TY - JOUR AU - Pujol, Dídac PY - 2017/12/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Three Translators in Search of an Author: Linguistic Strategies and Language Models in the (Re)translation of Shakespeare’s Plays into Catalan JF - Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance JA - MS VL - 16 IS - 31 SE - Articles DO - 10.1515/mstap-2017-0018 UR - https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/article/view/3288 SP - 41-59 AB - <p>This article shows how the language of Shakespeare’s plays has been rendered into Catalan in three especially significant periods: the late 19th century, the early 20th century, and the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The first section centres on the contrast between natural and unnatural language in <em>Hamlet</em>, and considers how this differentiation is carried out (by linguistic techniques that differ substantially from Shakespeare’s) in a late 19th-century Catalan adaptation by Gaietà Soler. The second part of the article investigates the reasons why in an early 20th-century translation of <em>King Lear </em>the translator, Anfòs Par, resorts to medieval instead of present-time language. The last section of the article illustrates how and explores the motivations why Salvador Oliva’s first (1985) version of <em>The Tempest </em>is retranslated in 2006 using a different language model. The ultimate aim of the paper is to put forward the hypothesis that, in the case of Catalan, Shakespearean translations are both a reflection of the current state of the language and a major linguistic experimentation that shapes and creates (sometimes through a <em>via negativa</em>) the Catalan literary language.</p> ER -