Dintshontsho Tsa Bo – Juliuse Kesara

Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara is a translation into Setswana of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, by the renowned South African thinker, writer and linguist Sol T. Plaatje, who was also a gifted stage actor. Plaatje first encountered the works of Shakespeare when he saw a performance of Hamlet as a young man; it ignited a great love in him for the works of the Elizabethan dramatist. Many years later he translated several of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana in a series called Mabolelo a ga Tsikinya-Chaka / The Sayings of Shakespeare.' Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara went to print five years after Plaatje’s death, in 1937, published in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press.

His translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana helped to pioneer and popularize a genre, the drama script, that was previously not well known in Southern Africa. It also showcased the rich range of Setswana vocabulary and served Plaatje’s aim of developing the language.