Using My Powers for Good & not Evil (II)
Anxiety, dejection, depression, indifference, melancholia, twitching, withdrawal; call it what you may, I suffer from it. For far too many countless days I have sent my body out under this cursed ashen sky only on autopilot. In these plaguing moods I spend all my waking energies just trying to stay level and balanced.
It has been a good friend and a good verb, to try. It does not require me to triumph, succeed, arrive victorious. No, just an unending attempt at doing something. As long as I have the energy to keep throwing myself blindly into the fray, I will keep trying. But there is never an terminus, end, conclusion to any of this. This is the myth of arrival after all. My own personal demon.
Still, for all my trying, each night I lay tossing in bed, sleepless for hours, tormented about imaginary slights or insults that occurred earlier that day or week or month. It is silly, I know. I laugh about it and make light of the situation with my friends and loved ones, but it still happens. I wish I were as strong as Zora Neal Hurston, who said, "No, I do not weep at the world; I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife." Yes, I still weep and my buckling shoulder muscles are still filled with interminable knots.
Like certain chemical imbalances, I spend my days swearing that with just a little more vitamin D or melatonin or whatever it is that controls my brain, just a little more of something and all this would be moot. In a perfect world I would stride across this barren wasteland heedless of what others said or thought about me. I write bad sonnets? Too bad, my friend. You don't like my translations? Deal with it. Why waste your breath attacking your friends when there are real people in this real world committing real acts of violence? So what if I'm misinterpreting Neruda? As Antler said: "… Tell it to the fact more women raped in America every year than poetry books sold every year …" Yes, we should all deal with this.
But it is now time to go to work and this seems to get overshadowed by that grizzled cloud that hangs low over me. Today I am curious about this criticism I received the night before. Laura, whoever she is, writes:
You can't put in your own poetry and call it a translation, no matter how poetic it is. Please don't call these translations. Your misrepresenting my beloved Pablo.
My beloved Pablo? The capitalist in me agrees with this sentiment (and the tyrant claims that ownership is three-tenths of the law) but the socialist in me balks at the idea of other people claiming ownership over another, even if it is just words. Maybe especially if it is words. I would like to think Pablo would agree, he is everyone's; even the plebeian translator's.
I approached Neruda's Odas like I approached Garcia Lorca's Gypsy Ballads; because of the fifty or so of the odes available on-line, only 30% have been translated into English. Take, for example, Neruda's Ode to the Air. It hasn't even been completely translated in any book (or if it has I cannot find it), let alone free on-line for anyone who would like to read it. Marilyn Hacker said: "a bad translation is better than no translation at all." Isn't it time someone translated this ode?
However, this raises the question: why do we need new translations? Shouldn't one be enough? Why are some translations so exciting to the ear and others dead and lifeless? Is the job of the translator to simply render literally, line by line, the poem from one language to the other or to take liberties to get the essence of the poem? Should I just feed non-English poetry into bablefish.com, which will produce what is written verbatim on the page but might end up sounding like gobbledygook in a new language?
My professor at UNLV suggested the best friend of a translator are other people's translations. See what you like. Do you agree a "river" is different from a "creek"? Which one sounds better to the ear? But translations are not simply the poem written verbatim. A translation takes in all the poet's innuendos, exaggerations, ironical caricatures, word play, satirizing, glorification and mythologizing in the mother tongue and brings it into the new language. Eric McMillan writes:
The translator must try to understand every nuance in the original text and then figure out how to communicate compactly each of those nuances in the translation. But the hard truth is that he or she can never be entirely successful. The translator thus has to make delicate choices as to which nuances to keep and which to drop in order to keep the overall meaning intact.
So should only masters of the native language try their hands at translations? I am neither a master of Spanish, nor for that matter, English. In an article on the difficulties of translating, A trick worthy of Houdini: poets and translators on translation Martijn Meijer reports that the Dutch poet and translator Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer said in an interview:
"The most difficult part of translating … is recreating the semantic aura surrounding the lines of poetry."
… What at first glance may seem to be a translation error, might also be a brilliant solution, as long as it works. Petlevski herself has seen how a translator misread a word in her own text, yet the result of the mistranslation added something to the original.
So should we be welcoming mistakes? Is there room enough in this world for error or is it as Laura states: "don't change the original words. estuvo is passed. its written in the past tense. you don't have the right to change that." Indeed?
Let us look at three translations and see what we agree with. We shall only look at one line from Garcia Lorca's Romance Sonámbulo:
Verde que te quiero verde.
This is perhaps one of the most famous lines of Spanish poetry ever written. Thus, to follow the argument set against me, there should be only one way to translate this verse. However, not one translator can agree to what that way is. Christopher Maurer translates it as: "Green, I want you green." Stephen Spender and J.L. Gili render it as: "Green, how much I want you green" and I have even seen some anonymous posting on the Internet that read: "Green, how I need you, green." All this simply proves is that poetry can be rendered into as many different ways as there are translators.
Perhaps that is all I can think of to say on the subject. But Laura, my friend, whoever you are and where ever you are, again I thank you for allowing me to consider different ways to see this problem and think about new ways to make poetry an enjoyable experience. Please write if you want. I am curious what you have to say.
December 30th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Neruda is my beloved, he is your beloved, he is the everybody’s beloved. Come off it. I wasn’t trying to capitalisticly hold him for myself at all. ITs just that there are many people out here who care for Pablo deeply. We need all the translations we can get. “A translation goes on to infinity,” said Gregory Rabassa, translator of Garcia Marquez and others. But you can’t put your own poetry into a translation and call it a translation. If Neruda wanted to write a poem in the past tense (United Fruit Co.) because its a historic happening thats part of the history he is interpretating in Canto General, don’t put it in the present tense in your “translation”
I completely disagree with Marilyn Hacker saying a bad translation is better than none at all. As a translator, you take on the responisbilty of representing the original, part of what you are translating is the duende poetry of the poem, the beauty of the poem–turning a great poem into a bad poem just for the sake of translating is a crime–take Ben Bellit’s Neruda “translations”–consensuly agreed as awful “interpretations” But thousands buy those books and think that that poetry is Pablo’s poetry. It is not. Check out Alastair Reid’s translations, or “The Essential Neruda”–you can learn from them. Keep at it. Paz y feliz ano nuevo,
L.
December 30th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Any time I am allowed to get a glimpse into other poet’s passion for their craft I am always delighted, even if that passion is far different than my own. I thank you, Laura, for sharing your time and energy on this subject.
To begin with, though I am hungry to learn, I am a student here, an amateur. I state that over and over throughout my blog. I have never once pretended to have a mastery over any language. I do have some ideas and a lot of questions, though. What is, exactly, a “translation”? What is an “adaptation,” for that matter? Are they one and the same? We throw these words around as if there is an universal acceptance on what these terms mean, but I cannot find two people who seem to be in agreement. So let us say there are many different approaches to translating and the arguments Laura puts forth here are as just as legitimate as the ones I bring; this is a conversation, these are points of view.
I fall into the “Coleman Barks School of Translating.” When I read his versions of Rumi’s poetry I am there with that Sufi mystic. They speak to me in a way that other Rumi translations do not. I, too, want to burn with fervor, call on my Beloved, set off looking for my Shams. And not just me, but loads of people seem moved by Barks’ translation, full of sensuality, passion, duende. It could be argued that Barks is not being literal to the originals. But for whatever reasons, the translations of Rumi’s work by other (yes, surely more faithful, literal, traditional) scribes leave me cold. Why is that? Should I turn my back on Barks’ work because they are not as literal?
The more I think about it, the more the terms “translation” and “adaptation” seem suppressive, arbitrary, shortsighted. All translations, regardless of their “literalness,” are the work of another person, not the poet. Thus, to claim to “know” what the poet “meant” is a conceit. Perhaps because I grew up being frustrated at certain levels with the English language (my only tongue, in case you couldn’t guess) I am rather meandering when it comes to choosing my words. This can be both a strength and weakness, but I seem to like it in others when it comes to passing on linguistic information.
Take another Neruda translator, Stephen Mitchell’s rendering of “Gilgamesh.” He states in his introduction that he does not know ancient Sumerian, but wanted to bring the story to a modern audience regardless. Mitchell pointed out older translation of the epic poem were subject to social and cultural forces just like the rest of us (even ones by translators who were skilled in Sumerian) and thus the translators introduced to the poem the same fixed cadences and iambic rhyme schemes that almost all Greco-Roman poetry was being translated in at that time. Mitchell’s translations take those forms away. Is it a translation now? Is it an adaptation? What can I say? For me it functions as a translation; rhyming couplets were popular at one time, now they sound rather stilted. One can ask (like Barks) if Mitchell is being ethical, honest, literal to the original? No, he is not. It seems Mitchell sacrificed some of the poem’s original linguistic devices, structure, style to make it flow to the modern ear.
Is that problematic? I do not know. Laura, you take a rather fundamental (dare I say puritan?) stand on this business of translating. Your write: “you take on the responisbilty of representing the original, part of what you are translating is the duende poetry of the poem, the beauty of the poem—turning a great poem into a bad poem just for the sake of translating is a crime.”
No, I disagree. Rape is a “crime.” Killing another human is a “crime.” A bad translation? It is a sad statement of our culture that the act of presenting ones talent (however limiting in skill) or even simply educating oneself, in other words the art of learning in all its myriad of complex, perplexing, profound ways, has ever be seen as a “crime” (this borders on the grim world of Thought Police, a fascist system as there ever was, even if it the year 2006) — though I admit we do not treat our students with the love and encouragement they desperately need.
I will close on a remark I heard Philip Levine make this year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at a reading with C.K. Williams. He was asked if a poet was afraid of producing bad poetry how could they ever move forward with their skills? Levine shrugged and said: “Go ahead, write bad poetry for chrissake, it’s not like your hurting anyone.” I think I shall take that stance as well. I am merely a student here, learning.
December 31st, 2005 at 12:21 am
I’m finding this absolutely fascinating, in the way that I find all such things that have no simple answers fascinating. I think translation is such a strange beast, a philosophical tangle…where aesthetics run and jump alongside ontology. Certainly it seems there is the question of what tickles the ear in the new language…a poem that sounds clunky fails as a poem, period, however faithful the translation. But then there is that matter of ontology - what about the poem is “real” and “knowable.” And isn’t that an interesting can of worms? Because if the essence of a poem is much more than its literal meaning, something that transcends content alone, then we could say that the original poet is him/herself a translator of sorts. Poets are not journalists, although some poems give us the news. So it seems to me that questions of “fact” in most poetry can be pretty dicey. Was Pablo really thinking of a river, or maybe his own mental image was of a creek…but he decided that rio fit the overall need of his verse better. The point is: can we know? In lieu of being able to know, what are the boundaries? Where is that borderlien? There must be some sort of line that one can cross in which most people would agree that the spirit of the poem is violated, but what is it? Is it definable?
I think river is a lovely word, maybe it would have worked as well in your translation. Does “creek” violate the spirit of the poem? Well, not to me…but that just tells me that I’m looking for the borderline in a different place than Laura is. If the translation fails on an aesthetic level, if using the word “creek” is not just imprecise but tone-deaf, then we’re back on more basic poetry-criticism-ground, and can have that discussion.
Similarly, I think a more interesting discussion is not, e.g., “La United Fruit Company (the original) is written in past tense, it is a historical poem, end of story” but rather: what does it mean for the poem to be shifted to present tense? In a sense, even knowing that the poem is written in past tense in the original, I find the present-tense version quite powerful. Maybe because it is now in present tense. Yes, Neruda wrote the poem in reaction to an event that happened in his time, now many years ago. And yet this poem could be written now. This poem didn’t happen: it is *always* happening. One might still argue that this shift violates the “reality” of the poem. And one might argue that it does not. I don’t know where this reality lives, or how to pinpoint in words how I know for myself when the subtler laws of meaning are broken, and when (again for myself) they aren’t.
December 31st, 2005 at 4:07 pm
a little note on you bringing up lorca’s verde, que te quiero verde. yes, there lies the art of translation where you can have infinite versions, because it has no direct translation into english. but the examples I brought up are different because there are direct translations of words like llegar, invierno, and rio, with no need for interpretation. As to Shelby’s interesting comments, yes, it is interesting reading United Fruit Co in the present, but that’s not translation. thats changing the poem. if you took a political poem thats written in english in the past tense, and turn it into the present, its an interesting poem, but it is an alteration of the poem. when someone lables a poem as a “translation” you have the responsibility not to be making radical changes, as interesting as they may be, unless you label it as such, and then its an “adaptation” not a translation
feliz ano nuevo everybody,
L.
December 31st, 2005 at 4:20 pm
This is a fascinating conversation! I am curious what you think, Laura, about the difficulties of translating a formal or structured poem from one language to another? You say about changing tenses: “that’s not translation. thats changing the poem” — and Neruda’s Odas are in easy free verse — but how do you “translate” a sonnet or some other form of formal or structured verse?
I have been working on Garcia Lorca’s Sonetos del amor oscuro for some time but logically, if I was to take the argument that I was only to work with “direct translations of words” then the end result will no longer be a sonnet. The rhymes do not translate in English. However, with a little “tweaking” I can still keep the essence of Federico’s poetry and keep a it a traditional sonnet. But am I breaking any taboos by doing this? Are all “translations” of formal poems really crude “adaptations”? If that is the case, poor Willis Barnstone! His wonderful book “6 Master of the Spanish Sonnet: translations and essays” really aren’t translations by that reasoning (but I still love what he did regardless).
I, personally, would rather read a good sonnet that might not be verbatim what the poet wrote but, in Emily Dickinson’s words, still “blew the top of my head off,” versus a bland translation that was faithful to the original but could not delight, sing, or rollick due to some fundamental dictum that prohibited us from doing justice to other’s words.
December 31st, 2005 at 4:45 pm
one other point that i may not have made clear. Zachary, I am not saying that you shouldn’t try translations, that you shouldn’t have fun and change them around. But keep those to yourself or label them differently. You take on a huge responsibility by publishing it on the web and calling it a translation, for people will google for Neruda and those poems and read them with trust that its a faithful translation.
December 31st, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Again, I thank you, Laura, for your time and point of view. I rarely get to meet other people who are concerned about the state of poetry today, even less those who take a stand such as you have. I recall a warning by Virgil Suarez that I hold very dear: “be careful who you insult or sleep with in the poetry world; there’s only about 800 of us who seriously read and consider poetry, word gets around.”
I try to be careful but I think anyone who gets me to think outside my box is a valuable ally, regardless.
However, I am curious about this statement of yours: “You take on a huge responsibility by publishing it on the web and calling it a translation, for people will google for Neruda and those poems and read them with trust that its a faithful translation.”
Not to be flippant but I thought only undergraduate students surfing the ‘Net to cut and paste essays for the next day’s assignment would take what I present at face value. Nowhere on my blog do I claim to have a mastery of Spanish and if I have not posted a giant red sign reading: “Caution, Amateur at Work!!” it has more to do with a misplaced fashion sense than anything else.
Perhaps it is the way I view blogs, especially poetry blogs, which seem often to be nothing more than sounding boards to complain about jobs, children or love lives (or lack there of). Sometimes there are drafts of poems that appear or even personal manifestos, but blogs all have a very “rough draft” presentation for me; they are very different than published magazines, both on-line and in print, which (to me) are rather well-prepared, professional, even technical, in what they present to the world.
But I could be wrong! Perhaps my view of poetry blogs is a tad cynical? If I took the approach that everything I presented had to be as professional as if it were going into an academic journal, I am not sure what I would do. Panic? Stop writing? Give up taking chances?
Believe me, if I had friends who were proficient in Spanish I would workshop my translations before posting them. Who wants to look like an idiot, cretin, simpleton even if it is all in good humor? But I do not have any friends who can help me, so I make do with what I have; this blog and enough honesty to say that I am new to all this. If I make mistakes along the way, so be it, but most of the time I do not really feel responsible for the entire Internet world if one or two people choose to misrepresent what I post here. Or should I? Hmmm … maybe I need to get that giant red sign sooner than I thought?