The intersemiotic translation of Hamlet for comics: the soliloquy “To be or not to be”

Abstract

More than 400 years later, William Shakespeare's legacy continues pulsating alive at the heart of society, due to numerous (re)editions and translations of his books, the performance of his plays in theatres all over the world and to the wide variety of adaptations, whether for cinema, ballet, opera or cartoon, videogames and comic books. In this context, the phantom of the Prince of Denmark returns. The present research intends to analyze the translation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet for comics in the Manga Shakespeare collection of British publisher SelfMadeHero, available in Brazilian Portuguese under the Galera Record label. We will address, among other aspects, overall features of the transposition; compare the main characteristics in both works regarding theme, plot, character design, and language; and examine external aspects that influence Hamlet’s adaptation, such as information on the publishers and actors involved in this work. The theoretical basis for this work is the concept of intersemiotic translation - or transmutation -, by Roman Jakobson (2015), later complemented by Julio Plaza’s considerations (2008); the concept of rewriting, put forth by André Lefevere (2007); the ideas on adaptation put forward by Robert Stam (2008); and critical writings on the corpus as well as on the language of comics, in particular, of the manga.