When you think of the great works of French dramatic literature (and, really, who doesn’t spend lots of time thinking about it?), the name Moliere is most likely to appear. If you are really a fan, perhaps Beaumarchais or Marivaux might pop up. The one name you might not expect to think of is Shakespeare. Yet, as history has proven, Shakespeare has been a force in many languages, not just English. Shakespeare’s works have been translated and translated, but how are they interpreted in these new tongues? When we see Moliere plays in English, numerous compromises have been made to approximate both the content and the verse of the French versions. When Shakespeare is performed in other languages, his plays undergo similar transformations.

A new literary project is devoted to examining those transformations more closely, specifically those by noted French writers. While all translations might be worthy of study, interpretations of Shakespeare by luminaries such as Dumas, pere, and Sand naturally attract greater interest. As a result, these works have been re-translated into English in an attempt to better understand how these works have been translated (and in some cases, adapted).

One might look at this endeavor and ask, “Well, what’s the point?” A translation of a translation is doubly diluted, so what will we get from it other than the fact that it will be significantly different from Shakespeare’s original? I certainly wouldn’t argue the merits of the play’s theatrical viability as the results following its multiple translations are likely to be extremely variable. Ultimately, what these translations will tell us is what aspects of Shakespeare are most important in another language. In other words, is what makes a Shakespeare play important in English the same thing that makes it important when filtered through another language and culture?