ABSTRACT
Shakespeare comes to us inextricably intertwined with the problem of translation. He does so for a number of reasons: because his works are translated, published and performed in more languages all over the world than those of any other literary author. Many or indeed most readers and audiences today access Shakespeare’s
experience Shakespeare in new media – from movies to songs and comic strips to downloadable clips – that perform their own translations of his works into new aesthetic and cultural forms. All of which is in turn translated into new academic approaches produced and reproduced in the classroom and in books and papers on Shakespeare and the translation and adaptation of his works into different national or linguistic contexts and media: postcolonial Shakespeares, native Shakespeares, national Shakespeares, Shakespeare and popular culture, Shakespeare and film, music, soap operas, Las Vegas.1 The list goes on and on, producing an endless textual and semiotic proliferation, a play of difference and a displacement and deconstruction of meaning that are indeed what Jacques Derrida said translation is all about.2
