Translation Problem - Poem - Project with Elisa's students

Transliteration of our poem for me, Gabby, and Jenna.

"Prima dei corvi"
"Before of crows"

Un attimo prima dei corvi
Just a second/moment before crows

nel calore dei gialli, nelle strade
into heat of yellow, into straight/road

di grano maturo, nell'ultimo sole,
of grain ripe, into the last sun,

ho visto venire la notte con occhi di gufo.
I saw coming the night with eyes of owl.

Ecco il prezzo del caldo:
Here/there it is the price of the heat:

un cielo di cupa minaccia, l'azzurro di un dio
a sky of blue cloudy/ominous/gloomy menace/threatening, the blue of God

inesistente, e dentro l'azzurro due gorghi,
extinct and inside the blue two whirlpools,

due aquile cieche.
two eagles blind.

Ma ho accettato, lo sai:
But I agreed/accepted, you know:

incubi, orecchie, anche il marchio d'infamia,
nightmares, ears, also the label/brand/mark of infamous,

solo per essere qui, adesso,
only for to be here, now

per dire che c'ero
in order to say that I was there.

Translation Question - Week 3- Literal Translation

Consider the comment: “The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase” (113), particularly in light of Schleiermacher, Borges, Jakobson, and Eco. What particular baggage does Nabokov bring to bear on this argument? What does he mean, for example, by a literal translation’s supposed “use” value? What, in other words, lurks behind that comment? What does it tell us about Nabokov’s theories of translation?

Nabokov’s theories of translation are in direct opposition to those espoused by pretty much everyone else we’ve read. It’s clear that Nabokov is not concerned with the entertainment/pleasure derived from reading a translated text, but only its educational value. He wants to “move the reader toward [the writer]” (Schleiermacher 49). He completely eschews the form and “sense” of a text, not wanting to recreate an experience for the reader, but simply the words on the page. As he says, “the original text will not be able to soar and sing; but it can be very nicely dissected and mounted, and scientifically studied in all its organic details” (119). Ugh. This is not how I want to see my literature, at least not all of the time. In fact, Nabokov believes that the translator shouldn’t worry about the “spirit” of a text at all, saying “’if the letter has killed the spirit,’ there must have been something wrong either with the original letter or the original spirit” (123). This is a stark contrast to what Eco proposed in “Sameness in Reference” and “Stylistic Values and Expressive Substance.” Even Borges, who had criticisms of each of the translators he mentioned, championed the respective value of each version. He seems to believe that the most important thing about translating The Thousand And One Nights was not making a perfect literal translation, but emphasizing “the atmosphere of magic” (95). Nabokov would likely respond by saying that the translation should be absolutely literal, and the magic will either come through or it won’t. It isn’t his concern.

It seems that Nabokov’s intention is for literature and translation to be activities of the elite, only enjoyed by academics interested in learning all there is to know about the source culture. Perhaps this is not surprising considering that he was born into an elite family, spoke three languages from childhood, and had the luxury of a stellar education. I also couldn’t help but wonder if his attitude had anything to do with the political climate of the day and the personal toll that changing political climes had taken on his life. This article/book was written in 1955. The Russia of Nabokov’s childhood was gone. He had been forced out of his country (1917); his father was killed as part of an attempted political assassination (1922). Russia’s male population had been decimated by the fighting in World War II. Russia was now communist and part of the Soviet Union, and it was the height of the Cold War. I say all of that to say, it seems that Nabokov might be speaking from a place where he feels like the history, culture, and literature of Russia is at risk and must be preserved at all costs. If so, then that raises the stakes for literal translation. The act of educating people of other cultures about your culture through its literature (via “translations with copious footnotes”) becomes a way to ensure its preservation. Just a thought.

Translation Problem - Jhumpa Lahiri "Venezia"

 Translation Problem - Jhumpa Lahiri "Venezia"

A Venezia non posso muovermi senza attraversare innumerevoli ponti pedonali.

At Venice I don’t/I can’t to move without to cross/to go across/to pass through innumerable pedestrian bridges.

All’inizio dover attraversare un ponte quasi ogni due minuti mi affatica.

At the beginning [I must/I have to] to cross/to go across a bridge almost/nearly every minute tires me.

Mi sembra un percorso atipico, leggermente difficile.

It seems to me a run/distance/way atypical, lightly/slightly difficult/hard

In poco tempo, però, mi abituo.

In little time, but/yet, I get used to it.

Pian piano questo percorso diventa abituale, seducente.

Little by little this/these way to become habitual, seducting/tempting/fascinating/charming

This seems to be the best literal translation:

“In Venice, I can’t move without crossing innumerable pedestrian bridges. In the beginning, having to cross a bridge almost every minute tires me. It seems to me an atypical way, slightly difficult. In a little time, however, I get used to it. Little by little, this way becomes habitual, charming.”

If I were going to render this into my own voice, I would say:

“In Venice, I can’t move without crossing innumerable pedestrian bridges. In the beginning, crossing a bridge every other minute makes me tired. It seems an odd and difficult way to do things. With a little time, however, I get used to it. Little by little, it becomes habitual, charming.”

Translation - "Rebeling against one's own language"

"Translating often means rebelling against one's own language." - Eco
I see translators as purveyors of language, students of language, and probably lovers of language in most cases. As such, the urge to exploit the target language would be strong, and it would be difficult to restrict the use of the language to translate a simple or austere text. I think the tendency is in us to think more is better: higher diction is better; word play is better; detailed imagistic description is better. We want to push language to its limits, stretch into all of its corners. Like Kelly and Zetzsche say, "Languages are living breathing entities that can be formed into virtually any shape or form that a translator wants them to inhabit" (111). I would imagine that an inexperienced translator could justify adding some flourishes by thinking that he was correcting "deficiencies" in a source text . What I understand Eco to mean by his statement "translating often means rebelling against one's own language" is that the translator must resist the urge to do everything I have described above. In fact, not just resist the urge, but be vigilant against creating something in the translation that is not in the source text even incidentally, just as he describes in his example using the word "sylvie."

I got a little taste of this when working on our first translation problem, translating the slogan. My product was green tea. However, no part of the slogan dealt with the fact that it was "green" tea. Only tea. However, knowing that I was going to lose the word play that exists between the homonyms tea and you in Italian (the/te), I was tempted to reach beyond the message of the slogan and pull in an idiom using "green" (such as "green with envy") to preserve some of the playfulness. In the end, I decided it was inappropriate because doing so would bring in ideas and associations that are not at all present in the original. Still, I see that the temptation to do so is there.

Translation Problem #2 - Moira Egan poem

Parthenocissus triscuspidata

I see another
plant in the dark garden and
I think he must be
a weeping willow
but when I ask him, he says: No,
he is a laurel
bound in an immense maze
of ivy that hangs from him.
Ivy does not
harm the host, hangs
symbiotically, and that's it,
in poetic pose.
Viola! he disappears
another lugubrious illusion,
I say, and he laughs.

I tried briefly to maintain the syllabics of the poem, counting the number of syllables in the Italian phrases and comparing them to what I was coming up with in English. I quickly realized that there was no way that this could be productive, as the Italian version inevitably has more syllables than the original English version due to the structure of the languages. If I had known the number of syllables in each line of the English original, then perhaps I could have tweaked mine to match.

I kept the line breaks the same, though I don't agree with all of them as I have it phrased here. Line 2 is particularly troublesome. I would almost never end a line on "and." If this were my poem, I would break the first three lines as follows:
"I see another plant
in the dark garden
and I think he must be"
In this case, however, I felt like it was important to keep the line breaks as they were.

I chose to leave the title in Latin. I didn't think anything could be gained from translating the title, since the Latin is the actual genus and species of the plant and isn't translated in the Italian version either. Also, I knew going into it that the poems that Moira shared with us in class had Latin titles as well.

Most of the decisions about wording were made kind of instinctively. It seemed to me that the gender of the weeping willow/laurel was revealed in the last line as "he," so I used that information to determine the pronouns leading up to the last line. I kept in mind that adjective usually follows the noun in Italian and switched them accordingly back into English. In my limited experience with Italian, it also seems that they add "a" and "that/this" in many phrases where an English-speaker would not, so I dropped "a" and "that/this" in several lines where it seemed awkward (lines 5 and 8). I struggled most with lines 8-9 and 13. In line 13, I chose to go with the more outrageous (and perhaps risky) "Viola!" because it is in fact outrageous and funny and seems most likely to spark the laughter in line 15. For that same reason, I kept "lugubrious," despite the fact that it is a word of much higher diction than the rest of the poem. It added to the over-the-top exclamation that seemed most likely to produce laughter.

Regardless of which phrase I used at the beginning of line 13, I really wanted that line to end with a comma, but there isn't one there. Each phrase I came up with seemed to demand a pause between "disappear" and "another." I didn't add the comma, and I am still slightly dissatisfied with the line as a result.

Refraction, not Reflection

What do we mean when we say that a translation does not reflect another culture, but refracts another culture?

Refraction, with regard to light, disperses a ray of light into its various wavelengths. This reveals the spectrum of colors contained in the original beam of light. Therefore, refraction does not create anything new – the frequency of the light remains the same and is determined by the source of the light (paraphrased from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/geoopt/refr.html). Refraction only reveals what is already there. It exposes the parts of the whole by separating them, but nothing is created or destroyed in the act.

If translation refracts another culture, it opens up the text in a way that can be understood by those outside of that culture and yet experienced in the same way that those of the parent culture would experience it (i.e. invoking emotion, humor, morale, whatever…). A mere reflection of another culture would often fall flat in a different language. The humor’s not the same; the history’s not the same; the social mores aren’t the same. If the goal of the original (before translation) is to teach other cultures about the culture from which the work originates, then perhaps a reflection would be adequate. However, if the elements of the story are in service to some larger objective of the work, then reflection of the original elements likely would not accomplish this with a reader reading it in translation. A translation refracts the story to reveal its essence or intent, so that this can be communicated in another language. It is this essence/intent that is far more important than the individual words.