The first thing I noticed is that the German translation abandoned the poetic structure of the English text, not even attempting to have a meter or a rhyme. This is most evident in Lear's opening speech, which looks organized and separated by lines on the left hand of my book, but is a big, long paragraph of text on the right.
The other thing I noticed is the many footnotes in my German text. Most of these, especially in the opening scene with Gloucester and Kent, explain the wordplay and puns which do not translate well, as anybody who has tried to tell a joke in a foreign language knows. One of my favorite German jokes makes absolutely no sense in English.
Zwei Jäger treffen sich im Wald. Beide sind tot.
The joke here is in the double meaning of 'sich treffen' which can mean either to meet or to hit (as in with ammunition). Thus the joke is that two hunters meet or hit each other in the forest. Both are dead. As I said, it doesn't work well in English, but there you go.
So these footnotes make mention of the pun and the double meaning of the English words, explaining the depth of the joke that is lost in the German text.
I am looking forward to King Lear, I have read it before, but now I can go into a more critical reading of it, comparing the German text with the original. I will also be watching the six episodes of season three of Slings and Arrows which centers around their production of King Lear.
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| King Lear, with his three daughters and his director. |
