Translations — Tiburón’s Wave
Around five years ago, while living in Las Vegas1 I fell in love with Carcharodon carcharias, the Great White Shark. It happened in the same manner other people fall in chocolate, Jesus and pet rocks "Obsession," might be a better word. Sharks appeared in my dreams, my poetry, even my magazine subscriptions. I began to plan a way to go on one of those shark diving tours where you go in the little cage into the cold ocean and wait until the sharks are swimming all around you and then stick out your hand and pet them. It is a well known fact Great Whites fall into a stupor after getting their noses rubbed; that their ampullae de lorenzini, which permits them to detect electromagnetic fields emitted by the movement of other living animals, somehow goes crazy and the shark appears to fall asleep and float away for several minutes. The more I studied their behavior, the more similarities I found with my own house-cat. I even found an on-line database Fishbase with dozens of regional and vernacular names for Great Whites; fueling my imagination for weeks:
"Cação-anequim" in Brazilian Portuguese;
"Canavar baligi" in Turkish;
"噬人鯊" in Mandarin Chinese;
"Devorador de hombres" in Cuban Spanish;
"Grand requin blanc" in French;
"K'wet'thenéchte" in Canadian British Columbian Salish;
"Karish lava" in Hebrew;
"Kelb il - Bahar Abjad" in Maltese;
"Peshkagen njeringrenes" in Albanian;
"Rechin mancator de oameni" in Romanian;
"Σμπρίλιος" or "Skylópsaro sbríllios" in Greek;
"Weißer Hai" in German;
"Tunnu palamitu di funnu" in Italian;
"Witdoodshaai" in Afrikkaans;
"Zarlacz ludojad" in Polish;
"Tiburón blanco" in Mexican Spanish.
One of the best books on the subject of Great Whites, Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, The Great White Shark (1991) is both easily accessible to the beginning Weißer Hai aficionado or the life-long Carcharodon carcharias geek. There is not, curiously enough, very much poetry on the subject of sharks2. There's Herman Melville's The Maldive Shark; E. J. Pratt's The Shark; and The Great White Shark Poem by Queensland poet Michael Sariban: "Twenty fathoms below, sexier/ than the squid, more celebrated than coral,…"
I am, of course, limited in what I can personally translate. Knowing only one other language, Eastern Armenian, and marginally at that, I questioned whether translating a poem concerning an animal that there isn't even a word for in Hayeren3 made sense? Spanish tiburón sounded wonderful to my ear; however, shark is "շնաձուկ" in Armenian — "shna'dzook" phonetically — "great" is "մեծ" and "white" is "սպիտակ" but is "Մեծ Սպիտակ Չնաձուկ" Armenian for Great White Shark? I asked my ever-patient tutor, Lucine Petrosyan (Լուսիմե Պետրոսյան), a cello player at Michigan State University and she said I should stick with the general term for shark.
| Tiburón’s Wave | «Չնաձկան Ալիքը» | |
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I. Tiburón’s waves, rising, falling. Your body the only warmth in miles of ocean. |
I. Չնաձկան ալիքները, բարձրանալով, իջնելով: Քո մարմինը միակ ջերմությունն է օվկիանոսի մղոններում: |
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II. This should be a movie; then we could open the doors of her face, a beastly flower. For three days the fog shut down the coast, winds increased to a gale. Waves, not Tiburón’s, rose high among the waters, a pulse in the sea. This is the binding syntax used to say this: |
II. Սա պետք է կինոնկար լինի, զզվելի մի ծաղիկ: Արդեն երեք օր է մառախուղը ծածկել է ափը, քամինրը հասել են փոթորիկի ուծգնության: Ծովային զարկերակը՝ ալիբները, թայց ոչ շնաձկան, բարձրանում են ջրերից: Սա պարտավորեցնող խոսքեր ենց որ նշանակում են հետևյալը. |
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III. If only her belly did not hang. A still-life: Pup with yolk sac. If only she wasn’t |
III. Դթե միայն նրա որովայնը չկխվր: Կյանքի մի կադր՝ |
Note: these are the stanzas we've worked out so far of a much longer poem. Updated 10/2/05 to put the original and translation side-by-side - hooray for learning html!!