Shakespeare in Uzbekistan. Comments to Uzbek translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Abstract

The article summarizes the history of Uzbek translations of Shakespeare, which starts in the 1930s: 1934 saw the publication of the first translation of Hamlet into the Uzbek language by the renowned writer and advocate of jadidism Abdulhamid Chulpan. A year later, the translated play premiered in an Uzbek theatre, directed by Mannon Uygur. For a long time, translators worked with a Russian rendering of the original. This changed in the late 20th c., when Jamol Kamol started to translate directly from English. In 2007, he published his work as a three-volume collection of Shakespeare’s plays. The article, however, focuses on translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets rather than plays. It was not until the 1960s that such translations were first made by M. Shayxzoda. In subsequent years, more translators were drawn to the subject: A. Obidov, K. Davron, and Y. Shomansur. The author compares the translations of Sonnets 66 and 73 made by two different translators and offers her arguments about whose version sounds more natural in the Uzbek language.