WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.229 --> 00:00:05.630
William Shakespeare.
Born 1564 in…

2
00:00:05.630 --> 00:00:06.750
You know what?

3
00:00:06.750 --> 00:00:12.669
I am tired of filming against an
amateur-hour lockdown green-screen

4
00:00:12.669 --> 00:00:16.449
in a tiny, boxy, echoey room.

5
00:00:16.449 --> 00:00:17.990
So for the first time,

6
00:00:17.990 --> 00:00:19.789
let's take the Language Files
on the road.

7
00:00:19.789 --> 00:00:23.530
"Go on location, Tom,
it'll look spectacular."

8
00:00:23.530 --> 00:00:28.079
Yeah, maybe it will, but it's also
about two degrees above freezing,

9
00:00:28.079 --> 00:00:33.650
and I'm being pestered occasionally
by some surprisingly aggressive swans.

10
00:00:33.650 --> 00:00:35.650
Anyway! Shakespeare.

11
00:00:35.650 --> 00:00:37.969
Born in 1564 here
in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

12
00:00:37.969 --> 00:00:42.260
Shakespeare’s plays and poetry have
a certain rhythm and feeling to them.

13
00:00:42.260 --> 00:00:46.809
A French-speaking poet could not have written
something that sounds like Shakespeare.

14
00:00:46.809 --> 00:00:48.340
Because the language you speak

15
00:00:48.340 --> 00:00:52.230
affects the poetry and verse
that it’s possible for you to write.

16
00:00:52.230 --> 00:00:53.559
Let’s start with English.

17
00:00:53.559 --> 00:00:55.650
English has what’s called “lexical stress”.

18
00:00:55.650 --> 00:00:58.960
There’s a difference in how we say the noun
“a CON-test”

19
00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:02.120
versus the verb, “to con-TEST”.

20
00:01:02.120 --> 00:01:04.430
Stressed syllables are part of
speech and poetic writing in English,

21
00:01:04.430 --> 00:01:07.730
and if you put the stress on the
wrong syl-LAB-le, it sounds ridi-CU-lous.

22
00:01:07.730 --> 00:01:10.000
...this is not going to be
one continuous take.

23
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.830
There’s a lot of really difficult things
for me to perform in the script.

24
00:01:12.830 --> 00:01:14.150
So there's going to be jump cuts.

25
00:01:14.150 --> 00:01:18.180
Anyway. English also has “prosodic stress”,
which is the difference between:

26
00:01:18.180 --> 00:01:19.360
_I_ want that

27
00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:20.730
I _want_ that

28
00:01:20.730 --> 00:01:22.280
and I want _that_,

29
00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:25.420
which are all different interpretations
of the same three words.

30
00:01:25.420 --> 00:01:27.680
I’m not talking about
that kind of stress here:

31
00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:29.470
I’m talking about lexical stress,

32
00:01:29.470 --> 00:01:32.640
the stress that’s built into
the words that we use.

33
00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:35.750
Stress isn’t normally something you have
to consider too much while writing,

34
00:01:35.750 --> 00:01:39.150
but in English poetry
where meter and timing matter,

35
00:01:39.150 --> 00:01:41.410
you have to be very careful with it.

36
00:01:41.410 --> 00:01:44.250
But I figured Shakespeare would be
quite a dull demonstration to start with,

37
00:01:44.250 --> 00:01:48.400
so instead, how about a less highbrow
bit of poetry, like a limerick.

38
00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:51.890
Not that Shakespeare was originally just highbrow,
but that’s a whole separate issue.

39
00:01:51.890 --> 00:01:52.890
Limericks.

40
00:01:52.890 --> 00:01:55.030
"There once was a man from…"

41
00:01:55.030 --> 00:01:58.280
Well, from where?
In increasing order of rudeness,

42
00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:00.830
he might be from Leeds,

43
00:02:00.830 --> 00:02:02.140
or Madras,

44
00:02:02.140 --> 00:02:04.670
or Nantucket.

45
00:02:04.670 --> 00:02:08.170
But the number of syllables
in those names doesn’t matter:

46
00:02:08.170 --> 00:02:10.149
you just make sure that the
one stressed syllable

47
00:02:10.149 --> 00:02:13.040
is in the right place
and they all sound fine.

48
00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:15.760
But you can’t have: “there once
was a man from Washington”.

49
00:02:15.760 --> 00:02:18.159
It doesn’t quite sound right.

50
00:02:18.159 --> 00:02:19.569
The lexical stress is a little bit early.

51
00:02:19.569 --> 00:02:22.989
And you can’t move that stress later,
because it sounds worse to say

52
00:02:22.989 --> 00:02:24.650
“There once was a man
from Wa-SHING-ton”.

53
00:02:24.650 --> 00:02:27.180
No, the lexical stress is wrong.

54
00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:29.799
For a limerick, the LEXical STRESS
has to LAND on the BEAT.

55
00:02:29.799 --> 00:02:31.060
Now, there is a solution:

56
00:02:31.060 --> 00:02:32.790
“There once was a man…
from Washington”,

57
00:02:32.790 --> 00:02:34.390
but it’s a little bit clunky.

58
00:02:34.390 --> 00:02:35.659
There’s a pause in there.

59
00:02:35.659 --> 00:02:38.269
Compare that to French,
which doesn’t have lexical stress.

60
00:02:38.269 --> 00:02:41.549
Just to be clear, French speakers do
still stress words to emphasise them,

61
00:02:41.549 --> 00:02:43.750
they use prosodic stress,
but that’s it.

62
00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:47.569
In French, by default, stress lands
on the last syllable of an utterance.

63
00:02:47.569 --> 00:02:50.470
So, and this is going to be
really difficult to perform,

64
00:02:50.470 --> 00:02:52.989
I’m not going to attempt a ridiculous
comedy French accent here,

65
00:02:52.989 --> 00:02:54.290
but, if you experi-MENT,

66
00:02:54.290 --> 00:02:56.609
you’ll find you sound much more FRENCH

67
00:02:56.609 --> 00:02:59.390
when you empha-SISE
only the last sylla-BLE.

68
00:02:59.390 --> 00:03:00.840
I think I got that.

69
00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:03.849
Anyway, that means you cannot
have a limerick in French.

70
00:03:03.849 --> 00:03:07.980
The FEEling and SOUND of a LIMerick
reLIES on the LEXical STRESS,

71
00:03:07.980 --> 00:03:10.659
and that doesn’t exist in French.

72
00:03:10.659 --> 00:03:13.470
So why does Shakespeare
sound like Shakespeare?

73
00:03:13.470 --> 00:03:17.280
Well, because: “iAMbic”
AND “pentameter”.

74
00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:19.579
Two words that make a fancy way to say:

75
00:03:19.579 --> 00:03:22.180
Stress every other syllable, in pairs,

76
00:03:22.180 --> 00:03:24.700
with five such pairs in every line you write.

77
00:03:24.700 --> 00:03:27.510
And that was Shakespeare’s style. Well, usually.

78
00:03:27.510 --> 00:03:30.159
He didn’t stick to that for every line.

79
00:03:30.159 --> 00:03:32.870
And if you want to sound
like him, that’s how.

80
00:03:32.870 --> 00:03:36.670
“If MU-sic BE the FOOD
of LOVE, play ON.”

81
00:03:36.670 --> 00:03:39.530
The reason Shakespeare sounds
like Shakespeare is:

82
00:03:39.530 --> 00:03:42.110
he wrote in rhythm, mostly.

83
00:03:42.110 --> 00:03:43.110
Which is nice.

84
00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:45.040
But if you’re translating that to French,
well,

85
00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:46.510
French can’t do that.

86
00:03:46.510 --> 00:03:49.030
Yes, there are all sorts of exceptions
for poetic reasons,

87
00:03:49.030 --> 00:03:53.040
the same as English can break its own
rules sometimes, but in gener-AL:

88
00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:55.870
French stress SITS
at the end of the utter-ANCE.

89
00:03:55.870 --> 00:04:00.140
You can translate Romeo and Juliet’s words
and sentences and meanings into French, sure...

90
00:04:00.140 --> 00:04:02.170
but it won’t sound like Shakespeare.

91
00:04:02.170 --> 00:04:03.750
It can’t sound like Shakespeare.

92
00:04:03.750 --> 00:04:08.939
So instead, some translators use an
equivalent French form: the alexandrine.

93
00:04:08.939 --> 00:04:12.140
Twelve syllables per line,
broken into two parts.

94
00:04:12.140 --> 00:04:15.219
And it should also rhyme.
Stress the end of each half.

95
00:04:15.219 --> 00:04:19.090
This is why poetry in translation often
doesn’t sound right, or even poetic:

96
00:04:19.090 --> 00:04:21.290
because you need to translate
not just the words,

97
00:04:21.290 --> 00:04:23.310
but the style and the stress patterns as well.

98
00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:25.420
Yes, you can adapt the style,
play with it a bit,

99
00:04:25.420 --> 00:04:27.560
English does have an alexandrine form,

100
00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:30.230
but it doesn’t work in quite the
same way as the original French.

101
00:04:30.230 --> 00:04:32.910
And French does not work
in iambic pentameter.

102
00:04:32.910 --> 00:04:37.650
Are there French poets with the same skills
of wordplay and drama that Shakespeare had?

103
00:04:37.650 --> 00:04:42.060
Of course. But they could
NE-ver sound like Will.

104
00:04:42.060 --> 00:04:47.450
There’s more about translating texts, including
Old English becoming very modern English,

105
00:04:47.450 --> 00:04:49.030
in my co-author Gretchen McCulloch’s
podcast Lingthusiasm.

106
00:04:49.030 --> 00:04:50.990
There’s a link on screen
or in the description.