but people would not use ‘開罪’ nowadays. ‘得罪’ can be used while you are talking to a person that has the same status as yours. As the Queen had a higher status and she was blaming on Hamlet, ‘得罪’ is rather plain and cannot show how serious the situation was. Therefore, in oder to be more reader-friendly and suits the register, ‘冒犯’ is the most appropriate