Daniel Hahn - If This Be Magic, Shakespeare in Translation

Award-winning translator, author, editor and lifelong Shakespeare enthusiast Daniel Hahn will engage and entertain us with If This Be Magic, his fascinating exploration of what it means to translate one of the greatest writers in the English language.

Hahn will be familiar to regular LitFest audiences as host of our popular Translation Duel since 2017.Why might Hamlet be even longer in Italian? How does Romeo and Juliet begin in Thai? How do you build a joke in German, or recreate a rhyme in Japanese and why are Lady Macbeths pronouns such a challenge? When every line of poetry, every pun, every rhythm and structure is transformed in fact, when every word is changed! is it still Shakespeare? And is it still any good?Drawing on examples from across Shakespeares plays and from languages across the globe, Hahn will reveal how translators choose their words, what might be lost or gained, and how meaning shifts in surprising ways.

Witty, insightful and deeply engaging, join Hahn as he revels in creativity and the power of words.Daniel Hahns translations include novels from a dozen countries, as well as short fiction, non-fiction, childrens books and plays.

He is the author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary and the editor of a new edition of The Oxford Companion to Childrens Literature.