The future of William Shakespeare may well lie beyond the English language. That was the striking message I took away from a talk by translation studies scholar Professor Susan Bassnett at the British Shakespeare Conference in Hull in 2016.

Her point was simple but powerful: Shakespeare’s works are likely to survive and flourish not only in English, but through translation, adaptation and reinvention across the world. Inspired by this, I asked four of my colleagues around the globe to share some Shakespearean adaptations in other languages that you might enjoy.

1. Goliyon Ki Raasleela

Ram-Leela (2013) Hindi, based on Romeo and Juliet

Ram-Leela is as heady a mix as Shakespeare’s own play, in equal parts comic and tragic, tender and flamboyant. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali relocates the action of Verona to an Indian town riven by two criminal clans: the Rajadis and the Sanedas. Violence saturates daily life. Bullets spill from spice jars and a Rajadi child urinating on Saneda territory ignites a vicious brawl.

In such a world, can love bring peace? The leads’ scorching chemistry makes us hope. My students practically swooned during a screening. At the end, soulful lyrics such as “Tera naam ishq/ Mera naam ishq” [Your name is love/ My name is love] frame the film’s Romeo and Juliet — Ram and Leela — through love rather than their hate-fuelled lineage.

The film also gives depth to its Lady Capulet and nurse figures, while Leela is sensual, witty and brave. Juliet exactly as Shakespeare imagined her.

Varsha Panjwani teaches at New York University, London, in the UK and is the creator and host of the podcast Women and Shakespeare

Six non-English movies that have been adapted from William Shakespeare’s works that you might find enjoyable

2. Otel·lo (2012)

Catalan, based on Othello

An award-winning work of Catalan cinema, Otel·lo transposes Shakespeare’s play to a contemporary film studio. Such a meta-narrative approach feels in line with the play’s focus on the enticing power of storytelling — famously embodied in the character of Iago as its arch-villain.

Blending documentary, mockum­entary and thriller aesthetics, the film turns Iago into an unscrupulous filmmaker willing to cross every boundary in the name of art. With his role played by the actual director of the film (Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font), the adaptation skilfully integrates form and content. We are, like Othello, manipulated into thinking that the fiction he has created is reality.

The film asks: to what extent are the images we absorb real? What purpose do they serve? And how do they affect our views on gendered and racialised minorities?

Inma Sánchez García is Lecturer in European languages and Culture at the University of Edinburgh in the UK

3. Throne of Blood (1957)

Japanese, based on Macbeth

The genius of Throne of Blood is that, despite being set in 16th-century Japan and changing almost everything about the original, it is immediately recognisable as the Scottish play. It’s considered by many to be the greatest Shakespeare film ever made.

The mist-swirled locations, the screeching flute and ominous drumbeats, the spooky old lady in the forest and, above all, the samurai, barking orders and getting lost on their horses, can mean only that “Macbeth doth come.” The final scene, when Washizu’s (Macbeth’s) soldiers turn on him with a hail of arrows, may even represent an improvement on Shakespeare. Meanwhile, his poker-faced lady clearly wears the kimono-trousers in their marriage.

Daniel Gallimore is Professor of Literature and Linguistics at Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya in Japan

4. Bhrantibilas (1963)

Bengali, based on Comedy of Errors

If you asked me to pick a favourite Shakespeare film, I’d probably surprise people by saying Bhrantibilas. It’s one of the earliest filmed Shakespeare adaptations in Indian cinema. It was also the inspiration for the globally popular Indian film Angoor (1982).

What I love about it is how confidently it relocates Shakespeare’s farce into a Bengali urban world without ever feeling like a dutiful “literary” exercise. A huge part of its lasting appeal is Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar. It’s pure pleasure watching him play the twin roles — Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus, identical twins separated at birth, whose accidental reunion causes chaos. His comic timing is razor-sharp, and there’s also an ease and charm that makes the confusion feel human, never mechanical.

Decades on, audiences still return to Bhrantibilas, often knowing every gag by heart, which says a lot about its cultural afterlife. For me, it’s a perfect example of how Shakespeare survives not through reverence but through reinvention — absorbed into popular cinema and kept alive by star power, humour and sheer re-watchability.

Koel Chatterjee is Lecturer in English at Regent College, London in the UK and the creator and host of The Shakespop Podcast and The Shakesfic Podcast.

5. Rahm (2016)

Urdu, based on Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure has long been regarded as a “problem play”. Disfavoured among Shakespeare’s works for centuries, it hit stages again in the 20th century and reached new audiences through its resonances with the #MeToo movement.

A local leader tells a devout woman that if she loses her virginity to him, he will spare her imprisoned brother’s life. This film shifts the action from early modern, Catholic Vienna to an ambiguous period in Islamic-era Lahore. Moderate and extremist versions of faith contend against the backdrop of the city. This film’s billing as a thriller, and status as the only big screen version of the play, help raise it from obscurity.

Sarah Olive is a senior lecturer in English literature at Aston University, Birmingham in the UK

6. To The Marriage of True Minds (2010)

Arabic, based on Sonnet 116

This freely available short film expands on one of Shakespeare’s shortest forms: the sonnet. It riffs on Sonnet 116, heard at countless weddings: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds… admit impediments.” Here, its Arabic translation provides both the backstory to — and future hope for — an asylum-seeking couple in a same-sex relationship, Falah (Amir Boutrous) and Hayder (Waleed Elgadi).

The story of their journey by sea, and shots of a tossed-about paper boat reference the poem’s sea-voyage imagery. Over 12 tense minutes, we hold our breath to see whether the Iraqi poet and his childhood beloved will overcome the impediments of religious conservatism, on one shore, and an apparently hostile asylum system on the other.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in English literature at Aston University, Birmingham in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 10th, 2026