Shakespeare in China

Ronald Kimmons has been interested in the beauty of language and poetry since his childhood. During his freshman year at BYU, he declared a major in English to further his desire to work with literary texts. But a mission call to Taiwan and a chance meeting with one of Taiwan’s most famous poets and essayists, Yu Kwang-chung, led to an academic course correction when he returned to Provo. Ron kept his English major but added a second major in Chinese. He also pursued his desire to translate, first by doing technical translation and interpretation, and then by trying his hand at translating several of Yu’s poems.

Last year, Ron shared his interest in translation with one of his instructors, Steven Riep of the Asian and Near Eastern Languages Department. As it happened, one of Riep’s colleagues, an authority on the translation of Shakespeare in China and Taiwan, had invited Riep to translate a Chinese adaptation of Hamlet by Chinese playwright and director Lin Zhaohua. Noting Kimmons’s interest in translation and his background in both English and Chinese literature and language, Riep invited him to partner on the translation of Hamlet. Kimmons’s and Riep’s rendering of Lin’s Hamlet adaptation will be the first time the Chinese play has been translated into English.

Working from a video recording of the Chinese performance, Kimmons and one of Riep’s research assistants, Fan Feng, prepared a Chinese transcript of the performance. From this transcript Kimmons then completed a draft of the English translation and added stage directions. Riep is reviewing Kimmons’s draft and providing feedback for refining the translation to match both the spirit and language of the original Chinese version. Together they are dividing the play into scenes and polishing their translation to make sure it is internally
consistent and flows well.

While the play retains much of the language and many of the themes of Shakespeare’s play, it also reflects a Chinese sensibility in the way the material is presented. For example, in Lin’s adaptation, Hamlet’s concern over his mother Gertrude’s marriage to his uncle Claudius is criticized in uniquely Chinese terms. Hamlet’s devotion to his deceased father is here ascribed to filial piety, the Confucian principle that a son owes devotion, deference, and allegiance to his father in life and death. Because Confucian views on chastity forbade women to remarry under any circumstances, Gertrude’s marriage is seen as particularly distasteful, as reflected in Lin’s original dialog and also in Kimmons’s and Riep’s English rendering.

In the fall of 2009, Kimmons prepared his senior thesis on the challenges of translation as they applied to his work on the Hamlet project. The thesis explores the need to balance clarity, accuracy, and the artful use of language in preparing a translation.

The finished project will be included in a volume of Chinese adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays to be published by Eureka Press in the United Kingdom.