'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in Basque
On December 3rd (2014), to celebrate the Day of the Basque Language, the Association of Translators, Correctors and Interpreters of Basque Language, EIZIE, launched online a new translation into Basque of Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream. This marks the end of the programme organised by DSS2016 and EIZIE on the subject of Uda-gau bateko ametsa (Please click on the image below to obtain the publication).
The author of the translation is Juan Garzia Garmendia, chosen for the task by DSS2016 in view of his previous excellent translations of Hamlet and Sonnets by the English genius. In order to socialise the actual translation process, DSS2016 and EIZIE signed an agreement in the frame of the above-mentioned programme, encompassing a series of events around the translation which took place this autumn. The initiative bringing an end to the programme is precisely this digital publication of Uda-gau bateko ametsa on the EIZIE website.
We can say that this is the work by Shakespeare to have a proportionally greater number of verses. Juan Garzia accepted the invitation to translate the work, and has written in verse the parts that figured thus in the original, also using rhyme in the same places as the English author. For the purposes of the task it goes without saying that he used the rhythms and rhymes of Basque tradition.
Another two earlier Dreams
This is not the only translation of the said work into Basque. Previously, another two translators, Bingen Ametzaga and Bedita Larrakoetxea, had created their own versions of the comedy in the fifties of last century. Precisely within the agreement signed with DSS2016, in 2015 the EIZIE association published Uda gau bateko ametsa by Bingen Ametzaga in book format.
