Introduction
The
entries for today and tomorrow constitute a two-part post on contemporary verse
translation, featuring the insights of 19 translators who have generously
contributed their answers to my frustratingly broad questions about the subject.
Many thanks to Geoffrey Brock, Bill Coyle, Dick Davis,
Rhina Espaillat, David Ferry, Christophe Fricker, Jonathan Galassi, Rachel Hadas, Len Krisak, David Lehman, Charles Martin, Robert Mezey, Michael Palma, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody, Roger Sedarat, Alicia
Stallings, Rimas Uzgiris, and Philip White. (See below for contributors’ notes.)
These
posts are meant as a somewhat casual practical guide for Anglophone
readers of non-Anglophone poetry, especially readers who don’t know the
language of the original work. At first I thought I’d write on this subject
myself, having at least had the experience of bewilderment over which
translations to read, which to avoid, and so on. But before long I remembered
that I have numerous friends who are well-regarded translators. I decided to
ask them a couple of very basic questions about verse translation.
Today’s
post focuses on rules of thumb for readers seeking to read translations of
verse in languages they don’t know. Tomorrow’s post will list some translations the contributors admire, along with a note
(at my request) concerning a work of their own.
As
you may notice, my questions are geared to the speculative assumptions of
ordinary readers, not to those of most translators! In a couple of
cases, contributors very reasonably questioned my questions, and this in
turn led to interesting comments that depart slightly from the original
format.
Please note: For practical reasons, I’ve had to edit down most responses.
But whenever I've done so, I've included a link beneath the contributor's name to a PDF of the fuller answer—which in every case I strongly
recommend reading. I’ve also substituted an ellipsis wherever I’ve cut something.
____________
Question: Please list up to five things readers should consider before
reading a collection of poetry in translation.
GEOFFREY BROCK
[Readers should consider]
rhythmic and tonal qualities. With the translation of poetry, the most
important qualities are almost always going to be those that don’t inhere in
the semantic fabric of the original—the very qualities of the original that
vanish when one is translating just for “meaning” (“Poetry is what is lost…”). These qualities must be freshly created by the translator in the new
language, if the translation is going to have any life of its own. (If they’re
not, what you have is a trot.)
BILL COYLE
Please click here for the full answer.
(1) How well, if at all, does
the translator know the language he or she is translating from? This is not the
be all and end all. Richard Wilbur doesn’t know Russian, but his
translations of Joseph Brodsky are the most readable in English.
(2) What is the translator’s
attitude to meter in general, and to the metrical qualities of the work
being translated in particular?…
(3) Is there an edition
of the translation that includes the original printed en face?…
(4) How close is the original
language to English?
(5) How similar is the
culture that produced the original work to the culture with which the reader
identifies?…
DICK DAVIS
Please click here for the full answer.
(1) Is the translator honest
about how well he knows the original language?…
(2) Who is the translation being
made for? Scholars or would-be scholars…; students in general lit classes
in college…; people who care mainly about the culture the translation is
from…; people who care about both the culture and about poetry….
(3) Do you feel confident that
the translator knows enough about the historical/social/literary contexts of
the work he is translating to notice when they should be taken into account,
and to be able to do this in a trustworthy manner?
(4) Do you think the translator
has the skill to submit himself to the original, and the character to do so?
This can be hard to gauge, but sometimes it’s obvious…
(5) Can the translator write at
least competent English verse?
RHINA ESPAILLAT
I think readers should approach
poetry in translation the same way they approach poetry in its original
language: wide awake, prepared for pleasure, but ready to be surprised by the
kind of pleasure they find and how it’s produced. Literary scholars, of course,
are another story: they come to whatever they read with additional expectations
peculiar to questions of their own.
DAVID FERRY
I think the reader of an as yet
unread book of translations should hope that the translations would be good
poems on their own, and that they should represent the original poems in as
much understanding complexity as possible, with regard to semantic meaning,
tones of voice, nuances of expression, whether syntactical or metaphorical or
whatever else, and with some recognition, one way or another, of the rhythmical
life of the original.
CHRISTOPHE FRICKER
Please click here for the full answer.
Poetry is translatable. If poetry were not translatable, we would know very little about The Odyssey and the Commedia, about Petrarch’s love and Rimbaud’s suffering. Many would be oblivious to Faust’s striving and Cavafy’s longing. Our trees would not remind us of the myths that Ovid has told us, and our hearts’ angels would scarcely know Rilke. Our worlds would be small, and silent.
JONATHAN GALASSI
[Readers] should try to learn
as much as they can about the poet and poetry in question. The more they know,
the more the translation will mean. This includes listening to and also reading
the poetry aloud in the original language, even if they don’t know the
language. The sound and rhythm are all-important.
RACHEL HADAS
Readers should consider: Do I
know the source language? Do I have a sense of what other translators have made
of this material over the years/generations? Do I have a sense of how well the
translator this time knows the language and tradition of the work? If the
translator is a poet in his or her own right, what do I think of their poetry?
LEN KRISAK
Please click here for the full answer.
When I see a new translation on
the bookstore shelves (we all remember what bookstores are, don’t we?), I first
check to see if the publisher has provided the source language en face, and then if the translator has
worked line for line (there’s just something about an Italian poem in three
quatrains that’s been worked up into 16 or 20 lines that leaves me either
scratching my head or else shaking it, tsk-tsk). Then, if I have a stumbling acquaintance
with the source language, I check a few lines to see if the poet has turned bicycle
into doorknob, or cathedral into can opener. If so,… Finally, I sample a goodly number of lines to see if they please me as
poetry in English. If all systems check out, I buy and begin reading.
DAVID LEHMAN
David left the first question unanswered. His answers to the second and third
questions are available here.
CHARLES MARTIN
Please click here for the full answer.
Charles replied, first, that he thought the question was somewhat
simplistic and that he was reluctant to attempt a definite answer. But he later supplied some
interesting notes on his way of thinking about various modes of translation.
Dryden described three registers
of translation: metaphrase, paraphrase, and imitation. Metaphrase is word for
word literal; his example was French translations of Horace’s odes into prose.
Paraphrase is freer, and imitation might very well not be translation, it’s so
free. My practice is paraphrase: I try to find a form in English analogous to
that of the original, and I try (most of the time) not to include any imagery
that isn’t in the original. This I have learned from Richard Wilbur and others.
But many of Lowell’s imitations, while sometimes being bizarrely inventive,
still delight me….
ROBERT MEZEY
It might be best just to
begin reading and see what happens. If you feel pleasure and excitement, you
may want to compare these poems to other versions by other translators. You may
want to find out, to whatever extent you can, how much liberty this translator
has taken in his or her englishing. I can’t think of much else one must
consider.
MICHAEL PALMA
Please click here for the full answer.
(1) Are the texts of the original poems included? The
experience of reading a poem in translation is incomplete without access to the
original.
(2) Does the translation follow the rhymes, meters, and
stanzaic forms (if any) of the original?… This is not to say that a
rhyming version is necessarily preferable….
(3) Is the translation fluent, idiomatic, and
natural-sounding?… I prefer a version that will strike me the way the
original most likely strikes readers in its own language….
(4) Does the translation stand on its own as poetry? This is
ultimately the crucial consideration. I don’t read poetry purely or even
principally for its “message.” If you are reading strictly for content, you’re
not really reading poetry….
ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS
(1) Having an interest, eventually,
in the original version.
(2) Not having an interest in the
original version.
NATHANIEL RUDAVSKY-BRODY
Please click here for the full answer.
I think the key to the translator-reader relationship is trust. Every
good translation, whatever the rules it sets for itself, has to break those
rules now and then to get off the ground. If the reader doesn't trust the
translator, and is always questioning lines, checking them against the
original, then the poetry just can't happen.
ROGER SEDARAT
Please click here for the full answer.
(1) What the music is doing in the original. Even if the
reader doesn’t know the source text language, it’s worthwhile getting a sense
of cadence, rhythm, etc….
(2) The literary and cultural tradition from which the poem
emerges….
(3) More generally, and I know this sounds obvious, but a
sense of how translation is never a static process. It’s really important to
get a sense of how translation-approaches to a given poet change over time. To
that end I’d advocate for reading multiple versions of a favorite poet or even
poem….
(4) Poet’s biography….
(5) The translation process…. It’s worthwhile to know
if this was a collaborative process with the original poet, what connection the
translator has to the language and tradition he or she engages, etc….
A.E. STALLINGS
Please click here for the full answer.
(1) If you really like the poet
and you don’t have the language (or even if you do), going to more than one
translation can be enlightening.
(2) The apparatus of a
translation book is important, too. What does the translator announce in
the apology? Are these strict translations, free, are they in a form in the
original not got over into the target language? What liberties were taken and
why? Does the translator know the language?…
(3) Is the original on
facing pages? If not, can you locate the original?…
(4) If you really, really
love a poet in another language, why not try learning some of the language to
attempt in original?
(5) Knowing something of
the background/historical context can be important too….
RIMAS UZGIRIS
Please click here for the full answer.
Rimas spoke mainly for himself about the qualities he seeks in
translation:
I choose to read translations
of poetry when either I want to get to know a certain author’s work better or
when I am simply captured by the English version of the poems. In choosing
between alternative translations I almost always choose those where the English
version strikes me as a powerful poem. I do prefer dual language versions,
especially in French and Spanish, where I can read the original (slowly). For
Lithuanian, I sometimes read a dual language version for ease and/or to check
how other translators are doing it….
PHILIP WHITE
Please click here for the full answer.
Readers, especially those who
only know their own language, need to be reminded again and again that they are
not reading the original poem, that whatever kind of translation it is, it
isn’t that; it’s a new thing altogether, though patterned on something that’s
often very different. Translation is something like describing what an actual
historic football game was like using only the terms for baseball. Better, it’s
like setting up and actually playing a game of baseball that’s supposed to
evoke an actual historic game of football. Now imagine that most of the people
watching know nothing about football. They only know baseball. So when they see
the translation, they think, “Wow, that was some game. Those football players
must be great athletes.”… The central irony here as elsewhere is that the
people who know the least may feel most sure that they understand what’s going
on. And the game was made for them, by people who know better.
____________
Contributors’
Notes
Geoff Brock has translated Pavese's Disaffections
and edited The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century
Italian Poetry. His translation awards include the MLA's Lois Roth Award
and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Bill Coyle received a 2010 NEA Fellowship to complete his translations
of Swedish poet Håkan Sandell. His book of poems, The God of This World to His
Prophet, won the 2006 New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Dick Davis has received the International Society of Persian Studies’
award for best translation three times. The Washington
Post named his translation of
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh one of the 10
best books of 2006.
Rhina Espaillat's three chapbooks
and nine books comprise poems, essays, short stories,
and translations. Her awards include one from the Robert
Frost Foundation, for her Spanish versions of Frost.
David Ferry’s awards
include the Harold Morton Landon Prize, the Ruth B. Lilly Prize, and a National
Book Award. His books of translation include Gilgamesh, The Odes of Horace, and The Eclogues of Virgil. He is
currently at work on Virgil’s Aeneid
and the Satires of Horace.
Christophe Fricker translates poetry by
Edgar Bowers and Dick Davis among others, and also trade books on politics,
literature, and science, into German. His academic work concerns the
relationship between poetry, travel, and friendship.
Jonathan
Galassi has
translated the work of Eugenio Montale and Giacomo Leopardi. He is currently
preparing a version of Montale’s later poetry.
Rachel
Hadas has translated Euripides' romance Helen, and her translations from Modern
Greek, Latin, and French are showcased in Other
Worlds Than This, a collection published by Rutgers University Press.
Len Krisak's
Odes of Horace, from Carcanet, and Ovid on Love, from University of Pennsylvania Press,
will be followed in 2014 by his complete Carmina of Catullus. He has
published four books of poems.
David Lehman's just-published New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013)
includes translations he has done of poems or prose poems by Apollinaire, Henri
Michaux, Goethe, and Mayakovsky.
Charles
Martin’s verse translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid
(2004) received the Harold Morton Landon Prize from the Academy of American
Poets. In 2005, he received an Award for Literature from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters.
Robert Mezey has won the Lamont and Poet's Prizes. His acclaimed versions of Borges (with Richard Barnes) have appeared in such periodicals as The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and Poetry. [Despite interventions by a number of luminaries, they remain uncollected for reasons relating to permissions.]
Michael Palma's fully rhymed translation of Dante’s Inferno was
published by Norton in 2002 and reprinted as a Norton Critical Edition in 2007.
He is also the author of three books of poetry.
Rowan
Ricardo Phillips has translated poetry and prose by many
Catalan-language writers, including Salvador Espriu’s short-story collection Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth. He
is also the author of The Ground (poems).
Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody is the winner of the 2013 Susan Sontag Prize
for Translation. He has translated Benjamin Fondane and Paul Valéry, as well as
contemporary Belgian poets.
Roger
Sedarat, a translator of
classical and modern Persian poetry, teaches literary translation in the MFA
program at Queens College. He has also published two books of poems.
A.E.
Stallings’s translations include Lucretius’ The Nature of Things and the Greek mock epic The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. She is the author of three
books of poems and recipient of a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship.
Rimas Uzgiris’s
work appears in many leading journals. The recipient of a 2013 Fulbright Scholarship and a 2014 NEA Fellowship in translation, he teaches literature and creative writing at
Vilnius University.
Philip White received the 2013 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for
Wang Changling’s "Border Tunes.” He’s currently at work on poems by Du Fu
and other Chinese poets. White has also published The Clearing (poems).