After four years of translation work, the first performance of the hit American musical Hamilton in a language other than English is scheduled for October 6 in Hamburg, Germany. The translation team has been working since before the pandemic on a German version of Hamilton that would satisfy both the German creative team and the original producers and writers of the show.
Translating a single word into another language is one task, but the process of translating an entire work of theater is a daunting, multi-year spectacle. The New York Times has already published several insightful articles on the translation process, which highlight specific lyric translations and the reasoning behind them. Translating Hamilton offers twin challenges: recreating the internal rhyme and wordy rhythm characteristic of the original hip-hop musical, and translating the context of a story about an American founding father, told through voices of modern-day America. How can the German musical maintain the powerful context of the cast, music style, and presentation of the original? Will these contexts translate to another country's audience? These are the type of questions a translator has to grapple with.
There is also the tricky question of whether this new work is a "translation" into German or an "adaptation" into German. And should it be called a 'new work' at all, if it is so apparently derivative of the original? Even though translation of written or spoken work has almost always been an implicit part of a globalized literary and scholarly world, the act of translation and the translators themselves are often forgotten. We read translated essays, novels, and stories, usually without the translator's name on the cover. Kevin Schroeder and Sera Finale were two of the main translators who worked on German Hamilton, but you won't find their names until 12 paragraphs down into the New York Times article.
But is it fair to describe a translation as purely derivative? Finding solutions to differences in language structure, cultural contexts, and verbal sound is its own creative practice. The work that emerges can often hold new layers of meaning and metaphors, and can engage with an audience differently than the original did.
Translation theory and the dynamics behind bringing words and meaning into a new language are worth pages of discussion, and they have only really recently become part of the public forum, mostly through the lens of novels and classic works. If you're interested in reading more, check out this article on the current global context for translators and this review of a new novel that imagines translation as a tool of imperialism.