36 Comments
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...
Att vara eller icke vara, det är frågan:
Månn' ädlare att lida och fördraga
Ett bittert ödes styng och pilar eller
Att ta till vapen mot ett hav av kval
When shakespeare is translated into swedish is it translated into the modern or a more archaic version?
That depends on the translation in question. :) There are translations that are translated into more old-timey Swedish, as well as ones that use a more modern and up-to-date language.
Kind of like the English versions then. We have many plays and film versions based on modern English, but any education has to be done using original versions (well, often a shortened version as 4½ hours is a bit too much to take in) - which is not easy to follow.
This may be of interest to some : http://runeberg.org/hagberg/a/0234.html
From Carl August Hagberg's Swedish tranlation of Shakespeare: http://runeberg.org/hagberg/
Surprisingly, the phasing in that book is 'Att vara eller icke vara' - is this dialectical or archaic? Was Swedish much closer to its sibling languages just 150 years ago?
944
icke is an older spelling that is not used in real life anymore. It is used in older texts, like certainly in the original translation of this quotation: http://korta.nu/GX5
Re-recording
I do re-recordings on sentences that the voice gets wrong. Actually, this one isn't bad at all, really, so because it's a Friday evening I thought I'd record the relevant parts from Hamlet, but using old translations and a thick Småland accent.
Here's the recording of the "to be, or not to be" soliloquy: http://duolingo.vydea.io/08537e7bb2d04a4391b24778cc6298c2.mp3
And here's the recording of Act I - Scene V: http://duolingo.vydea.io/fbb1e5cbeb864174bd7019253818c86f.mp3
For more info on re-recordings, please check the info thread: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/23723515
Thanks for listening. Ha en bra dag! :)
Well, most things are better in their native languages. That's why it's such a thrill to learn new ones and getting to know culture as it was made! :D
- 944
No, because finns is in the present tense, so you can't use it with the infinitive marker att. But you could use finnas, the infinitive form. That would make the meaning closer to 'exist' or to 'to be' as in there is a spoon on the table.
