Notes towards a Theory of Translation

Nabakov writes in his introduction to his translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:

"Can Pushkin's poem, or any other poem with a definite rhyme scheme, be really translated? To answer this we should first define the term "translation"...

So far in the Salon we have read TOMES in translation from German, French, Russian and Portuguese. Translation is a major issue for most of us in our reading. What ideas do we have about translation? What do we think about Nabakov's bleak question?

Murrushka,

A difficult question. One of the classes I used to teach before I left the university in high dudgeon was World Lit ??????-1700 (as if teaching all that were possible). Having had remiss professors, I never learned Sumerian for example. I have no idea why this course was not included as a standard part of the curriculum. However, I tracked down numerous translations of Gilgamesh ranging from the rigidly literal (I think) to . . . whatever. Unfortunately, my favorite translation seemed to be the one that had little in common with any of the other translations, but it sang. For the moment, I have treat translations gingerly almost as works in their own right based on another work, but not that work. In a sense, I suppose I've decided to throw the concept of translation out the window. Of course, I haven't really. I could spend pages explaining the logical holes in my claim. Alas I am not a linguist. Perhaps, I would have better ideas if I were.

>2 urania1: I treat translations gingerly as almost as works in their own right based on another work, but not that work.

Yes, I think you're right here. Some translations are so collossal and brilliant that they become masterpieces in their own right:

Scott Moncrieff's In search of lost time
Richmond Lattimore's Homer
Turgenev/Viardot's Eugene Onegin (from Russian into French)

Murr correctly pointed out that my translation musings belong here and not in the philosophy thread. So copied below you will find some thoughts originally posted in philosophy:

But as a translator, I am much more interested in the fact that MY languages, Slovak and Czech, are filled, among other things, with dimunitives and the language invites you to form dimunitives easily. So when in English we have the bald word "cat", I can translate it into Slovak with perhaps a hundred different dimunitive words. Which is right? What did the original writer in English intend? Can I tell? And what if I decide, that even if he intended THIS meaning, I prefer THAT one. To ME, THAT sings more. Do I have the right to recreate? Perhaps more precisely, do I have a DUTY to recreate?

I have not been translating from English into Czech or Slovak but from Slovak and Czech into English. There, the problem is related although somewhat different. If a writer, as Kolenic, whom I am reading right now, delights in sentences filled with almost nonsensical versions and variations on common words and English does not lend itself to that, what do I do? Let's stay with "cat". Let's posit that on this page Kolenic has used forty different dimunitive variations on "cat". We will start in English with "kitty" and "kittykins" and soon run out of sensible possibilities. Yes, there is "piglet" but do we want to go to "kitlet"? Adding adjectives is of course possible but gets awkward and cumbersome. Tiny, puny, cute, miniscule...... No. In the original language it is a single word.

A major translator I know, translating the body of a major poet I know, says in the preface that some poems did not get translated into English because of "technical issues" which he does not elucidate.

I suspect that if Kolenic gets translated, some passages will get omitted for "technical reasons."

....

the point is that in the original there are many many many variations. The translation will usualy not lend itself to that.

OF COURSE not a phrase.

macka -- cat

a few Slovak possibilities:

maca
maciatko
macicka
macicienka
maculicka
macilienka
macilienko
mnauka
mnauko
cicka
cicuska
ciciatko
ciculienko
cicienka

That's just very quickly without much thought. All of them are variations on the one word, all perfectly sensible without in the least pushing the language. Can I run with it this way in English? I don't think so. So the solution has to be elsewhere.

>4 polutropos: Andrushka,

As I suggested in response to your post, portmanteau words might be one method. Or, you could opt to leave some Slovak words in the text with a footnote explaining the nuances. I am seeing a lot more of this kind of thing these days, particularly in Indian literature. Of course, philosophy texts have alway resorted to this method. One cannot, for example, convey the insight of Lacan's pun on le nom/non du père. One simply leaves it untranslated.

P.S. Personally, I like it when translators translate a key word the first time and leave it untranslated afterward. And with e-books, one now has the ability to hyperlink to the pronunciation. Nice!!!

Gatto = Cat

gattino
gattuccio
gattuccino
gattaccio
micio
micino
micetto
micettino

Less than in Slovak, but still a good number.

cat
kitten
kitty
kitty cat
tomcat
puss
pussy
pussy cat
alley cat
grimalkin
tom
mouser

In the Italian example we have four examples each from two roots.

In the English I would eliminate the compounds as not relevant here and then we have two variations on one word, two on another, and all different for the others.

This is not a contest, of course, but my point was that the Slavic languages I am familiar with allow many variations on a single word. And there are still other suffixes I had not thought of originally.

>9 polutropos: Andrushka,

With all due respect, I do not agree that we should eliminate the compounds as not relevant. Pussy and pussy cat can be the same or quite different ;-). The addition of cat to pussy makes a difference sometimes. Even pussy (as used for cat) differs a lot depending on context, etc.

In this day and age, and it may just be me, I'm not sure I would use the term pussy by itself in mixed company unless the context was totally unmistakable as meaning a pussy cat, in which case I would probably use the qualifier, cat. I think like gay it has drifted to its lowest meaning. Of course there is also the pejorative meaning, referring to a weakling.

I tend to simply stay away from words that may be misconstrued unless I'm using them to make a specific point. This is a word I have not felt the need to use.

Of course all this may be wrapped up in my male perspective. Regardless of how we may wish things were, men and women are still terra incognita to one another.

>11 geneg:,

You are correct about context. However, as polu noted on another thread, certain words for cat in Czech have different nuances. Some for example are feminine. So, whether you like to use the word or not, it is one whose use remains available to us in all its multiple registers. And . . . for example, when reading Victorian children's literature or E.F. Benson's Miss Mapp, one needs to understand the nonpejorative (even caressing) use of the word as well as the puns available to us.

11, 12:

I'm not staunchly against using the word 'pussy,' for example, but I think part of Gene's point here is that in our culture the word in fact does not "remain available to us in all its multiple registers" but rather has become so charged as to render it almost inseparable from its other meanings. If you are translating a contemporary work and you choose to use the word "pussy" (as opposed to translating from the equivalent of Victorian children's literature, for example), your reader is going to pause at that word and wonder whether your decision to use that word is a measured statement on some hidden sexual context of the scene as defined by the author. Translation is always an act of interpretation and analysis. As we know well here in the Salon, close reading is fundamental to nuanced analysis of a work in your native language. How much more attuned, then, must the careful reader be when presented with a translation!

I can't articulate the point I actually wanted to make about puns/footnotes (#5), so instead here is a humorous look at another pun that I found while trying to track down the exact language for something I read in my Chinese translation of Ulysses (an idealistic experiment that quickly turned nightmare):

'Stephen recalls that he has borrowed a pound from the poet and writer George Russell, who styles himself "A.E." Thinking of his debt, Stephen puns "A.E.I.O.U." In the German, Italian, Czech, and Latvian translations, the expression is simply left as it is, which must be rather baffling to readers. Most others include a native-language gloss. In the 1929 French translation the passage reads "A.E. Je vous dois. I.O.U." In Spanish it is "A.E. Te debo. I.O.U." In Hungarian the vowels are changed, killing the joke: "A.E.K.P." The same is true in Croatian, where an explanation is also added: "A.E.J.V.D (Ja vam dugujem)."'

The excerpt is from Cait Murphy's "Ulysses in Chinese" in the Atlantic 1995, you can find it if you google it.

>10 urania1: The addition of cat to pussy makes a difference sometimes.

I agree. Phrooooooararrr!!!!!

Amaranthic, there is something similar in Eugene Onegin canto 3 in a cancelled variant of the end of Tatiana's letter:

She wondered what people would say
and signed T.L (her initials)

I quote from Nabakov's commentary:
In Russian this produces an identical rhyme because of the use of special mnemonic names for letters in the old Russian alphabet. The word for L is Lyudi. The reader should imagine that in the English alphabet the letter T were labelled say, 'tough' and the letter L "little."

and after pondering a little,
she wrote her signature, Tough, Little"

Puns, and idioms, are, of course, notoriously difficult and a translator's nightmare.

Urania, I think P's point was that the two lists are quite different: Andrew's list is formed of affixations, (not asphxiation, please note, everyone) which is quite a different animal, linguistically, from a compound. English is deficient in this kind of affixated diminutives, but rich in compounds.

P, I have a question based on your first post where it seems you are saying that translating the rich vocabulary of Czech or Slovak is somehow restricting. Do you find English into C/S more restricting, or C/S into E more restricting? Can you say anything about the difference in restrictions for grammar and lexis?

I believe the only formal work I have read on translation was about translating rhymes. It said that for many languages with word endings that reflect meaning that rhymes occur much more frequently and naturally than they do in English. The author suggested that trying to preserve rhymes when translating into English would result in forced sounding verse, and instead advocated the use of slant rhymes, as on/moon bodies/ladies in:

When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
(Yeats, "Lines written in Dejection")

However, the deeper issue, for me, is that writing itself is a translation of experience. The difficulty of this is evident to me each time I have an experience clear in my head, and then I try to put words to it. It seems it should be simple enough to tell a story, but it is not, not even when the story seems, at first glance, to be a series of events. There is always the meaning beyond the words. With poetry it is even more directly an experience you are trying to convey such that the reader of the poem can apprehend it as well. Often this is done not by describing it directly but by surrounding it, by touching its edges so the meaning is what is left. This is why, to me, a translation of a poem is a new poem. A translator can't just translate the words. They must apprehend the experience and translate that as well. Some poets take on the limitation of a form, i.e. sonnets, rhyme scheme, # of syllables, and rather than a restriction this can sometimes be a help, allowing the poem to come of its own while consciously one focuses on the formal. Similarly with an artist drawing from nature, the meaning and expressiveness may come through while the artist is focused on the rendering. Of course, there are empty formalities and empty reproductions of nature, but the intensity of concentration can help bring about a state in which more is communicated. Translation has the restriction of conveying the original experience of the original poet (or at least the part of that experience apprehended by the translator) in language that is true to the language of the original. To me that task as well is the task of a poet.

So much to respond to, and think about, in your post, Solla.

Highly inflected languages (eg: Russian/German) have richer rhyming possibilities than English, hence my question to P about the restrictions of translating into E, which has lost almost all its inflections.

With poetry it is even more directly an experience you are trying to convey such that the reader of the poem can apprehend it as well. Often this is done not by describing it directly but by surrounding it, by touching its edges so the meaning is what is left.

Beautifully put.

Why is English so poorly inflected and other languages are more heavily so. Does the lack of inflection (mostly) make English leaner and more flexible, or does it hinder it in some way. I took a minor in classical Greek in college so I'm familiar with inflection and how it dictates word and sentence construction and so on. Of course English uses inflections for verb tenses, but beyond that, well, not so much.

Is it an advantage, a disadvantage, or advantage neutral, to speak an inflected language?

Why is English so poorly inflected?

I have been away for three days and MUST catch up on all this fantastic food for thought. I have to go food shopping right now, lest my suffering family make me into sausage, but Solla's post #16 will provide me with jumping off points for many many comments.

The very brief answer, Murr, to your question in #15 is that I find translating Czech and Slovak into English much more restrictive since (this is probably a vast oversimplification and I must give it much more thought) what Czech and Slovak do with one word, often requires many English words. When attempting to translate poetry and do it the way elucidated by Solla, economy of language is essential, and one must create a new poem, not a long-winded wordy manual.

More later.

I have previously gone at too great a length about the single word variations on simple words in Slovak, which will ultimately end up being translated with portmanteaus as Urania suggested, or become more wordy.

Another example is in the Slovak words for becoming something.

A great Slovak fairy tale, for example, has as a key line "Bodaj by ste zhavraneli." I have translated that fairy tale with reasonable success. That line becomes "May you turn into ravens."

zhavraniet (infinitive) = turn into ravens or become ravens

zdreveniet = turn or become wooden

onemiet = become dumb, turn speechless

oslepnut = turn or become blind

and so on ad infinitum.

Well, in prose, I think, that is an acceptable translation. In poetry, where that kind of a construction is extremely common, that translation will not hold water.

A good translator will do more. And the poem, as Solla said, will be new in English.

excellent P.

Gene, hold that thought. Two bloody good questions.

Geneg, can I put your questions in a new thread? I think they are so important that they need a separate discussion.

Any suggestions for a threadname?

How about Inflectious Language?

Haha! Nice one.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/79980

I have just finished reading Les Miserables in translation, and got a bit caught up in the questions of how puns are (or are not) translated. Then I started reading The Temptation of the Impossible by Mario Vargas Llosa, and got off on a tangent about the translation of phrases intended to make a certain sound in the original language. I copy my ramblings from the Les Mis thread:

Now to Llosa's discussion of the narrator's use of language. (Actually, Llosa does not discuss the loss of the sound of the words when translated. This is my comment.)

"Alongside exhibitionism, the most ardent passion of the narrator is euphonic repetition. He likes to talk, to produce sonorous flourishes, to listen to himself showing his ability to use language, coloring it, making it musical, molding it into fanciful and sonorous shapes: 'Elle était sèche, rêche, revêche, pointue, épineuse, presque venimeuse' (I,V,VIII)"

Wilbour's translation: "She was dry, rough, sour, sharp, crabbed, almost venomous"
Not the same sound, at all, is it? And Wilbour tried, I think. That is not a literal translation, although the sense of the words is the same.

Number 2: "On another occasion: 'Je connais les trucs, les trocs, les trics et les tracs' (II,VIII,VII)

Wilbour: " I know all the tricks and traps and turns and twists". A better job here, especially since the French is really slang.

Finally: "Cet être braille, gouaille, bataille . . ." (III,I,III)

Wilbour: "This being Jeers, wrangles sneers, jangles . . " Again, a valiant effort by the translator, but it is not the same.

As Llosa says, "(the narrator uses) many phrases like these in the book--often written in slang--in which expressiveness and musicality prevail over semantics."

Ruminating on Murr's original comment as it pertains to poetry--these types of phrases are also difficult to translate and there is something lost in our appreciation of the language of the work.

黑夜給了我黑色的眼睛
我卻用它尋找光明
http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/allen_gu_cheng.html

A Generation - Gu Cheng

the black night gave me black eyes
still I use them to seek the light.

tr. Aaron Crippen
------

Even with these dark eyes, a gift of the dark night
I go to seek the shining light

tr.by Joseph Allen
-------------------
http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/allen_gu_cheng.html
And a literal translation a Chinese colleague w/ excellent English, gave me this morning:
___________________________________
The dark night gives me black eyes (pupils?)
And I use them to look for lights
_________________________________
opinions? help! I'm quite familiar w/ Gu Cheng in translation - but cannot judge "accuracy" at all. The two translations here seem rather different in substance as the first is a bit more -- brutal? -- the black night as a direct actor; the 2nd a bit more subtle?

In general Gu Cheng was noted for being one of the originators of the "misty" (Allen says "Hazy") school of allusive, personal and, maybe, "neo-mystical" poetry in China after the cultural revolution.

Golly. Bob, you anticipate my next workshop!

Translating Chinese is FRAUGHT with difficulty for reasons which will become clear in the workshop, I hope. for now, I will say I prefer Allen's version.

The notion of accuracy doesn't apply. (WARNING: CONTROVERSY AHEAD)

Lisa, you raised an excellent point in your post about the phonic element in translation. What do our translators have to add to this? is it important? does one try to stick as closely as possible to the sounds in L1 or create new sounds in L2?

duh...;-) - i actually did realize that literalness was hardly the essence - but for a non-Chinese reader/speaker it provided me with a useful starting point. And, really, might not be a bad idea to have a "correct" literal translation along w/ the poetic translations, in general, just so one can have an idea of the process. In a way, having a literal translation would be more interesting and useful in the case of poetry than in prose, since both in the original AND in the translations, language can and ought to be stretched beyond its normal confines. I also prefer Allen's version - but only because it seems to fit in with what I know of Gu Cheng's approach to poetry - and reads more elegantly.

(My feeling in re "accuracy" - unless it's SO far off as to create something alien - is similar to my belief about the relative unimportance of ideas being "right" or "wrong." I'm much more interested in ideas that trigger other ideas, responses, dialogue, or are capable of evolving, than in "literal correctness." Monotheism, Darwin, Freud, Marx (though, imo, 2 & 4 got an amazing amount right)

Briefly, my one cent's worth in this fascinating thread.

Jaroslav Seifert is a great poet and a winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. I have been working on translating his work in the last twelve months. I have a body of about twenty poems translated at a high level, and have sent them to appropriate journals for consideration. I continue, however, to struggle with a large segment of his work which has never been translated into English. The reason for the lack of translation by others is most likely the same struggle which I experience. In the original Czech his rhymes and rhythms flow, they sing. In the English I am producing literal silly non-rhyming versions or rhyming doggerel. When I depart from the original significantly, producing a "new" poem in English I feel a sense of sacrilege, of unworthiness to put his name to what is to a significant degree "my version". I find I cannot be both faithful to the original and produce poetry that sings. And thus, so far, the rhymed translations languish.

(Thanks, Bob, for the two examples above.)

bob, and P.

I must share this with you. I have been reading Nabakov, as you know, and I am beginning to think, after reading your remarks above, that:

A literal translation is a mythical beast, Eco's unicorn.

What say ye thereto?

Murr,

I am not sure you mean what you say above, or perhaps I am misunderstanding.

In Bob's example above, the literal translation was the

"The dark night gives me black eyes (pupils?)
And I use them to look for lights".

There is nothing mythical about that one, or difficult for that matter. Anyone can do a literal translation.

The mythical beast, the unicorn, is, I think, a more elusive beast. The Crippen and Allen translations are the more elusive ones.

BTW, which Nabokov is it you are referring to? I now have the Notes on Prosody. Is that the one I should turn to?

You have Notes on Prosody? I am soooooo jealous. Hmmph.

Nabokov talks about his theories of translation in his introduction to his translation of EO.

Regarding the Chinese above, actually, a literal translation would be this:

1.黑 2.夜 3.給 4.了 5.我 6.色 7.的 8.眼 9.睛
1.我 2. 卻 3. 用 4.它 5.尋 6.找 7.光 8.明

1. Black
2. Night
3. Give
4. (past particle)
5. I
6. black
7. (adjective particle)
8 & 9 eye

1. I
2. instead
3. use
4. it
5. look for
6. look for
7. light
8. clear

This is a character by character translation. Of course it makes no sense in English that way, so it has to be adjusted to make sense in English. Now, N would argue that any such adjustment is TOTALLY WRONG and that the translators job is to stick to the literal meaning at all times.

I do not agree with him. This literal trans destroys -for me- the ambiguity of the Chinese, and violates the beauty of English, doing a disservice to both languages in the pursuit of an impossible 'literal translation' - in this case impossible because of the two widely and vastly differing linguistic systems of E and C, hence my feeling that a literal trans which works in both languages is a mythical beast.

Yes? No? Clear?

(I know what I am trying to say, just not sure if I'm saying it. Please let me know what you think)

The First Elegy

Reading five translations at once
reminds me of a problem I love
and will never solve; trisecting an angle
with compass and ruler. You can see the answer,
but not prove it. Rilke waits
at the vanishing point where angles and angels
greet the accurate heart.

Laura Fargas, from an animal of the sixth day

Fantastic. Fantastic. I love that!!!! I am reading Onegin in various different translations,and can really relate to what Fargas says.

Rilke waits
at the vanishing point where angles and angels
greet the accurate heart.

She's talking about the first Duino Elegy, right?

yup. she is one of my favorite poets and i couldn't get that poem out of my head or this thread (having nothing linguistic to contribute, i toss odd, vaguely relevant bits in from the sidelines).

I have absolutely nothing to contribute (though I've really been enjoying the thread), but do want to step in to thank you for that poem, Bob. I've never heard of Fargas. I will have to look her up.

>34 bobmcconnaughey:, 36 Damn it all bob, you're always suggesting books I want to read. I just had to replace me sainted Mac (she died on New Years Eve complete with fireworks shooting from her hard drive) and am currently impoverished. I suspect I may be unable to engage in any book acquisitions for the rest of the year due to this unexpected tragedy. Nevertheless, I will toddle off to Amazon and add Fargas to my wishlist. Are you familiar with Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Arabic"?

Bob, can I tempt you to a (line-by-line) close-read thread on a (short) poem of your choosing by Fargas?

We have many poetry lovers in the Salon, and I would like to get some discussion going on the poetic use of language and how it differs from prose; and Laura Fargas seems as good as place to start as any, and you seem the perfect guy for the job?

We will save the best herring and the choicest cuts of sturgeon for you, and Cap'n Mac might even dance the kamarinsky for you.

yes?

One of my favorite things in my life (why yes, my son and I watched the Sound of Music last night, why do you ask?) is a mailing list called Sunlight. It sends out a poem by Rumi every day.

As you probably know, Rumi was a Sufi poet, who wrote in Persian and lived in the 13th century, mostly in a beautiful city called Konya in what is now Turkey. He also founded the Mevlevi Sufi order (the "Whirling Dervishes").

As you may or may not know, lots of different people have translated his poetry many different ways, from literal to "versioning". The most famous of these is probably Coleman Barks, an American poet who was a disciple of Robert Bly. Bly gave him a literal translation (by RA Nicholson) and told him to "release these poems from their cages." He has been doing it ever since.

What Sunlight often does is post a whole bunch of these versions together so that you can read, and compare, all of them. Sometimes they include transliterations of the original Persian, and at one point they were also posting links to the spoken Persian. (this is a bit wasted on me of course - I don't speak Persian unfortunately.)

It makes me happy every time they do this and all of my closest friends are probably tired of getting Rumi poems in 5 different versions forwarded to them.

Anna- I love Rumi and have the Barks translation, but I've never heard Sunlight. I'll have to look into it.

oh yeah..Naomi Nye is another of my favorites; i discovered her via Hugging the Jukebox years ago and have had a serious crush on her for a well over 20 yrs. Many of the modern poets I reread the most are not "difficult" - Nye was a student of Stafford, who, too, is very straightforward. Anna Swir, Robert Hass, Laura Fargas all use language a bit more "elegantly" (well, i assume Swir's Polish is elegant - as she comes across so cleanly in translation) but usually their poems hone in on a particular point/metaphor. AR Ammons and Gertrud Schnackenberg tend to be more complex and i find that I'll often spend a good while working my way through their layered depths.

I haven't done a true close reading in well over 25 yrs - once upon a time I mapped out Yeat's famous "Second Coming" using a subset of graph theory and compared that poem's fierce connectedness and tautness against that of a forgettable poem a previous reader/writer had deconstructed using a cruder (i thought) use of network analysis in a (defunct?) journal called "Semiotica," which was kind enough to publish my demonstration a way to make a subjective reading as explicit as possible. I will go through An Animal of the Sixth Day - sadly only available via used book outlets at the moment- and post a short lyric w/ a bit of my - largely superfluous i suspect - reading. Will anyone be offended if i select one that reflects her Christian "nature mysticism"? Though nothing like Blake in style - her POV often reminds me of his.

Bob, not at all. If the discussion gets too evangelical, I will simply open a window and air the salon. I'll start a thread for you. Can you post the poem on the thread? Fair use and all that?

i have an old email address from Ms Fargas when I asked her about putting her photo from the book jacket up @ LT (which i have yet to scan...) I'll ask her - though i expect 1 seven line half sonnet that going to be taken apart) would be fine. I managed to just lose my initial posting w/ a damn CTL-something combination.
I'll put the poem up now and direct her towards this thread, assuming her email is still good. I THINK Texas Tech UPress is about to re-issue an animal of the sixth day if i read their site info properly...

bob, go here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/81404

OK all,

Here's an example of a Rumi post to give you an idea of the differences in versions. As you can see, two are more literal and three are more poetic, and they vary quite a bit.

Anna :)

Here, Sunlight offers five presentations of Ghazal (Ode) 649.
from Rumi's "Diwan-e Shams":

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ocean billowed, and lo!
Eternal Wisdom appeared
And cast forth its voice and cried out . . .
That was how it was and became.
The ocean was all filled with foam
and every fleck of this foam
Produced a figure like this,
and was a body like that,
and every body-shaped fleck
that heard a sign from that sea,
It melted and then returned
into the ocean of souls . . .

-- Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
"I Am Wind, You are Fire"
Shambhala, 1992

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"This Eternal Play"

At dawn the Moon appeared in the sky.
It floated down and looked at me.
Then, like a hawk snatching its prey,
it grabbed hold of me
and dragged me across the sky.

When I looked I could not see myself.
By the magic of the Moon's light
my body dissolved into pure spirit.
In this form I journeyed on
Merging with a boundless light.
Then the secret of this eternal play
opened up before me.

The nine spheres of heaven
were enveloped in light.
The ship of my soul
was lost in a shoreless Sea . . . .

Suddenly the Sea of Being formed into waves.
Thoughts rose up,
images and forms broke on the shore.
Then everything returned to the way it was before,
merging into that vast Spirit.

The fortune of this sight
comes from Shams, the Truth of Tabriz.
Without his grace,
no one could ever ride the Moon
or become the endless Sea.

-- Version by Jonathan Star
"Rumi - In the Arms of the Beloved"
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York 1997

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the sky, a moon appeared, at dawn,
She descended from the sky and threw her glance to me,
Like a falcon taking hold of a bird, during the hunt,
She seized me and took me high in the skies.
When I looked at me I did not see me
Because in this moon, my body, by grace,
had become the soul.
When I traveled within the soul, I only saw the moon,
Until was unveiled to me the mystery of eternal Theophany.
The nine celestial spheres were totally immersed
in this moon.
The hull of my being was totally hidden in that sea.
The sea broke down in waves; Intelligence returned
And made its call: that's how it was and had been.
The sea got covered with foam, and from each fluff of foam
Something appeared as a form, something appeared as a body.
Each fluff of foam which looked like a body received
a signal from that sea,
Melted immediately and followed the course of the waves.
Without the salvation-bearing help of
my Lord Shams-ul-Haqq of Tabriz,
None can contemplate the moon, nor become the sea.

-- Translation into English by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch
from the French translation by Simone Fattal
"Rumi and Sufism"
The Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, California 1987

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To Know the Moon and the Sea

At the break of dawn a single moon appeared,
descended from the sky, and gazed at me.

Like a falcon swooping in for the catch,
it snatched me up and soared across the sky.
When I looked at myself, I saw myself no more,
because by grace my body had become fine.

I made a journey of the soul accompanied by the moon,
until the secret of time was totally revealed.
Heaven's nine spheres were in that moon.
The vessel of my being had vanished in that sea.

Waves rose on the ocean. Intelligence ascended
and sounded its call. So it happened; so it was.
The sea began to foam and every bit of froth
took shape and was bodied forth.

Then each spindrift body kissed by that sea
immediately melted into spirit.
Without the power of a Shams, the Truth of Tabriz,
one could neither behold the moon nor become the sea.

-- Version by Kabir Edmund Helminski
"Love is a Stranger"
Threshold Books, 1993

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the dawn hour a moon appeared in the sky,
came down from the sky and gazed upon me.
Like a hawk which seizes a bird at the time of
hunting, that moon snatched me up and ran over the sky.
When I gazed at myself I saw myself no more,
because in that moon my body through grace became
like the soul.
When I voyaged in soul I saw naught but the moon,
so that the secret of the eternal revelation was all
disclosed.
The nine spheres of heaven were all absorbed in
that moon, the ship of my being was entirely hidden
in the sea.
That sea surged, and Reason arose again and cast
abroad a voice; thus it happened and so it befell.*
That sea foamed, and at every foam-fleck something
took form and something was bodied forth.
Every foam-fleck of body which received a sign from
that sea melted forthwith and became spirit in that sea.*
Without the royal fortune of Shams al-Din of Tabriz
one could neither behold the moon nor become the sea.

-- Translation by A. J. Arberry
"Mystical Poems of Rumi 1"
The University of Chicago Press, 1968

* "Reason": Universal Reason, the first emanation of God.
* "Became spirit": or, departed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since it is Sunday let's have a look at the lighter side of translation. The devil's in the Dee-Tales.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

Thanks, Porius.

I have spent the day struggling with poetic phrases so that translation of "Can you please fondle my bum" followed by "Your Lordship I wish to plead incompetence" was just perfect.

>46 anna_in_pdx: How different they all are! so which one do you think is closest, anna?

49: Arberry is the literary/literal translation. Arberry and Nicholson are the two translators that are most often used to get an idea of the literal meaning. They knew Persian well enough to get at least some of the levels of meaning in the verses. Many of the more poetic versions are actually starting out with Arberry/Nicholson, rather than Rumi, because those poets don't know Persian.

Though I love Coleman Barks, I actually think my favorite of the Rumi poets is Nadir Khalili. He unfortunately passed away last year. He was not only a great Rumi translator (very concise and beautiful renderings) but he ran this amazing nonprofit that made ecologically zero-impact buildings.

Translators are the post-horses of Enlightenment.

Pushkin

They spread the knowledge and are therefore vitally important?

Am I interpreting that right?

yes, that's how I understand it.

I have posted some thoughts on translation, prompted by my reading of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin.

I hope it might kickstart this discussion back to life.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2010/01/primary-aim-for-sake-of-which-all.html

I have at long last read the second half of this thread, and I'm very intrigued by all the names and poems you lovely people offer up.

My contribution to the conversation about poetry in multiple translations is Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, which I almost bought the other day but couldn't justify spending $8 for such a thin little book. Also, I had just spent $39 on a bunch of photocopied pages held together with spiral rings - darn supplementary reading packet cost more than the main textbook! But that's neither here nor there...

The book is basically just this:

http://www.chinese-poems.com/deer.html
(contents: original text, word-by-word literal trans, and a sort of a stodgy, pedestrian trans I shall now proceed to ignore)

That little book also includes a brief commentary on each translation of the poem.

Xie tian xie di, what I saw of the book was not obtusely academic or scholarly at all - just a nice, simple poem rendered 19 times.

ETA: I'd also like to note that this poem is quite grammatically simple (any Chinese learners to support/decry?). Wang Wei is famed for clarity of language and beauty of image rather than stylistic complexity.

May I take this opportunity to humbly pimp my own work:

my latest essais on Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin. Includes a close detailed reading of 5 different translations of one stanza from EO. I hope it will be of interest to those occupied with translation.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2010/01/eugene-onegin-5-translations-and.html

I would be interested in your opinion, tomcat--or anyone's--on translations of The Idiot; Pevear and Volokhonsky, Constance Garnet, and Magershack are the ones I know about. I reread the book every few years, and I've read the above versions and have my own amateur opinions, but it would interesting if someone who knew more about the art translation could tell me which they prefer, or don't, and why.

it's been so long since I read the Idiot, and I've never undertaken a close comparison of the different versions. My translation is Magarshack's, I think. The trouble is that every translation has its own good points and bad points. go with what you prefer I think.

sorry can't be more helpful.

Hey y'all--glad to finally have a reason to darken the door of this thread! I just finished reading the Shahnamehof Ferdowsi--the Iranian "Book of Kings", sort of a/thefoundational text in Persian literature, so I undestand--and it was good (oh, be still my heart, was it good), but I was confounded/dismayed at the end to realize that not only had I been reading an abridged version (the whole last "cycle", which deals with real history from about the time of Alexander through the Sassanids to the Arab invasion, was lopped off, leaving the "heroic" stuff), but that the epic had originally be written in verse (as epics should be)--rhyming couplets, to be exact, my favourite--and that the translator, who was named Helen Zimmern and has her own (bare-bones) Wikipedia page and was also the translator of some of Nietzsche and perhaps translated this from German and not direct from Farsi, I don't know, has rendered it in prose.

And I mean, it's decent prose, full of past tenses like "gat" and "sware" and words like "guerdon" and "welkin". This, I understand, reflects the self-consciously archaic style Ferdowsi used, because he wanted to use only words with a certain Persian pedigree, which meant reaching back for anachronistic syllables to many of the naturalized Arabic words then in common use. (Ironically, the result was a literary Persian language that owes a lot to Fedowsi as its first standardizer.) So I guess I have two discussion questions:

1) What do you think about "archaic" translations, whether self-consciously anachronistic like Zimmern's or simply old like e.g. Chapman's Homer, as opposed to current translations, like Fagles' Homer? (Aside from questions of general literary skill and merit, to the degree possible.) As a side question, what do you think about rendering epics and oldtimey stuff in elevated language as opposed to ordinary speech (consider, e.g., the Bible)?

2) What justification can you see for rendering epic poetry into prose? (I should note that the Shahnameh has been translated into verse numerous times, so it's not something intrinsically problematic about Ferdowsi's language or the rhyme scheme)? Would you ever choose a "prosed" epic over its poetic self?

The relevant review, FWIW, and I should stress that this is not a "pimp", is here:

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=booksfallapart

Not an expert in this field by any means, but from the gut I would ask what does the reader wish to get out of the translation? If they are coming to the text for understanding I think the use of modern language would be a must. How many people don't need a translation for "welkin", although it is a perfectly good English word? On the other hand, if the reader is familiar with the text and understands it, a more archaic translation might be preferable for the "old-timey" feel it lends to an "old-timey" document.

I think the efficacy of the translation is bound up in the requirements of the reader.

#59 booksfallapart

Let me, in an indirect answer, quote Nabokov dealing with the issue you outline above, specifically in connection with Pushkin:

"Nabokov maintained the problem to be insoluble and produced a literal version in unrhymed prose lines, substituting for Pushkin's verbal and metrical vivacity a rather curious linguistic vivacity of his own. The effect is not like Pushkin but it is like Nabokov, who is a highly original artist in his own right, and being so great an admirer of Pushkin the two proceed, as it were, on an amiably parallel course. Perhaps this is wiser than grasping the nettle and trying to imitate Pushkin's rhymes and stanza form in English, and Nabokov displayed great contempt for the various gallant attempts that have been made to do so. He even made the point in verse:

What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head;
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead."

All the above is from John Bayley's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, translated by Charles Johnston. (the bolding of course is mine)

Polutropos. There's a good thing on Nabokov's PUSHKIN in the latest ed. of the NY Review of Books. And anything by Robert Nye is excellent, by the way.

I did not wish to put my measly experience in the same post with the august presence of Nabokov and Pushkin.

I have been translating the work of a great Czech poet, Nobel Prize-winning Jaroslav Seifert. More than half of his oeuvre is rhymed. That portion remains by and large untranslated into English by anyone. The translations I have done and feel reasonably confident in, are those of his unrhymed poems. My translations of his rhymed poems are, at the moment, more doggerel than poetry and since I do not wish to promote "profanation of the dead" have not been submitted anywhere.

"Where I sometimes add 'from' to the number in brackets at the bottom of each poem, this is to indicate that in these versions, lines (and sometimes whole stanzas) have been omitted, in an attempt to produce poems that work in English ...Occasionally I compress two of Mandelshtam's poems into one.

from Translator's Preface to Selected Poems by Osip Mandelshtam, the translator is James Greene of whom Nadezhda Mandelshtam says that his translations "are the best".

Translating poetry is really a fraught issue. On my e-mail list where we discuss Rumi's Sufi poetry there have been many rather acrimonious arguments about what constitutes a "translation" and what constitutes too much liberty with the original.

Most of the poetic "translations" of Rumi are more properly thought of as "versions" because they really are taking a whole lot of liberties with the original, sometimes changing an entire metaphor or moving lines around so that the poem sounds like a real poem in English.

Literal translations (like the gold standard for Rumi poetry, J. A. Nicholson's translation) are scholarly, dry, contain lots of explanatory footnotes, and generally don't read like poems at all. Because a lot of our modern Rumi "translators" don't speak Persian at all, they may be working entirely from one of these instead. (This is what Barks was doing for a long time, although now he works with a Persian speaker and has probably learned some Persian of his own as he has been doing this for decades.)

I am glad that Mandelstahm thinks that the person who takes so much liberty with her(?) poems is her (?)best translator. I have a feeling that Rumi would have felt the same. My attitude is, that really poetry is so culturally bound that a *perfect* translation is not achievable, but a *poetic* translation is, and it will not be very "accurate" in terms of the original text.

You cannot translate poetry. A poem is a poem only in its Mother Tongue. Anything else is another poem entirely. This is not to say that I don't admire translations, I simply recognize them for what they are. If Empson said there was 7 types of ambiguity, in a poem translated you lose about 6 1/2, it seems to me. And ambiguity is just one aspect of a poem. This is also not to say that you cannot enjoy a poem translated from one language to another. I hear everyday about Germans who cannot get their fill of Edward Lear.

>65 anna_in_pdx:, 66 very much agreed, and if I'm reading between the lines correctly here, Anna, you're suggesting that a "poetic" translation is preferable to one that strives after semantic/lexical accuracy, since both cannot be adequately had. I agree, but isn't that just another kind of accuracy? Formal accuracy? "Aesthetic" accuracy, assuming that something beautiful more closely approximates the original than sometihng literal and plodding?

>63 polutropos: it seems as though we are all on a similar page--in that context, I feel like going after a prose translation rather than a poetic translation that takes some liberties, is the cheap way out. Perhaps preferable in terms of accurate knowledge of the work for the scholar, but shouldn't anyone with that much concern for accuracy-to-source be learning ot look at the original anyway. I guess I start to see prose translations of poems as an important specialized niche, but totally not preferable for the general reader (you know, me:)

Again, I find myself agreeing with Geneg. (are we both nutters, Gene, or both eminently sensible?)

It depends what the reader wants from the poem. Nabokov's version of Pushkin is simply unreadable as English poetry, in spite of what Bayley says. It works very well as a crib, however, to show the non- Russian reader exactly what is going on linguistically in the poem. Word for word translations of this kind can be very useful for other translators who want to try their hand at a more poetic, paraphrastic version.

The problem wiht Aesthetic accuracy, Martin, as I see it, is that one person's beauty is another person's ugliness. Douglas Hofstadters' translation of Eugene Onegin is a good example. It's horrendous, execrable, laughable, but that's just my opinion.

The best way to read poety in translation, is with two versions: a (prose?) crib, and a more free-er poetic version.

Yes? No?

Not knowledgeable enough to answer your question, Murr, (and my entry here may be a bit off topic) but maybe I can come close to answering the question roundaboutly by citing an example of two translations of four lines by C.P. Cavafy from one his most renowned poems, "The City".

I grew up on Edmund Keeley's/Philip Sherrard's trans (memorized it in fact):

"You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses."

Whereas Daniel Mendelsohn's trans - below - (and all the others I've read of Cavafy) "feels" and falls flat for me:

"You’ll find no new places, you won’t find other shores.
The city will follow you. The streets in which you pace
will be the same, you’ll haunt the same familiar places,
and inside those same houses you’ll grow old."

Note I don't know the Greek, but the former just "sounds better" to me, fwiw. Could just be my familiarity with it and not wanting to let go of what I know, over what, internal-rhyme-wise, may, in fact, be a superior translation. Not knowing the Greek, again, impossible for me to say.

# 68 Murr
"The best way to read poetry in translation, is with two versions: a (prose?) crib, and a more free poetic version."

YES!

As long as the crib is faithful, it then gives options to the reader who wishes to go beyond. It in fact allows him to make his own choices in keeping with his own aesthetic values. The Hofstadter translation of Onegin is one example. Beauty in the eye of the beholder? I am sure there are readers who would argue that what is execrable and laughable to you, is, I don't know, beautiful? Or at least wonderful in some way you do not see. But it does require the original crib to be able to make the judgment in the first place.

Another example that comes to mind is the Anne Carson version of "An Oresteia". Sacrilege, say I, and many others. Hokey, colloquial, modernized nonsense. But it speaks to some, and is celebrated.

Five versions of the same passage:

Lattimore's Oresteia:

Is it some grace — or otherwise — that you have heard
to make you sacrifice at messages of good hope?
I should be glad to hear, but must not blame your silence.

Peter Meineck:

Have you heard some good news, some new hope? Is this why you are making these sacrifices? We would be grateful to hear, but will respect your silence.

Philip Vellacott:

Have you received some message? Do these sacrifices rise for good news, give thanks for long hope re-assured? I ask in love; and will as loyally receive answer or silence.

Ted Hughes:

What is the news? Good or bad? That kindles the fires on all these altars. Or is it only a rumour? One more rumour? We hardly dare ask, but our loyalty makes us bold.

Anne Carson:

So you got good news?
You’re optimistic?
Tell me, unless you don’t want to.

Anne Carson: I think this is what she really meant:

So you got good news, dude?
You’re optimistic, right, man?
Tell me, unless you like really don’t want to, motherfucker..

junky stuff for a junky age.

god help us!

Begin rant

With a decent K-12 education system in this country, we wouldn't need translations of either the ancient Greeks or the Romans. They would be our introductions to the humanities. After all, they did create the fundament upon which Western Civilization stands. More importantly they educated those giants who founded this, the greatest nation on earth. But, alas, we are more interested in nerds, educated by modern Gradgrinds with no knowledge of, or interest in, how we should all live together and what their new technological achievements are likely to yield in terms of how well we live together. Today we have people who can read the genetic code, but want to copyright it so they can sell our own natural processes back to us a dollar at a time. No wonder the ill-informed and uneducated are so lost in the modern world. We inhabit a world in which the stoopids are in charge.

I've seen many a utilitarian argument put forward as "modern logical/rational thought" by people unaware that their operating philosophy was tried and disposed of nearly 200 years ago. I think we live in a country in which Jeremy Bentham would be pleased. Just look around. We are like mushrooms. The Oligarchs keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit. That way, I guess, lies universal harmony and happiness. Hah! We are each responsible for our own happiness, in our own way. We don't learn that from a science book, we learn it from Plato, from Aristotle, from Homer, from Sophocles, from Jesus, for Heaven's sake, from the authors of the Mahabarata, from Lao Tzu, from Ovid (with a side of our own helplessness in the hands of fate), from people who observed human behavior and made educated guesses and assumptions about what it meant to be human. Not from people who can nail 2 + 2 = 4, sixteen ways from Sunday. Yet, do we teach our kids from this font of wisdom? No, we teach them in the school of Gradgrind. This makes it nearly impossible for them to think for themselves when confronted with situations where the facts are less important than the circumstances.

Until we stop talking about improving science and math scores as a way of improving "education", I don't want to hear about it. When we decide to educate our kids in subjects such as, "The Meaning of Honor", or "Why Character Counts", or "Greed: The Road to Serfdom" we are never going to be the kind of country we think we wish to be, and the Oligarchs will continue to mine our best minds for the purpose of their own aggrandizement.

Ask a Tea-Partier what an Oligarch is or who they are. That's what makes them so sad. Their hearts are in the right place, but they aren't educated well enough to know when they are being manipulated and used by those who decidedly do not have the average American's well being at heart. We teach our kids how to count beans, but we don't teach them to ask why the beans should be counted and who they belong to. Just count. I'll give you bread and circuses, but you just count. We don't live authentic lives and don't know it. Authenticity and a sense of worthwhile accomplishment lead to happiness, not cheating in every aspect of life. He who dies with the most toys is a loser, a poor sucker who thought he could find happiness in things while missing the essential element that toys only facilitate happiness, they don't in and of themselves create it. Happiness is a quality excavated from deep within, nurtured and brought to bloom through understanding, not things. Science doesn't teach understanding or wisdom, only knowledge. We only arrive at understanding and wisdom through knowing our own humanity. I dare say those Native Americans who lived here ten thousand years ago were just as happy, if not moreso, than we are today. And they made their toys themselves. They knew the value of toys, not much.

end of rant.

Sorry about that. I'm going to let it stand because I have need to say it every few months, but I despise this artificial dichotomy between science and math on the one hand and the humanities on the other. It's backwards. Science doesn't advance the quality of life, the humanities do. Science creates money, that's all. And only the humanities teach the proper value and uses of money.

Gene for Dictateur! Vive le Dictateur!!

And all kidding aside, Gene, well said. Thanks.

>73 geneg: indeed, well said, and as somebody who had that humanist education in high school (although not Greek and Latin, more's the pity), I always thought a (fully funded, natch) liberal-arts BA before professional specialization should be the birthright of a citizen in wealthy Western societies such as ours. (And wouldn't it be good for the common weal, too.) I don't know if I quite agree that science only creates money, although it is bracingly social-materialist of you to say so--surely science and the arts can advance the quality of life in tandem. My quality of life would hit the shitter fast if somebody reverse-invented eyeglasses, although I guess I could still be an artisan or scribe (until the Mongols slew the shit out of me).

And >68 tomcatMurr:, certainly not arguing for any reductive aesthetics of language, but certainly beauty in whatever form, a Schroedinger's cat, a prayer, should be admissible as one of a translator's goals.

>75 MeditationesMartini: absolutely, I'm not saying it shouldn't at all, but I'm saying that basing a theory of translation on aesthetics alone is simply not enough.

One of the things that bothers me about Hofstadter and Carson and their dreadful ilk is that their aesthetics is based on the now, whereas I firmly believe it should be based on the time the work was written. Imposing the mores and aesthetics of today upon a work that was written in 1830 or in the 5th century BC is vulgar in the extreme and completely traduces the original, and ruins any response I might want to have to the original.

No?

>73 geneg: Geneg,

No wonder the ill-informed and uneducated are so lost in the modern world

I consider myself well- informed(ish) and well educated(ish), but I feel COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY LOST in the modern world. What shall the ones like us do?

Apart from that caveat, I agree with every word of your magnificent, Dostoevskyan rant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ZZU6-30Qo

67, 68:

No, I don't think a poetic translation or "version" is necessarily better, but I do think it can convey the power of the original in a way that a literal one cannot.

I agree it is optimal to have both a poetic rendering (or two or three) and a literal one (or more than one) of the original, in order to really delve into the poem. I love doing this.

Anyone else spent hours at this website? :)
http://fleursdumal.org/

72: I think the final version is too cutesy too. Unless the object is to teach poetry to very young children, in which case it might be appropriate.