[New-Poetry] Re: Alex's comment re: translation / Tranströmer

[Crisman Cooley]

I doubt that I'm adding to the accumulated knowledge on the  
subject, ... ;) that said,

You represent one philosophy of translation as I understand it, that  
is, that the translation should be a new and beautiful edifice in its  
own right.  Another school of thought says that the translation  
should represent the original as accurately as the lexicon and sound  
palette of second language can manage.  There's a lot of room between  
these two.

I haven't done any published translation but I've read enough French  
and Spanish to see definite difficulties of certain kinds of  
translations, for example of what I've read Lorca and Rimbaud seem  
especially difficult, and, to me anyway, sometimes sound silly in  
English.  The most recent translation I read was Ted Hughes'  
translation of Racine's _Phèdre_.  I do not miss the alexandrine  
couplets, and only sometimes feel sad about Hughes' English word  
choices.

Here's a poem by Rimbaud and a utilitarian translation by Koch that,  
if you can't hear the French, makes you wonder why anyone would write  
it:

Fleures

    D'un gradin d'or - parmi les cordons de soie, les gazes grises, les
velours verts et les disques de cristal qui noircissent comme du bronze
au soleil, - je vois la digitale s'ouvrir sur un tapis de filigranes  
d'argent,
d'yeux et de chevelures.
    Des pièces d'or jaune semées sur l'agate, des piliers d'acajou
supportant un dôme d'émeraudes, des bouquets de satin blanc et de
fines verges de rubis entourent la rose d'eau.
    Tels qu'un dieu aux énormes yeux bleus et aux formes de neige, la
mer et le ciel attirent aux terrasses de marbre la foule des jeunes et
fortes roses.


Flowers

    From a step of gold -- amid silk cords, grey gauzes,
green velvets, and crystal disks which turn black the way bronze
does in the sun--I see the foxglove open on a rug of silver filigree,
eyes, and flowing hair.
    The water rose is surrounded by yellow gold coins scattered on  
agate, mahogany pillars
holding up a dome made out of emeralds, bouquets of white satin and
thin wands of rubies.
    Like a god with enormous blue eyes and a body of snow, the
ocean and the sky attract the crowd of young
and strong roses to the marble terraces.

*******

Throughout, Fleurs rings like a gamelan with these sustained tones,  
such as:
1. D'un gradin d'or (the "d'un, din, d'or")
2. gazes grises ("ahz, eez")
3. velours verts (velours 2 syllables compress into 1: verts)
4. yeux et de chevelures (succession of vowels: eux, de, che, ve, ure)

Turns to paste in Koch:
1. step of gold (clunk!)
2. grey gauzes (well, that sounds pretty good)
3. green velvets (eeks!)
4. eyes and flowing hair (runs along, but doesn't ring...)

What this exercise demonstrates does not negate what you're saying--  
it simply shows that there are limitations to judgments we can make  
about the original poem when hearing it in English.  That's what I  
was saying about Tranströmer -- that I could only form judgments of  
the translations and based on attention to esthetic details.  This is  
more so with the great eary poets -- imagine trying to render Yeats  
in Russian or Shakespeare in German.  Mein gott!





> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 10:09:34 -0800 (PST)
> From: Alexander Dickow <alexdickow9 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 30, Issue 29
>
> "One huge
> impediment is that I cannot speak Swedish.  How much
> of a poem is
> translatable seems to vary by poem and poet, but not
> having the
> original sound or native sense, it is impossible to
> tell how much has
> come across."
>
> Alas, alack. This perception has done so much harm to
> translation: we read them, and think we are trying to
> read some other text "through" them. Why can these
> translations not stand alone, as poems in their own
> right? The very best poetic translations, after all,
> are so much akin to rewritings. New poems, built on
> top of an old one, but why not forget the ruins under
> the foundation?
> Alternatively, one might wonder what's under the
> foundations of any old poem, as though it were a
> mistranslation, already.
> Yours,
> Alex
>
>
> www.alexdickow.net/blog/
>
>   les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
>   merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet
>