Gotowa bibliografia na temat „German drama – 19th century – Translations into English”

This article examines the English repertoire of the German theatre in Ljubljana in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy and its reception by the local German newspaper, Laibacher Zeitung. It considers only drama, not operas or operettas. The English plays were, of course, performed in translation, in German, as opposed to the plays performed in the Slovenian language from the late 18th century on and especially within the Dramatično društvo circle established in 1867. The choice of performances gives interesting insights into the late 19th century attitude towards English culture as well as the self-image fostered by the German stage in Ljubljana.

“The oldest hath borne most”: The old age of Shakespeare’s King Lear in Czech translationsfrom the 18th and 19th centuriesA number of critics have noted the importance of the motif of old age in Shakespeare’s King Lear, chiefly the old age of the play’s eponymous character. Indeed, the King’s age serves in the play as a powerful dramaturgical device, a kind of prism through which the audience sees not just Lear’s character, but also other characters’ deeds and most of the play’s action. When watching the play, the audience is constantly reminded of Lear’s age, both directly, through Lear’s or other characters’ speeches, and indirectly, through a number of physical details. It could be said that the King’s age is employed at all possible levels of the drama, becoming the main impulse for the development of the plot.King Lear is one of the first plays by Shakespeare to be translated into Czech, and various dramatists attempted to localise it for Czech audiences. The present paper examines three early translations of King Lear into Czech: by Prokop Šedivý 1792, Josef Kajetán Tyl 1835, and Ladislav Čelakovský 1856. While the last mentioned version is the first “true” translation of the play into Czech, using Shakespeare’s unabridged English original as the source text, the two earlier translations are rather loose adaptations, almost certainly based on various German stage versions, altering significant portions of the story and cutting entire scenes and speeches or even characters.Surprisingly, even the earliest Czech translators seem to have been aware of the dramaturgi­cal importance of the dominant motif in the original play and, in spite of the sometimes drastic alterations, tried to preserve it in their versions as much as possible. Nevertheless, in various passages from the Czech versions, we may observe that even with this knowledge, the translators at times struggled with a number of nuances in the original, not always being able to preserve the complexity of a character or dramatic situation. This was only achieved by Ladislav Čelakovský, whose mid-19th century text was the first to represent Shakespeare’s King Lear, both in terms of form and, of course, in terms of the motifs of the original.„Najstarszy wycierpiał najwięcej”: starość króla Leara Szekspira w czeskich przekładach okresu odrodzenia narodowegoWielu badaczy zwróciło uwagę na znaczenie motywu starości w Królu Learze Szekspira, zwłaszcza na starość tytułowego protagonisty dramatu. Królewska starość służy w istocie jako mocny środek dramaturgiczny owego utworu, w pewnym sensie jest to pryzmat, przez który widzowie spoglądają nie tylko na samego Leara, ale także na czyny pozostałych postaci i akcję sztuki w ogóle. Podczas przedstawienia uwagę widzów nieustannie przyciąga wiek Leara, bądź bezpośrednio, a więc w samych wypowiedziach Leara lub innych postaci, bądź za pomocą szeregu detali fizycznych. Można stwierdzić, że wiek króla pojawia się we wszystkich warstwach dramatu i staje się głównym impulsem rozwoju akcji.Król Lear jest jednym z pierwszych dramatów Szekspira, które zostały przełożone na język czeski, a w sumie istnieje około piętnastu czeskich przekładów tego tekstu. Niniejszy esej bada trzy wczesne przekłady wersję Prokopa Šedivego 1792, Josefa Kajetána Tyla 1835 i Ladisla­va Čelakovskiego 1856. Podczas gdy ostatni wymieniony tekst jest pierwszym „prawdziwym” przekładem Króla Leara na czeski, wychodzącym z nieskróconego angielskiego oryginału jako wzorca, pozostałe dwa przekłady są raczej wolniejszymi adaptacjami, prawie na pewno opartymi na różnych niemieckich adaptacjach pierwotnej sztuki, w których zmienione są znaczące elementy historii, a czasem całe dialogi i sceny a nawet postaci.Jednak nawet pierwsi czescy tłumacze mimo wszystko świadomi byli dramaturgicznego znaczenia dominującego motywu starości w pierwotnym tekście i nawet w pewnych drastycznych skrótach tekstu starali się go w jak największym stopniu zachować. Z konfrontacji różnych fragmentów badanych wersji czeskich wypływa, że i w tym wypadku tłumacze często walczyli z różnymi niuansami oryginału i nie zawsze potrafili zachować daną postać czy sytuację w całej jej rozpiętości. Osiągnął to dopiero Ladislav Čelakovski. Jego przekład zpołowy XIX wieku był pierwszym, w którym udało się w pełni wyrazić tekst Szekspirowskiego Króla Leara od strony formalnej, oraz zachować sens poszczególnych motywów oryginału.

It is a well-known fact that the Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia and Siberia possess a rich heritage of oral epic poetry. Much has been written down, and in some areas the oral tradition of epic poetry is still flourishing today. While a few of the early texts, written down in the 19th century, are available in older German translations (A. Schiefner, W. Radloff), the majority of these epics can only be accessed either in their original language or (in some cases) in Russian translation. Translations of Turkic oral epics into European languages such as English, German or French are urgently needed in order to familiarize epic scholars outside the Turkic- or Russianspeaking world with this important corpus. Translating Turkic epics into European languages poses, however, a number of problems. In the following some of these problems are identified and discussed with reference to my translations of the Uzbek oral epics Ravshan and Alpamysh into German, the Karakalpak epic Edige and the Kirghiz epic Manas both into English. ´The latter translation is still ongoing; two volumes have so far been completed. The translation problems concern basic methodological questions such as the choice between a literary and a literal translation and the strategies available to overcome differences in linguistic structure between the source languages and the target languages. An important element in translation is not only the linguistic, but also the stylistic level of the text. In addition, a translation has to pay attention to paralinguistic aspects (e.g., music and performance modes) and to the cultural world of the original. The translator is not only a mediator between languages, but also between cultures.

Latvian national identity (language-centred), the literary polysystem and even the written language itself are the result of translation. Translations have always constituted the majority of literary and other texts. Translation played an exceptionally important, even pivotal, role in the beginnings of written Latvian in the 16th-18th centuries. Translators (native German speakers) formed, codified and modified written Latvian. Religious translations applied a rigorous fidelity approach. Secular translations were localizations of easy reading, sentimental German stories. Parallel to the rise of native literature in the 19th century, there occurred a gradual transition from adaptation /domestication to foreignization and fidelity as the main approach. More ambitious translations of Western classics started, usually done by distinguished Latvian writers. Next to the traditional faithfulness, some translations were freely shortened and otherwise modified. After acquiring independence at the beginning of the 20th century the volume of translation grew and included also literature from more exotic sources. The Soviet period brought a re-orientation: most translations were done from Russian, fiction was translated from the original languages or via Russian as well. Regaining of independence brought about an enormous growth in the translated information amount; within 5 years English became the dominant source language. Translation again (like in the early stage of Latvian) became the main vehicle of language development. In a somewhat paradoxical way translators have formed, altered and inspired a strong language-bound national identity. Their voice, though not always heard and recognized, has been central in the Latvian narrative polyphony.

Though Sir William Jones's captivating English version of a ghazal of Hafez, first published in 1771, inspired many translators in the final years of the 18th and early years of the 19th century, none succeeded in producing a living, breathing body of Hafez's work in English. Goethe, of course, lavished his admiration on Hafez in the West–Östliche Divan, and Ralph Waldo Emerson echoed and amplified this praise in America with a number of English translations of von Hammer-Purgstall's German renditions of Hafez. All this attention from trend- and style-setting literary figures did Hafez the favor of creating an interest in and a ready market for translations of his poems. At the same time, however, it burdened him with a literary reputation the expectations of which were difficult for translators to meet. Once FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, perhaps the most successful English verse translation in history, demonstrated the possibility of creating a native English idiom for a poet such as Khayyam, readers' expectations for Hafez only intensified. Though a score of translators have tried their hand at Hafez, none has managed anything more than a satisfactory result.

In a diachronic perspective from the 16th century to the present, this article inves­ tigates translated interlinguistic agreement and difference in the use of the temporally marked Slovenian prepositional phrases that appeared in the semantic group of verba dicendi in the first two books of the Old Testament and the New Testament of the old­ est Slovenian translation of the Bible, from 1584, and that were replaced in the mod­ em literary language in the 19th century by the introduction of prepositionless or other prepositional patterns. A comparison is made on the basis of Internet publications of parallel sections of six foreign language translations (Latin, German, two English [17th century and modem], French and Russian), and the extent to which these preposition­ al phrases are covered by older or modem literary Slovenian syntactic patterns is deter­ mined .

The article deals with the oldest music-related documents from the Morawetz collection (most of which come from the collection of Friedrich Donebauer), which the Czech Museum of Music obtained in 2003 and 2008. Specifically, this involves letters of musicians from Bohemia who were working in German-speaking countries around the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th (Jiří Antonín Benda, Leopold Koželuh, Antonín František Bečvařovský, and Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek). The study presents a critical edition of six letters and one receipt and their translations into Czech and English. On that basis, there is an examination of context within the framework of the lives of the individual musicians and of the period musical milieu. The letters document cultural exchange, tastes, and the stylistic orientation of the period as well as of the music business in Europe at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. Voříšek’s letter documents the period reception of a Mass by Jan Václav Tomášek in Vienna in 1815.

The continental expansion of the Elizabethan-Jacobean Theatre and the transnational influence of its drama attracted historical interest in the long 19th century, but the topic was then largely neglected for several decades in German-speaking areas for some decades, as a consequence of the war. The standstill in research, visible in the mass of out-dated standard literature, established the creation of numerous legends. A prime example which is examined here in close detail is the persistence of fictional biographical narratives relating to the English theatre director John Spencer. The trigger was a false Brandenburgish prince. An extensive concealed and interlinked control mechanism steered the “choreography of traveling people”* in the opening up of the continental theatre business: clientelism.

In the first half of the 19th century, the international interdenominational organization the Religious Tract Society in London provided financial support for the publication of religious books in the native languages of the people of the Kingdom of Prussia: German, Polish, Sorbian and Lithuanian. The branch of the Prussian Religious Tract Society established in Klaipėda, an important trading city of the time, took care of the translations of short books into Lithuanian along with their publishing and distribution. Wilhelm Andreas Rhenius (1753–1833), the inspector of the Bachman’s estate, the follower of the Moravian movement, who managed compilations, worked for the Klaipėda branch. This article aims to reveal the ties of Rhenius, the member of the Society, with the international organization in London, and his participation in educational activities in Klaipėda. Lithuanian translations of religious English texts patronized by the Religious Tract Society in London are also discussed, including an anonymous small volume book, The Warning Voice (Graudénimo Balsas, 1818), published in Tilsit, the Prussian Lithuania, in 4,000 copies, and the collected sermons Sixteen Short Sermons (Sźeßolika trumpi Kalbesei, 1820, Tilsit) by the British author Thomas Tregenna Biddulph (1763–1838), the minister of St. James’s Church in Bristol.

Among Slovene scholars in English and German studies Jakob Kelemina (19 July 1882- 14 May 1957) has a very important place. Janez Stanonik justly places him among the founding fathers of the University of Ljubljana (Stanonik 1966: 332). From 1920 Kelemina was professor of Germanic philology and between 1920 and 1957 he was also the Chair of the Deparment ofGermanic Languages and Literatures at the Faculty of Arts of this university. The major part of Kelemina's research was devoted to German and Austrian literatures, German philology, German-Slovene cultural relations, and literary theory; his work in these fields has already been discussed by severa! Slovene scholars. However, in the first two decades of the twentieth century Kelemina also wrote severa! book reviews of Slovene and Croatian translations of Shakespeare's plays as well as three introductory essays to Slovene translations of Shakespeare's plays. They are considered as the first serious studies on Shakespeare in Slovenia (Moravec 1974: 437), and have not been analysed yet. Therefore this topic presents the core of my study, together with an evaluation of Kelemina's contribution to Slovene translations of Shakespeare's plays done by Oton Župančič (1878-1949) during the first half of the twentieth century. Župančič's translations became the criterion for all further translations of Shakespeare's dramatic works in Slovene. Župančič is stili one of our most important poets and translators of this time and Kelemina's advice and criticism undoubtedly also helped him to achieve such a high standard in his translations. In the central part of my study I also include some new material (e.g. Kelernina's letters), which is relevant for our understanding of his co-operation with Oton Župančič and other Slovene authors and critics. In order to put Kelemina's work into a historical perspective I present at the beginning of my study a brief survey of the development of drama and theatre in Slovenia, particularly as regards pro­ ductions and early attempts oftranslating Shakespeare's plays into Slovene. This information, which may be particularly relevant for foreign readers, ends with the year 1922, when Kelemina's last writ­ing about Shakespeare's plays appeared. In 2007 we commemorate the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Kelemina's birth and fiftieth anniversary of his death, which is another reason why his work on Shakespeare should be finally researched and evaluated. This study should also help expand our knowledge about Jakob Kelemina's contribution regarding translations of Shakespeare's plays for the Slovene theatre and for Slovene culture generally.