When Shakespeare was translated into other languages, did they have to create new words in the other languages to represent the Middle English?
Most definitely — the translators would have had to try and understand what Shakespeare meant, and introduce the concept to their audience. I haven’t noticed the need for that by the translators in the couple of Finnish translations I’ve read, but that’s no surprise; by the time Finnish translations were coming out, the plays had been available in Swedish and Russian for hundreds of years (Finland was for centuries under first Swedish, then Russian rule), and it goes without saying that the ability to read and what you had available to read was very class-based. The upper class was generally multilingual to boot, and now when I read old Finnish translations, it just… sounds slightly archaic, poetic and influenced by that.But soooo… let’s take a more recent piece of evidence as an example where I know the translator had to think hard and fast about stylistics, faithfulness to the original and making it sound natural for the target audience. Harry Potter.J.K. Rowling’s Slytherins as a group became Luihuinen (springs to my mind the following adjectives/mental image: narrow, devious, creeping, plotting) in Finnish — it was translated with the flavor of meaning and concept that came with the original. Likewise, the slightly… soft Hufflepuff became Puuskupuh — puuskuttaa (to pant or huff or puff) + puh (onomatopoeia for the puffing and huffing sound). Locations required similar tongue-in-cheek wordplay, as did Quidditch and just about everything.(By the by, ze translator: Jaana Kapari-Jatta - Wikipedia )PSVaguely related: Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion translated into Finnish becomes a hilarious notion once you learn of certain mythological ties to the Finnish Kalevala and that Finnish was a partial inspiration for Quenya… and that the Finnish translator had to go back to Finnish mythology to figure out how to translate terms like “elf.”
What are the characteristics of Greek people?
Oh boy, time for stereotypes :^)Men have hairy arms and chests and (more often than not) rock dark, bushy beards.Loud. And by loud I mean you’d think we are fighting even though we are just debating about whether you should put onion in your pita souvlaki or not (spoiler alert: you should).We like good food, end of story. That smelly blue French cheese ain’t got nothing on my feta and halloumi, boy.Most of us dance, even though we have no clue how to. I’d argue zeimbekiko was precisely invented to make us look like we know what we’re doing.Contrary to popular belief, we don’t just clump up together and avoid other nationalities. It’s just that if you happen to be in our group, you’ll leave with the framework for Greek language 101 and lots of curse words.Forget about football or basketball, the Greek national sport is complaining. Complaining about traffic, complaining about the queue at the post office, complaining about the government, complaining about Olympiakos getting his 1032847th league title in a row etc.Greek grandmas are probably the most up-to-date sources of information on the planet. I bet that I could hear news from them before even CNN gets to cover it.We have a localized reception network: If we are in our country, it sucks. If we are abroad, “there’s nothing like home”. You could find a Greek in a huge beautiful European city, seeing monuments like the Brandenburg gate or the Notre Dame and they would still be like “it’s good and all that, but they ain’t got nothing on the White Tower mate”.We actually wave our hands like the Italians a lot, but we don’t have that reputation. Probably due to some epic historic battle of gesticulations between a really vocal Italian and a Greek abroad, with the Italian winning.Backgammon to Greeks is like chess to Armenians. Sitting at the beach? Backgammon. At some coffee place? Backgammon. Home with grandpa with nothing else to do? Backgammon. There’s also this weird habit of “blowing” or spitting on the dice so that we get more lucky. Don’t ask why, even we can’t answer that.Disclaimer: I fulfill about 2–3 of those only personally, so that should clue you in that Greeks also tend to be quite diverse personalities and you can’t expect the same characteristics from everyone.
How dark is TOO dark when it comes to writing?
For starters writing isn't a hobby, its a passion. I think you should always write what you're good at to be honest. Fiction is getting more and more dark anyways, and I love horror if it is written well - not cheesy like the books for little kids. No one will fear you for writing a scary story, it doesn't make you weird or anything at all like that! Some people are good at writing different things; some people plays, some diaries, some a certain genre of fiction. If you enjoy writing 'dark' things, go for it :) I once read a teenage book about a girl recalling a man who used to.. well 'touch' her. That was disturbing but I couldn't put the book down. Its difficult to know what you mean by dark as in creepy or actual gory horror? If you wanted to publish in the future, I reckon you should go down the horror genre route, rather than a disturbing story, you would gain a lot more readers possibly of both genders. Good luck :)