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deep lake and a wide river. There is the same water, the same quality of water, the same beauty of water, the same function of water, but the form is different. The lake has its smaller and bigger streams, but the river has just the stream, one stream. You have to get that feeling of fluency, the feeling of motion. And drama ... it depends on what drama is meant. Modem drama is mostly prose, and Shakespeare's drama is poetry. But drama has its distinction, because it is always physically spoken. And this should be taken into consideration by the person who is working on a translation of a dramatic text. One has to render it in such a way that it can be spoken. If it cannot be spoken, it is bad drama. OS: Your name is mostly associated with the translations of Shakespeare's works. Why did you choose to translate Shakespeare? MH: I did not choose him, he just came into my life and stayed there forever. It wasn't my choice at all. I read Hamlet and I was taken, captured. OS: What are the main difficulties that you deal with while translating Shakespeare? What is the most difficult to render in Shakespeare? MH: The most difficult is to understand him ... Not just to understand him as I do, but to understand him as he was. One understands more and more in Shakespeare when growing older. So my understanding of him twenty years ago was one kind of thing and now it is something completely different. When I consider this process of my understanding Shakespeare, I see that it still has something in store, so I probably still do not understand everything. That is why Shakespeare is difficult to understand, not because he is complicated, but because we are not ready enough. OH: And your other translations? Why did you choose to translate David Lawrence, Patrick White and Sylvia Plath? MH: Sylvia Plath is my least favorite author. She was probably the first poet that I was enchanted by, but I think it was rather the person than the poet who fascinated me. There was a period in my life when I was also impressed by Patrick White, but it was just a period. There was something attractive in him, but there was also something that I gradually ceased to like. And when there is something in the author that you do not quite like, you somehow fall out of love with him. And Lawrence ... there is something in Lawrence that I always liked. I sympathize with him. From the point of view of the form, he is not the best writer. His pieces do not seem quite finished to me. OS: What are you working on now and what are your plans for the future? MH: There are too many of them. They are connected with translation, but right now I am working as coordinator of some other translators and their translations. But I am going to work constantly, as long and as well as I can, on Shakespeare — not translating him, but exploring him and writing about him and editing his translations in new Ukrainian editions, and even in English ones. His texts have been edited and changed by so many people and so many times that the original Shakespeare needs to be found again. OS: And the last question. What are the main aspects of your profession that you most like and dislike? MH: I like the profession itself in all of it aspects but one. At the stage when the book is being prepared for publishing, you have to deal with somebody known as the editor. Dealing with editors has eaten away a lot of my life. I still do not know how to cope with the negative aspects of this collaboration. One really needs to have his work seen through somebody else's eye after it has been done, but this should be a very special eye. The necessity of being subjected to the scrutiny of a random eye is the only negative aspect in translation that I hate. Editor's Note: Olessia Shchur is a second-year student of the Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics at Ivan Franko State University in Lviv, Ukraine. She is immersed in a pilot program launched by the university for the purpose of training translators and interpreters to meet a pressing need for preparing skilled linguists for work as professional interpreters and translators in the challenging environment of the new and complex relationships emerging in Ukraine. Ms. Shchur's interview with Maria Hablevych was forwarded to Our Life by Professor Roksoliana Zorivchak, Chair of the Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics at Ivan Franko State University. UNWLA NEW E-mail: ігупакб? aol.com UNWLA NEW FAX NUMBER: (212) 533-5237 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ВЕРЕСЕНЬ 1999 23
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