Übersetzen als kulturelles Handeln: Zur politischen Motivation der Übersetzungsstrategien in Thomas Braschs Shakespeareübersetzung „Wie es euch gefällt”

Abstract

This article analyses the different translation strategies in Thomas Brasch’s German translation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It with respect to their impulse towards adaptation. The article takes as its starting point the assumption that the cultural performance of a translation can be experienced independently of the criterion of similarity. This is the case whenever one manages to elucidate how a translation cites and at the same time dislocates its source and target (con-)texts. In this double distance between source context and the inherited context of its own target language translation is manifested as an act of cultural intervention. Brasch’s analysed translation reveals its emotional, linguistic and cultural richness as the reader recognizes how the various translation strategies are meaningfully related to his political convictions.