Translating Shakespeare’s Works into Chinese

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has been translated from English into many languages for audience around the world. Over the years several Chinese translators have produced the translations of Shakespeare’s works. Translators who focus document translation services often translate Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets using existing translations. They translate plays such as Macbeth, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. For example, Chinese translator Fang Ping used a Chinese version of the play to complete his own translation of the play. He studied and considered the existing translations as he worked on his own version. His goal was to perform a blank verse translation, preserving the cultural essence of the original English document. He tried his best to maintain the effect of the original verse as much as possible.

He and eight other translators retranslated all of Shakespeare’s works, attempting to preserve the blank verse. According to an editor at Shanghai Translation Publishing House, the translators’ latest version was collected in ten volumes to celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birth anniversary. Other publishing companies in China have prepared the translation of Shakespeare’s works. However, most of them were modern Chinese prose. Fan and his team wanted to use tonal patterns in their translations. They admit that the Bard uses different language in different places to emphasize their differences. However, it is very challenging to replicate this distinction in the Chinese version. Some translators are motivated to maintain blank verse in their translation because they want to preserve the cultural contexts of the original plays.

Although it is usually a huge difficulty for translators to translate poetic language from English into a foreign language like Chinese, our translators always do their best to produce top-quality translations. When they are asked to translate a document from English into Chinese they consider the cultural essence and the writer’s style. They examine the words and the way they are used in the work and come up with their equivalents in the target language. Our translators have worked on various types of translation projects. They always try to deliver top-quality translations.

California Center for Translation & Interpretation emphasizes quality of translations and timely delivery. Our translators translate documents efficiently and respect deadlines. Their goal is to offer the industry’s best translations. Please contact us to learn more about our document translation services or in-person interpretations. We would be happy to speak with you about how you can have a document translated from English into Chinese. We can also translate documents from Chinese into English.

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