Lecture 5: Poetry translation

1. Lecture 5:Poetry translation Dr Jacob Blakesley

2. Outline • Impossibility of translation (?) • Poetry: definitions • Theories of poetry translation • Translating poetry • Greek (Homer) • Chinese (Du Fu) • Persian (Omar Khayyam) • Japanese (Basho) • English (Beowulf, Chaucer, Dickinson, Shakespeare)

3. George Steiner, 1975 • ‘No two speakers mean exactly the same thing when they use the same terms; or if they do, there is no conceivable way of demonstrating perfect homology. No complete, verifiable act of communication is, therefore, possible. All discourse is fundamentally monadic or idiolectic’. • George Steiner, After Babel(Oxford, 1975), 263.

4. David Bellos, 2011 • ‘Any thought a person can have, the philosopher Jerrold Katz argued, can be expressed by some sentence in any natural language; and anything that can be expressed in one language can also be expressed in another. What cannot be expressed in any human language (opinions vary as to whether such things are delusional or foundational) lies outside the boundaries of translation and, for Katz, outside the field of language, too. This is his axiom of effability. One of the truths of translation—one of the truths that translation teaches—is that everything is effable’. • David Bellos, Is that a fish in your ear? Translation and the meaning of everything (Faber and Faber, 2011), 153.

5. Ladmiral, 1979 • ‘Can one imagine another human activity, comparable in importance and, extent and continuity, see its existence denied in law, despite the facts observable daily? Will it be demonstrated that it is impossible for us to walk?’ • Jean-Rene Ladmiral, Traduire (Paris: Payot, 1979), 85.

6. Poetry: definitions • Edgar Allen Poe: ‘I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty’. • William Wordsworth: ‘I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. • William Hazlitt: ‘Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life’. • Shelley: ‘Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred’.

7. Poetry: definitions • T. S. Eliot: ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality’. • Carl Sandburg: ‘Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes’. • Robert Frost: ‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation’.

8. Dante, 1307 • ‘E peròsappiaciascunochenullacosa per legamemusaicoarmonizzatasipuòdellasualoquela in altratransmutaresanzaromperetuttasuadolcezzaedarmonia’. • Dante, Convivio

9. John Dryden, 1683 • ‘No man is capable of translating a poetry who, besides a genius to that art, is not a master both of his author’s language, and of his own’. • ‘To be a thorough translator, he must be a thorough poet’. • Dryden, ‘Preface concerning Ovid’s Epistles’

10. P. B. Shelley, 1821 • ‘It were as wise to cast a violent into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed or it will bear no flower – and this is the burden of the curse of Babel’. • Shelley, The Defense of Poetry

11. Robert Browning, 1877 • ‘I should require him to be literal at every cost save that of absolute violence to our language’. • Browning, preface to Agamemnon

12. Ezra Pound, 1917 • ‘There are three kinds of poetry’: • Melopoeia: ‘wherein the words are charged, over and above their plain meaning, with some musical property’ • Phanopoeia: ‘which is a casting of images upon the visual imagination’ • Logopoeia: ‘the dance of the intellect among words’

13. Ezra Pound, 1917 • Melopoeia: ‘practically impossible to transfer or translate it from one language to another, save perhaps by divine accident, and for half a line at a time • Phanopoeia: ‘can…be translated almost, or wholly, intact’ • Logopoeia: ‘does not translate’; ‘you may or may not be able to find a derivative or an equivalent’ • Pound, ‘How to read’

14. Paul Valéry, 1944 • ‘Where poetry is concerned, fidelity to meaning alone is betrayal’ • Paul Valéry, Variations sur les Bucoliques

15. Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1946 • ‘La traduzioneè la prova del fuoco di quanto[la poesia] siaindividuale e inimitabile. Non ètraducibileilritmo […] Non ètraducibile la qualitàsillabica […] Non ètraducibileilcontenuto […] Non ètraducibileinfine né la forma né lo stile, in cui tuttol’altros’assomma, sifonde e vive, e si fa commovente’. • Giuseppe Ungaretti, “Poeta e uomini,” in Vita d’un uomo:Saggi e interventi, ed. Mario Diacono and Luciano Rebay (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), 739.

16. Eugenio Montale, 1956 • “Fedele o infedelechesia, unatraduzioneèsempreun’altracosa; puòessereanchemiglioredell’originale, ma èdiversa.” • Cit. in Mario Picchi, “Del tradurre,” La Fiera Letteraria, June 3, 1956, 6.

17. Roman Jakobson, 1959 • Poetry is ‘by definition untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible’. • Jakobson, ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’

18. Robert Lowell, 1962 • Strict metrical translators still exist. They seem to live in a pure world untouched by contemporary poetry. Their difficulties are bold and honest, but they are taxidermists, not poets, and their poems are likely to be stuffed birds…I believe that poetic translation—I would call it an imitation—must be expert and inspired, and needs at least as much technique, luck and rightness of hand as an original poem’. • Robert Lowell, Imitations

19. Vladimir Nabokov, 1964 • ‘In transposing Eugene Onegin from Pushkin’s Russian into my English I have sacrificed to completeness of meaning every formal element including the iambic rhythm, whenever its retention hindered fidelity. To my ideal of literalism I sacrificed everything (elegance, euphony, clarity, good taste, modern usage, and even grammar) that the dainty mimic prizes higher than truth. Pushkin has likened translators to horses changed at the posthouses of civilization. The greatest reward I can think of is that students may use my work as a pony’. • Nabokov, Foreward to Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse

20. EdoardoSanguineti, 1979 • Devo insistere […] chenellatraduzione, piaccia o non piaccia, non c’èrealmentealtrolocutorecheiltraduttore.” The translator moves from being a medium to being the original author: “Il traduttore [...] traditoretravestito, quelloèilnostrocontemporaneo.” • Sanguineti, “Il traduttore, nostro contemporaneo,” 185.

21. Franco Buffoni, 2008 • ‘Ci sono due grandimalattiecheoccorresempretentare di debellare: l’ideache la traduzionepossaessere la riproduzione di un testo; e l’ideachesiaunaricreazione’. • http://rivistatabard.blogspot.com/

22. Categories of poetry translation • Mimetic translation: same or formally similar • Analogical translation: functionally equivalent • Organic translation: content-derivative • Phonemic translation: reproducing sound • Prose translation: in prose, not verse • Imitation / Adaptation • A. Lefevere, Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint (1977); J. Holmes, Translated! papers on literary translation and translation studies (1988)

23. Mimetic translation • Translation written in same or formally similar meter • “Optimistic” as regards cross-cultural communication • Criticized as a “very rigorous straightjacket imposed on the target text”

24. Mimetic translation • ‘Meters in verse are kinds of spiritual magnitudes for which nothing can be substituted…they cannot be replaced by each other and especially not by free verse’. • Joseph Brodsky

25. Examples of mimetic translation • Translating Petrarch’s 11-syllable sonnets into 11-syllable English sonnets. • Translating Italian sonnet (2 quatrains and 2 tercets) into 2 quatrains and 2 tercets, and not translating into three quatrains and a couplet (English sonnet)

26. Analogical translation • Functionally equivalent or prestigious meter • Translating Petrarch’s hendecasyllable verse into English iambic pentameter

27. Organic translation Deep in the mountain wilderness Where nobody ever comes Only once in a great while Something like the sound of a far off voice, The low rays of the sun Slip through the dark forest, And gleam again on the shadowy moss. [Wang Wei, 4 verse poem, translated by Kenneth Rexroth]

28. Prose translation • I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of Lavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the hands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce and unforgetting anger of Juno. • David West, 1990

29. Prose translation • ‘to attempt…a translation of a lyric poem into prose, is the most absurd of all undertakings, for those very characters of the original which are essential to it, and which constitute its highest beauties, if transferred to a prose translation, become unpardonable blemishes. • A. Tytler, Essay on the Principles of Translation

30. Phonemic translation (Catullus 70) Nulli se dicitmulier mea nuberemalle quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat. dicit: sedmuliercupido quod dicitamanti, in vento et rapidascribereoportet aqua. (Catullus) No one my woman says would want to marry More than me, not even if Jupiter himself asked. She says: but a what a woman tells a passionate lover Should be written on wind and in rapid water. [literal translation] Newly say dickered my love air my own would marry me all whom but me, none see say Jupiter if she petted. Dickered: said my love air could be o could dickered a man too in wind o wet rapid a scribble reported in water. [Louis and Celia Zukofsky]

31. Imitation Pierre Ronsard (1578) W. B. Yeats (1893) When you are old and gray and full of sleep   And nodding by the fire, take down this book,   And slowly read, and dream of the soft look   Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;   How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true;   But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,   And loved the sorrows of your changing face.   And bending down beside the glowing bars,   Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead,   And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. Quandvousserezbienvieille, au soir, à la chandelle, Assiseauprès du feu, dévidant et filant, Direz, chantantmesvers, en vousémerveillant: Ronsard me célébrait du temps quej’étais belle. Lors, vousn’aurezservanteoyanttelle nouvelle, Déjà sous le labeurà demi sommeillant, Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’ailleréveillant, Bénissantvotre nom de louange immortelle. Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os: Par les ombresmyrteux je prendraimon repos: Vousserez au foyer unevieilleaccroupie, Regrettantmon amour et votrefierdédain. Vivez, sim’encroyez, n’attendezàdemain: Cueillezdèsaujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

32. Yeats v. Montale W. B. Yeats Eugenio Montale Quandotusaraivecchia, tentennante trafuoco e vegliaprendiquestolibro, leggilosenzafretta e sogna la dolcezza deituoiocchi d’un tempo e le loroombre. Quantihannoamato la tua dolce grazia di allora e la bellezza di un vero o falso amore. Ma uno solo ha amatol’animatuapellegrina e la tortura del tuotrascolorantevolto. Cùrvatidunquesuquestatuagriglia di brace e di’ a testessa a bassa voce Amore ecco come tufuggi alto sullemontagne e nascondiiltuopianto in unosciame di stelle. When you are old and gray and full of sleep   And nodding by the fire, take down this book,   And slowly read, and dream of the soft look   Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;   How many loved your moments of glad grace,           And loved your beauty with love false or true;   But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,   And loved the sorrows of your changing face.   And bending down beside the glowing bars,   Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled    And paced upon the mountains overhead,   And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

33. Choice of target form • Literary system and tradition of target language • Aesthetics of translator • Editorial policy • Translation waves • Prestige of source language, author, text, genre • Historical and political situation

34. Target language changes • Vocabulary (slang, idioms, cliches) • Grammar, syntax • Cultural, historical, literary references • Poetics, literary tradition • “Every generation needs a new translation” • Lydia Davis

35. Difficulties in translating poetry • Its physical shape • Its use of inventive language • Its sound and structure • Its openness to different interpretations • Its demand to be read non-pragmatically

36. Types of compensation • compensation in kind: “making up for one type of textual effect in the ST by another type in the TT”; • compensation in place (such as “using different sounds in different places [in the text]”) • compensation by merging (e.g., translating two French terms into one combined English term) • compensation by splitting (e.g., translating one French word into two English words) • Sandor Hervey and Ian Higgins, Thinking Translation: A Course in Translation Method: French to English (London: Routledge, 1992)

37. Compensation (Vinay and Darbelnet) • ‘one of the major concerns of translators is to ensure that the translation preserves the content of the original without losses; any loss, regardless of whether it is of meaning or tone should be recovered by the procedures of compensation’. • Vinay and Darbelnet, Comparative Stylistics of French and English (1995)

38. Compensation (Vinay and Darbelnet) • “the stylistic translation technique by which a nuance that cannot be put in the same place as in the original is put at another point of the phrase, thereby keeping the overall tone.” • Vinay and Darbelnet

39. Compensation (Steiner) • ‘The final stage or moment in the process of translation is that which I have called ‘compensation’ or ‘restitution.’ The translation restores the equilibrium between itself and the original, between source-language and receptor-language which had been disrupted by the translator’s interpretative attack and appropriation. The paradigm of translation stays incomplete until reciprocity has been achieved, until the original has regained as much as it has lost’. • George Steiner, After Babel (1975)

40. Compensation (Steiner) • ‘Translation fails where it does not compensate, where there is no restoration of radical equity. The translator has grasped and/or appropriated less than is there. He traduces through diminution. Or he has chosen to embody and restate fully only one or another aspect of the original, fragmenting, distorting its vital coherence according to his own needs or myopia’. • George Steiner

41. Compensation (Newmark) • ‘compensation is the procedure which in the last resort ensures that translation is possible.’ • Peter Newmark, About Translation (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 1991), 144.

42. Interlingual poetry translation

43. Iliad • Dactylic hexameter (stress + 2 unstresses): quantitative meter • Meter based on quantity, not on stress • No rhymes • ‘This is the | forest pri | meval. The | murmuring | pines and the | hemlocks’ • Four ‘feet’ either dactyls or spondees, fifth dactyl foot, and then either a spondee or trochaic foot • Caesura is in the 3rd or 4th foot

44. Iliad Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε δαῖτα· Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

45. Iliad, read by Stanley Lombardo • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR7FGshwBWY

46. Literal translation of Iliad Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή· The wrath, sing, Goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles, Destructive, which placed many griefs on the Achaeans, Sent forth many valiant souls of heroes To Hades, made them prey for all dogs and vultures. And the will of Zeus was done.

47. Types of translation of the Iliad • Rhyming 14 syllable verses: G. Chapman (1614) • Rhyming heroic couplets: A. Pope (1720) • Spenserian stanzas: P. Worsley (1868) • Hexameter: R. Merrill (2007) • Sonnets: F. Light(2009) • Loose iambic pentameter: R. Fagles (1990) • Blank verse: W. Cowper (1791) • Prose: E. V. Rieu (1950) • Imitation: C. Logue (2002) and A. Oswald (2011)

48. John Keats, 1816 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. • Keats, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’

49. Ballad meter and heroic couplets Rhyming 14 syllable verses (ballad meter) Achilles’ bane full wrath resound, O Goddesse, that imposd Infinite sorrowes on the Greekes, and many brave souleslosd From breasts Heroique—sent them farre, to that invisible cave That no light comforts; and their lims to dogs and vultures gave. [G. Chapman] Iambic pentameter heroic couplets Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing! That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain… [A. Pope] • Classical scholar Richard Bentley: ‘It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer’

50. Hexameter • Sing now, goddess, the wrath of Achilles the scion of Peleus, • Ruinous rage which brought the Achaians uncounted afflictions; • Many the powerful souls it sent to the dwelling of Hades, • Those of the heroes, and spoil for the dogs it made of their bodies, • Plunder for all of the birds, and the purpose of Zeus was accomplished— • R. Merrill, 2007