The Localization Of Hamlet And William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'

After the Queen and Polonius cried for help, Hamlet mistook Polonius for the King and killed him. According to Cambridge dictionary, ‘a rat’ informally means an unpleasant person who deceives others or is not loyal, which is Hamlet’s opinion towards the King. Perng and Lin translated ‘rat’ into ‘老鼠’ and ‘耗子’. These translations are also negative in the target culture. Nevertheless, people might think it is actually a ‘老鼠’ or ‘耗子’ Hamlet intended to kill. Lin compensated this with a localization term, ‘狗命’ in the latter part. Not only did he use another idiomatic Chinese animal phrase, it shows his actual intention to kill the King. ‘Ducat’ was a gold coin in European countries in the past. For Perng’s, he directly translated the latter part of the line. The homonyms ‘幣’ and ‘斃’ might be an attempt wordplay but it is meaningless. Zhu used a colloquial Chinese word ‘鼠賊’ to render ‘rat’, which avoid the problem Perng’s translation might have. In the latter part of the line, Zhu used ‘結果你’ as in ‘to finish you’, to bring the King’s life to an end. This word-for-word translation of ‘finish’ is not suitable. A better translation would be ‘結束你 '. The original meaning of that line is that Hamlet ‘bet a ducat that the King is dead.’ All three translators failed to convey the meaning of this part. There are many classical mythology allusions in Shakespeare’s play. The western readers might be familiar with them, but not the target readers. Therefore, the translators had to decide if