It was the final night of a rare three-week run of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” performed in Korean at the acclaimed Barbican Centre in London, and California State University, Northridge theater historian Ah-Jeong Kim spent that evening in 2006 studying the audience.

Ah-Jeong Kim

She wanted to see how the mostly British crowd would react to a foreign interpretation of work by the great English playwright. The director had translated the play into Korean, pared it down to 90 minutes and even changed the ending. Though there were English subtitles, which Kim helped create, most people ignored them and kept their eyes on the actors.

“What I saw was revealing,” said Kim, interim chair of CSUN’s Department of Theatre. “Once the play began, nobody moved. They were glued to the stage. You could see the perplexity and fascination on their faces. They were clearly familiar with the work, but what they were seeing on stage was also new. They were kind of shocked. It was amazing to watch because there was also a commonality that they could relate to.

“Theater is a live art form that brings people together, and there’s something about Shakespeare that transcends all barriers,” she continued. “He may be a British playwright, but Shakespeare wrote about humanity in all its greatness, all its failures and all its silliness. His insight is mind blowing. You understand Shakespeare as much as you understand life, and that transcends all languages.”

Kim has spent much of her professional life studying what happens when Shakespeare is translated into a foreign language, and then what happens when that interpretation is translated back into English. Her insights are included in a recent podcast, “Bless Thee! Thou Art Translated,” created by the Folger Shakespeare Library which explores that very topic. The Folger Shakespeare Library, located in Washington, D.C., is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials.

There are obstacles theater directors have to overcome when they translate Shakespeare into another language — among them his words.

A scene from the 2006 theatrical production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in Korean at the Barbican Center in London. Photo courtesy of Ah-Jeong Kim.

“Anyone familiar with Shakespeare knows how important his language and poetry are to his work,” she said. “But when you translate Shakespeare into another language, those words are doomed. For one, a literal translation will not give you the same rhymes in his prose. Another problem is the words themselves. Some of the words he used in Elizabethan English do not exist in Korean or Chinese or Japanese or Hindi or Portuguese or whatever language his work is being translated into.

“So that raises the question: is it still Shakespeare without his poetry and his words?”

Kim’s answer is yes. She noted that as a bilingual person, she can speak in English or Korean. But before the words are made, she must start with the idea she wants to articulate.

“Shakespeare is like that idea,” she said. “His messages, the power of his stories, are almost primordial. And it’s those ideas that can be captured on stage in any language if a director is truly competent.”

Kim singled out the American musical classic “West Side Story” and the more recent film “10 Things I Hate About You.”

“Even without the poetry, without Shakespeare’s words and even his characters, you recognize that they are Shakespeare’s stories,” she said. “‘10 Things I Hate About You’ is ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ while ‘West Side Story,’ as everyone knows, is ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Some things may be different, but once inside the story, you can see Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare has become a lingua franca,” she continued. “Not many people realize this, but Shakespeare has this strange, magical power and he’s convinced everybody in the world that he belongs to them — the Japanese, the Brazilians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Korean… Shakespeare has not only survived the 400 years of passage of time, but he has become a binding factor in the world.”

Department of Theatre, Featured, Mike Curb College of Arts Media and Communication, Research, Shakespeare, Theater