Shakespeare in Hindko

Jun 03, 2026

This translation/transcreation was originally part of an essay which was published in The Friday Times.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (English):

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Hindko — Peshawari Dialect):

Tanu mai siyale di tiyari kawa?

Kho toon tay aur bhi haseen te jameel hai

Hawawan te larzaa chor diyan baharan de mashoom phulla nu

Te garmiyan di muddat hi zara jhi reh gayi hai

Kaddi tere ijyay laskhare haunden kay roshni bhi kachi reh jawe

Tere waal sone aar urn, tay tera rang chandni hai

Kho sohne sohne chehre bhi kaddi kaddi murjaa janden

Jwand te naam hi badalde halatan da haundan hai

Lekin watt bhi dilan de chiragh kaddi na bhuj soon

Na hi hilda is dil si, teri ulfat da langar hai

Pawe marna bhi asaan hojawe, wat bhi taluq reh si

Mere khattan di reet, mere lahfuz, shiddat una di lafaani hai

Jaddo tukul ankhiyan de chiragh bal sun, te mera saa chal si

Teri tashnagi zinda reh si, pawe dunya hai ya barzakh hai

PS: One may read a fabulous translation/transcreation of the same sonnet in Urdu by Anjum Altaf here:

Freak Thoughts