Shakespeare Translated

The author had the assumption that the play, Hamlet, had one possible interpretation that was universally obvious between all cultures. This, however, was not verified since the tribe’s elders that the author was sharing the story with had different understandings of what the author was trying to tell them in the story. Many details of Hamlet just simply could not be translated to be understood by this particular tribe. For example, the elders of the tribe could not understand the concept of a ghost, It just did not exist to them. Also, their idea of death and how it should be handled by family members did not match up at all, the elders did not believe in a mourning process, and found it completely normal for a widow to remarry immediately simply for survival purposes.

If the author had the ability to go back and take the time to tell the story, and go more in depth with explanations and how things typically work in English culture, then the author may have been able to get a closer interpretation to what Hamlet actually meant. But I do not think that there is a way to render Hamlet completely understandable to this tribe. This is mostly because many of the details of the story were just untranslatable.