Using My Powers for Good & not Evil
It probably happens to everyone at some point. I've seen responses to it that were down right vile and knee jerkily reactionary. I admit I am on doddering grounds here, went in with apprehension about my own skills and talents and last night finally got a response that said, in effect, "Yes, you are right, you don't really have a clue."
I am talking, of course, about constructive criticism. I am talking about my lack of mastery over the Spanish language when it comes to what I have been laboring over this past month, my "translations" of various non-English poets. Particularly, Pablo Neruda.
Last night I got this e-mail from someone who goes by the name of ">Laura concerning my translation of Neruda's La Poesía:
I feel in your “translations” you take far too much poetic license. Adaptations are one things, but in presenting poems to readers who don’t understand the original language as a “translate” you can not alter words. For example in this poem llegar doesn’t mean wander. it means arrive. if neruda wanted to say wander, he would have used a word like vagar. A river is different from a creek. Invierno is winter, not frost. Silencio is not serenity, it is silent. And that’s just the first five lines or so. You can’t put in your own poetry and call it a translation, now matter how poetic it is. Please don’t call these translations. Your misrepresenting my beloved Pablo.
This wasn't what I wanted to hear when I got home from work at ten minutes before midnight after a long night of cleaning up continual vomit and bloody feces from one of my residents who is on her way out. After all, in the grand scheme of crimes against humanity, poor translations hopefully are a forgivable crime. Still, this response was mild, even kind, compared what Ron Silliman received from Franz Wright a week or so ago that starts: "You're so full of shit, Ron. Are you kidding, or do you really not hear the pathetic absurdity of terms like "Gang of Eight"? It's embarrassing, & you're misleading young American idiots with no knowledge of history. There's no conspiracy–your work is just tremendously, cruelly tedious, and nobody but a linguistic technician could read it for more than five minutes without dying of boredom" … and we talk of living in a community! Ai!
This does raise some interesting questions for me; is a poor translation better than no translation? If we don't try our hands at an activity how will we ever know if we can enjoy it, even if the results are less than what others want or desire from us? However, to make her point again, Laura wrote a second response last night to my work on Neruda's La United Fruit Co.:
again–don't change the original words. estuvo is passed. its written in the past tense. you don't have the right to change that.
I know I am taking this all out of context. The poems are not here in front of you to judge for yourself. But I am not attacking Laura, in fact, I say, "thank you, Laura." You are right, I should use my powers for good and not evil. I have taken down all my Neruda "translations" (with the exception of three poems I am just in love with and if they are so terrible that I hear more cries of torment and pain from others I will take them down, too).
Personally, I think Neruda would be entertained, amused, even tolerant at all this; but what do I know, really? We must all start somewhere. Someday I would like to think I will have the resources and time to submerge myself in a Spanish speaking culture that would allow me a better understanding and mastery of the language so I could re-attempt Neruda's Odas. This is all a learning experience.