Differences in culture across Europe and Asia in different translations of literature: Shakespeaare, Presgurvic, Nadaasdy focusing on “La Haine” Darcey Victoria 12th Grade

In the late 1990s, French composer Gerard Presgurvic rewrote Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into a musical with modern influences, while largely remaining faithful to the original plot. This musical play was hugely successful and was translated into multiple languages across Europe and eventually across Asia and America too, including Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Spanish (Mexico), Dutch, German, Japanese and Korean, to name a few. However, because the original French play was a musical, it would be impossible to translate verbatim, which means that all of these different translations and productions of the play differ drastically, with even a second French production with almost exactly the same script bears many differences to the original 2001 production, despite sharing several of the same actors. Because of this, it is easy to see cultural differences in how different countries view hate and love. For example, not only can temporal comparisons be made between Shakespeare’s 17th century play to Presgurvic’s 21st century production, but also cultural differences between the original French and other languages. Presgurvic’s play was subtitled “from hate to love,” and one of the most interesting differences is how each...