Sagarra «sagarreja»? A Linguistic Analysis of Josep M. de Sagarra’s Translation of «Macbeth»

Abstract

The translations of Shakespeare’s plays by Josep M. de Sagarra marked a turning point regarding the previous translations of Shakespeare’s works into Catalan. This was mainly due to the number of translated plays (twenty-eight) and the fact that these translations were meant to be performed on stage. This paper reviews the main critical comments about Sagarra’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays. One of them is that some options in Sagarra’s texts sagarregen, that is, they contain more of Sagarra’s style than Shakespeare’s. The aim of this article is to refine the concept of sagarrejar and to identify the main characteristics of Sagarra’s way of translating Shakespeare. To do so, key linguistic aspects of his translation of Macbeth have been analysed: register, intensification, preferential words, addition and deletion of information, total changes of meaning and metre.