William Shakespeare’s command of language is legendary - which can create issues when translating him into other tongues.123rf.com Why might Hamlet be even longer in Italian? How does the story of Romeo and Juliet begin . . . in Thai? How do you build a joke in German, or recreate a rhyme in Japanese? And why are Lady Macbeth's pronouns such a problem? What does it mean to translate Shakespeare? When we change all the poetry, all the wordplay, all the syntax - all the words! - is it still Shakespeare?