If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation with Daniel Hahn
Doors at 6:00 pm. Event will begin at 6:30 pm.
Featuring bilingual performances by San Francisco Shakespeare Festival
Join award-winning translator, writer, editor, and Shakespeare enthusiast Daniel Hahn for an illuminating event based on his new book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Drawing on examples from across Shakespeare’s works and from languages around the world, Hahn reveals the extraordinary craft of translation and the power of words, inviting us to rethink not only Shakespeare, but also language itself. Featuring bilingual performances by San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Carla Pantoja, this event showcases the beauty of Shakespeare’s work as it resonates across cultures and tongues. Moderated by Michael Holtmann, President of the Center for the Art of Translation.
Co-presented by the Center for the Art of Translation and San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.
About If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world’s most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience.
“For those who care deeply about language, and about Shakespeare…this will be a treasured book.” —James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare
Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless work of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways the great playwright is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself—in Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, and more than 100 other languages.
From word order, puns, and punctuation to metaphor, accent, and song, Shakespeare’s variety of genius presents an endless set of conundrums, among them: How does Romeo and Juliet’s love story unfold if their dialogue cannot form a sonnet (nor rhyme), as it does in the original? How can you form wordplay around the letter “I” and its sound if its meanings are not shared in other languages? These are just two out of millions of issues facing translators tasked with bringing Shakespeare to non-English languages and non-Shakespearean eras and cultures. To attempt such a feat, they must cut and add beats, maintain rhymes, adapt names and locations, and preserve meaning while not unilaterally prioritizing it, all while knowing that for each word, line, or scene they construct, another option is yet to be discovered.
Traveling the world, Hahn speaks to writers and actors engaging with Shakespeare’s work, sharing stories of his own. Hahn, whose great-grandfather produced one of Brazil’s earliest Shakespeare translations, emerges as a wise and enthusiastic guide, teacher, and sleuth. If This Be Magic does not require knowledge of any other language or more than a passing acquaintance with the Bard’s canon, but it draws out fascinating insights on both. As nerdy as they come (there is a chapter on commas), supremely readable, and funny throughout, this is a book for everyone and a fitting tribute to the Globe’s Bard.
About San Francisco Shakespeare Festival
Founded in 1983, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s mission is to make Shakespeare and the performing arts accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, geography, economic status, or level of education. We believe that Shakespeare experienced in a communal setting unifies those who sit beside each other—whether it is in a public park, a classroom, virtual shared spaces, or a traditional theater setting. We are one of the largest free Shakespeare programs in the nation, and a major provider of arts education programs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
“SF Shakes” is best known for Free Shakespeare in the Park, which brings free professional productions of Shakespeare to large and diverse Bay Area audiences (ages 1–101) of up to 30,000 people each summer. Performances take place exclusively in municipal parks, because we believe in activating communal, public spaces as welcoming, inclusive, and accessible for all. This summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production is Antony and Cleopatra, performing in Cupertino July 25–Aug 9, Redwood City Aug 15–30, and San Francisco’s Jerry Garcia Amphitheater and Sue Bierman Park Sept 5–27.
For more information, visit www.sfshakes.org(opens in a new tab).
Daniel Hahn is a translator, writer, and editor. His translations include a wide range of fiction and nonfiction from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, as well as many children’s books and plays. He is the author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary, the editor of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, and co-editor with Padma Viswanathan of the forthcoming Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories. He is currently translating an Angolan novel.
Michael Holtmann has worked in the arts for more than fifteen years. Prior to joining the Center, he held positions at the National Endowment for the Arts and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He has served on the board of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and the international programming committee of the Bay Area Book Festival.
Carla Pantoja, born and raised in the South Bay, is an actor, fight director, teaching artist, intimacy director, and mom of two. She has been a Resident Artist of San Francisco Shakespeare Festival since 2014 and recently served as Director of Vision for the 2021 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, directing episodes 2 and 4. In 2020, she was in the acting company at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, returning in 2022 as the festival’s first female fight director. Carla is an associate instructor for Dueling Arts International and serves on their governing body as Vice President. She is also a proud member of Making Good Trouble, an anti-racist training cohort based in the Bay Area. Carla has directed SF Shakes’ Shakespeare on Tour production of Romeo and Juliet and Comedy of Errors and Assistant Directed the 2017 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet. She played Paulina in Free Shakespeare in the Park’s The Winter’s Tale, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, and Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. She’s performed with Cal Shakes, Shotgun Players, Crowded Fire, Playground, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, and the SF Mime Troupe in the Bay Area to name a few.