Sebastian Faulks reviews “Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France ” by John Pemble (via AL Daily), about French resistance to Shakespeare and all things Anglo, and recalls some bizarre translations:
As late as 1904, when King Lear was staged for the first time in Paris, Kent’s lines at the height of the storm, “The tyranny of the open night’s too rough / For nature to endure” became “Il n’est pas possible de rester plus longtemps dehors.”
This reminded me of the hours I spent in Left-bank cinemas as a student learning French by reading the subtitles of English films. My brother claims to have seen a western in which the trail-weary cowboy’s first line on entering the saloon — “Gimme a shot of red eye” — was translated as “Un Dubonnet, s’il vous plaît”.
Mick Hartley 
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