If This Be Magic - by Daniel Hahn (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world's most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience.

"For those who care deeply about language, and about Shakespeare. . . this will be a treasured book." --James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare

"A deliciously fresh reading of Shakespeare. . . . It is a stirring celebration of the plurality of languages." --The Wall Street Journal

Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless work of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways the great playwright is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself--in Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, and more than a hundred other languages.

From word order, puns, and punctuation to metaphor, accent, and song, Shake­speare's variety of genius presents an endless set of conundrums, among them: How does Romeo and Juliet's love story unfold if their dialogue cannot form a son­net (nor rhyme), as it does in the original? How can you form wordplay around the letter "I" and its sound if its meanings are not shared in other languages? These are just two out of millions of issues facing translators tasked with bringing Shakespeare to non-English languages, non-Shakespearean eras and cultures. To attempt such a feat, they must cut and add beats, maintain rhymes, adapt names and locations, and preserve meaning while not unilaterally prioritizing it, all while knowing that for each word, line, or scene they construct, another option is yet to be discovered.

Traveling the world, Hahn speaks to writers and actors engaging with Shake­speare's work, sharing stories of his own. Hahn, whose great-grandfather produced one of Brazil's earliest Shakespeare translations, emerges as a wise and enthusiastic guide, teacher, and sleuth. If This Be Magic does not require knowledge of any other language or more than a passing acquaintance with the Bard's canon, but it draws out fascinating insights on both. As nerdy as they come (there is a chapter on commas), supremely readable, and funny throughout, this is a book for everyone and a fitting tribute to the Globe's Bard.

Review Quotes

"This is one of the best books I've ever read about translation, and also one of the best books I've read about Shakespeare. Hahn celebrates and expounds the diverse choices of Shakespearean translators into a vast array of the world's languages, illuminating the almost magical alchemy required to translate 'gold into gold.' This very funny, wise, playfully erudite book will thrill and enlighten anyone with even a passing interest in language and literary style."
--Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad

"Hahn delights in how translators have conveyed the intricacies and nuances--and hopefully even jokes--through languages with different sounds, rhythms and word order. . . . A kind of master class in translation, a chronicle of the author's healthy obsession, and a great way to catch up with Shakespeare's work. We should know how people experience Shakespeare worldwide if, as Harold Bloom taught us, his work was 'the invention of the human.' Hahn's tour makes a lovely case for that."
--The New York Times

"Hahn provides a series of illuminating glimpses into the problem-solving that is integral to the craft, while exulting in Shakespeare's capacity to resonate with audiences encountering him in Bengali, Chinese, German or Kurdish. . . . A deliciously fresh reading of Shakespeare. . . . It is a stirring celebration of the plurality of languages."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Are Shakespeare's jokes actually funny in French? Why might Hamlet be even longer in Japanese? You will find the answers to these and many more fascinating questions in If This be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Daniel Hahn is a remarkable translator, writer, and editor, a dedicated supporter of literature and knowledge, and he has written this gem of a book which is clearly the outcome of decades of hard work and dedication, and passion, really, for the art of storytelling."
--Elif Shafak, author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

"For those who care deeply about language, and about Shakespeare, and about the courage of those who try to render him in a foreign tongue, this will be a treasured book."
--James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

"This lovely, expansive book illustrates Shakespeare's global reach in languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish--but it also reveals how much can be found, rather than lost, in translation--poetically, culturally, and imaginatively."
--Emma Smith, author of This Is Shakespeare

"I've just finished, and loved, If This Be Magic. It's a fresh and vivid way to think about Shakespeare; it's so witty and knowledgeable, so alive to the ways in which language resists reduction. It feels like attending the most fascinating lecture of the term, like learning made swift and sharp and generous."
--Katherine Rundell, New York Times bestselling author of Impossible Creatures

"In If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, Daniel Hahn considers all that goes into rendering the Bard across languages and cultures. The prospect of Hahn writing on either of these topics would be enticing enough; the combination [is] such stuff as dreams are made on."
--Words Without Borders

"In If This Be Magic, his learned but cheerful and chatty book, Hahn makes an enthusiastic case for translators as Shakespeare's natural heirs, forced by the scale of the challenge into matching his knack for innovation and irreverence. . . . No challenge in Shakespeare's text is so tricky that he can't find a translator who has come up with a solution worth celebrating. . . . This is a book that forces any reader to think deeply about the building blocks of Shakespeare's language."
--Financial Times

"If This Be Magic is Hahn's paean to the great translators of Shakespeare, arguably the most challenging writer in English to translate. . . . Hahn's skilled and compelling chapters offer much to savour."
--Times Literary Supplement

"Hahn is exceptionally associative and alive to the quirks of his subject. His book is a bran tub of interesting topics: the risks of anachronism in translating old texts; how to deal with malapropisms and puns; the power of monosyllables vs their scarcity in Romance languages. . . . [If This Be Magic] deserves to find shelf space well beyond those places where translation is studied."
--Literary Review

About the Author

DANIEL HAHN is an award-winning translator, writer and editor. His translations include a wide range of fiction and non-fiction from Europe, Africa and the Americas, as well as many children's books and plays. He is the author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary, the editor of the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, and co-editor with Padma Viswanathan of the forthcoming Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories. He is currently translating an Angolan novel.