RED (rouge) (rood) (rojo) (rosso) (rot) (Pepto Bismol)
The first time it happened I felt, for some reason, that I'd been cheated. I bought a translation of the Sufi poet Rumi (the best selling poet in the United States, btw) and reading through the "About this Translation" forward I discovered the translator was employing something called "free translation"; that is he, a poet and academic, was translating from another's literal or scholarly translation of the work. It wasn't a too bad translation in the end (I have other Rumi against which to compare, but don't like the guy enough to do so).
A few years later the so called "free translation" approach (I don't even know if that's a legitimate term, or one used only by the American poet and academic who translated that Rumi I read) was suggested as an exercise in crafting a poem for my poetry workshop during my writing degree. The idea was to get a poem in the original language, have someone fluent in that language provide a literal translation (word by word with different meanings of words provided if more than one) and then to use that to decipher what the original poet meant in translating the poem to English. No one I knew who speaks Chinese (I asked several people) would do that for me at the time, so I did not partake in the exercise. More than one classmate did try it and it was a fascinating exercise -- in one case a classmate spoke the original language of another classmate's translated poem and was able to read both and compare.
Of course, no matter the translation or translator (or, even, the languages involved) any translated work constitutes a NEW work. This is certainly true of poetry. I think of Hughes' translation of Ovid, where he fills in so many holes with images never hinted at in the original, certainly not at least when compared with Martin's wonderbar line-by-line translation.
I've just finished Stephen Mitchell's "A New English Version Gilgamesh" which was interesting but wholly unsatisfying as it worked to open the classic up to a modern audience. I've only read one other, "scholarly" translation which provides all the bits and pieces from various tablets found here and there and everywhere and that can be terribly stuffy, BUT it somehow better captures the sense that you're reading something 1700 years older than Christ hisself(1000 years older than Homer!). Sure the "modern" accessible translation lacks the page upon page upon page of repetition which, of course, marked the poem's original oral history, but I read the new translation in a few hours last night and was left with no acute sense of awe whatsoever. The monster wasn't scary and the run through the Sun's tunnel lacked any anxious moments for this reader.
Nor did I get, in Mitchell's version, any sense that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were boinking, even though there's talk of them stroking each other as a man would his wife. The identical Flood Story as stolen by the writers of the Bible and the intense love between the two heroic figures (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) as stolen by Homer in his recounting of the, ah, friendship of Achilles and Patroclus leaves a fellow totally convinced of the historical accuracy of a flood, AND also of one major faggot love affair between two very senior heroes in the ancient-ancient world.
Speaking of Homer. Fagles is your translator there. And back to translation: An Italian writer, Alessandro Baricco decided to read the Iliad in public -- given that's how it was originally delivered, spoken to people. Finding a producer who loved the idea, he was stymied by the fact it would take some 40 hours to read the work. So he set out to write a prose translation (using another "full" prose translation as his starting point) that he could (and did) read publicly, to more than 10,000 people over two nights. He did not cut any scenes totally, removed all references to god inspired action (for as he explains all action can be explained by human behaviour in the poem) and dropped all the redundancies. He gave the story to the voice of the characters themselves. And he rarely added anything (but does include the Horse and fall of Troy, which Homer does not cover in the Iliad). The work ("An Iliad") has now been translated into English (and several other languages) -- and I've just started reading it.
Now what I need is a translator to turn this ramble into an interesting blog...
A few years later the so called "free translation" approach (I don't even know if that's a legitimate term, or one used only by the American poet and academic who translated that Rumi I read) was suggested as an exercise in crafting a poem for my poetry workshop during my writing degree. The idea was to get a poem in the original language, have someone fluent in that language provide a literal translation (word by word with different meanings of words provided if more than one) and then to use that to decipher what the original poet meant in translating the poem to English. No one I knew who speaks Chinese (I asked several people) would do that for me at the time, so I did not partake in the exercise. More than one classmate did try it and it was a fascinating exercise -- in one case a classmate spoke the original language of another classmate's translated poem and was able to read both and compare.
Of course, no matter the translation or translator (or, even, the languages involved) any translated work constitutes a NEW work. This is certainly true of poetry. I think of Hughes' translation of Ovid, where he fills in so many holes with images never hinted at in the original, certainly not at least when compared with Martin's wonderbar line-by-line translation.
I've just finished Stephen Mitchell's "A New English Version Gilgamesh" which was interesting but wholly unsatisfying as it worked to open the classic up to a modern audience. I've only read one other, "scholarly" translation which provides all the bits and pieces from various tablets found here and there and everywhere and that can be terribly stuffy, BUT it somehow better captures the sense that you're reading something 1700 years older than Christ hisself(1000 years older than Homer!). Sure the "modern" accessible translation lacks the page upon page upon page of repetition which, of course, marked the poem's original oral history, but I read the new translation in a few hours last night and was left with no acute sense of awe whatsoever. The monster wasn't scary and the run through the Sun's tunnel lacked any anxious moments for this reader.
Nor did I get, in Mitchell's version, any sense that Gilgamesh and Enkidu were boinking, even though there's talk of them stroking each other as a man would his wife. The identical Flood Story as stolen by the writers of the Bible and the intense love between the two heroic figures (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) as stolen by Homer in his recounting of the, ah, friendship of Achilles and Patroclus leaves a fellow totally convinced of the historical accuracy of a flood, AND also of one major faggot love affair between two very senior heroes in the ancient-ancient world.
Speaking of Homer. Fagles is your translator there. And back to translation: An Italian writer, Alessandro Baricco decided to read the Iliad in public -- given that's how it was originally delivered, spoken to people. Finding a producer who loved the idea, he was stymied by the fact it would take some 40 hours to read the work. So he set out to write a prose translation (using another "full" prose translation as his starting point) that he could (and did) read publicly, to more than 10,000 people over two nights. He did not cut any scenes totally, removed all references to god inspired action (for as he explains all action can be explained by human behaviour in the poem) and dropped all the redundancies. He gave the story to the voice of the characters themselves. And he rarely added anything (but does include the Horse and fall of Troy, which Homer does not cover in the Iliad). The work ("An Iliad") has now been translated into English (and several other languages) -- and I've just started reading it.
Now what I need is a translator to turn this ramble into an interesting blog...
posted by Heipel at
7:39 PM
3 Comments:
There seems to be a motif happening here.
Seeing red.......
A state of irritation or annoyance,
huff, miffed, botheration, irritation, vexation.
The psychological state of being irritated or annoyed.
BTW Happy Halloween! :)
I read a lot too, although not as heavy tomes as you do my dear. I apologize for not being as learned, but I hope you don't mind me talking about something your blog brought to mind.
In reading novels, I always thought what a great thing it was to have the elders be the teachers of the children, and talk of their lives, the places they'd lived, the past, politics, religion, lore... everything.
My dad tried to tell us kids of his life, but we were so self-involved, we cut him short and got on with our own thing. Recently I found a story he sent to the Legion website that I'd never heard before. I so regret not taking an interest in what he had to say back then...
My observation being, the elders were the children's education - I believe - a better education of life and the world than they'd ever get at school today.
We depend too much on schools to teach our children. The native North American's have it right, I hope they can hold on to their way of teaching (outside of school-learning).
And another tangent - but I hope related, somehow - what is the ... (Pepto Bismo) blog trying to say? That you want the real thing? That you're pissed at translators trying to grab a piece of the "classic's" pie? That translations don't give you what you were looking for?
What are you trying to get from your reading (don't apply this question to your Mao/China reading! I'm referring specifically to the Pepto blog)? What I mean is, when you read poetry or novels, are you wanting something that will sweep you away from the daily grind or a scholarly analysis of the work, or just a desire to be there when the words were originally said?
I'm sure I've missed your point. Hope you don't mind this er... simple.. interpretation of what I think you blogging on about. ha
Why did I have it in my head you'd taken Latin? Maybe your own translations would give satisfaction?
Trish, all I mean is that translation is a fascinating thing -- language can never convey actual meaning, of course (although what else do we have), and then to to try to find that meaning in a language and convert it to a second, or third language set of symbols (language).
It is disappointing, but simply unavoidable, that I'll never be able to read Homer in the original. But what's delightful is there are the incredible minds of people like Fagles who can let me read a version of Homer in my own language of my own time (versus that of a Victorian Englishman a la the so-called classic translations of Oxford and Penquin, for example).
Any "rant" in the blog was against "out of date" translations. Not "bad" just not revelant to a modern audience given the fluid nature of language.
HA! I have not taken Latin. It took Fagles 10 years to translate Virgil's Aeneid, which I'm about to read so I can get the most out of reading the new translation of Dante's Inferno :) Anyway, Fagles re-taught himself Latin before starting the task. Re-taught I point out as he taught himself the language the first time as a young man. I have difficulty reading the French on packaging. I'll stick to English translations -- the only door available to all that great work.
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