Translation—What is it Good For?
Poetry Example
From, “A Note on Translation” by Maynard Mack (Norton)
Here’s a typical Japanese tanka. In its own language but transliterated in the Latin alphabet of the West, the tanka looks like this:
kasumi tachi
ko no me mo haru no
yuki fureba
hana naki sato mo
hana zo chirikeru
In a literal word-by-word translation (so far as this is possible in Japanese, since the language uses many particles without English
equivalents and without dictionary meaning in modifying functions—for example, no, mo, and no in line 2), the poem looks like this:
haze rises
tree-buds swell
when snow falls
village(s) without flower(s)
flower(s) fall(s)
The three best-known English renderings of this tanka look like this:
1.
When snow comes in spring—
fair season of layered haze
and burgeoning buds—
flowers fall in villages
where flowers have yet to bloom.
(Translated by Helen Craig McCullough)
2.
When the warm mists veil
all the buds swell while yet the
spring snows drift downward
even in the hibernal
village crystal blossoms fall.
(Translated by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius)
3.
With the spreading mists
The tree buds swell in early spring
And wet snow petals fall—
So even my flowerless country village
Already lies beneath its fallen flowers.
(Translated by Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner)
According to Maynard Mack, “The inevitable result [of translating this tanka] is a disassembling, a spinning out, spelling out, thinning out of what in
the Japanese is an as yet unraveled imagistic excitement, creating (or memorializing) in the poet’s mind, and then in the mind of the Japanese readers,
the original thrill of consciousness when these images, complete with the magical transformation of snow into the longed-for cherry blossoms, first
flashed on the inward eye. What is comforting for us who must read this and other Japanese poems in translation is that each of the versions given
here retains in some form or other all or most of the five images intact. What is less comforting is that the simplicity and suddenness, the explosion in
the mind, have been diffused and defused.”
Here’s a personal account of the difficulty of translating Asian poetry into English: http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/mythologyi-translation-kim-myung-wons-dabi#.VLclaWTF9XZ
Discussion—Answer individually and discuss connections with your classmates’ thoughts:
1. Which do you like the best as a reader? Why? Try to really pin it down if you can.
2. Choose a distinct difference between the translations—i.e. a metaphor or a word or the syntax of a line that the translators
translate differently. What is the effect of each different choice?
3. What do you notice the translators adding, altering, rearranging, or explaining/clarifying?
4. What do you think of what Mack says? Does it make you look at the text differently?
Translation—What is it Good For?
Prose Example
Here is the original of the opening of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphoses in German:
ALS Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer
verwandelt. Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen,
von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichen Niedergleiten bereit,
kaum noch erhalten konnte. Seine vielen, im Vergleich zu seinem sonstigen Umfang kläglich dünnen Beine flimmerten ihm hilflos
vor den Augen.
According to Rebecca Schuman, “The Metamorphosis is, in fact, full of untranslatable terms (beginning with its title, Die Verwandlung, which
as Bernofsky points out in her translator’s note “does not suggest a natural change of state” in the way the English “metamorphosis” does).
But the biggest challenge is indeed Ungeziefer (OON-gee-tsee-fir), a descendant of the Middle High German for “creature unfit for
sacrifice.” It is used in modern German to describe household pests, particularly of the multilegged variety. And yet it does not merely mean
“insect” or “bug,” “beetle” or “cockroach,” because there are German words for those (Insekt, Wanze, Käfer, Kakerlak). Ungeziefer is a
necessarily vague word for something repulsive and unwelcome in the house, whose repulsiveness is defined through the eyes of its human
beholder. There is no single English word for this, and as a result, translations of The Metamorphosis are stuck with vague imitations, the most
accurate being “vermin” (which also evokes Nazi anti-Semitism).”
From
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/01/kafka_books_susan_bernofsky_translation_of_the_metamorphosis_and_jay_cantor.
html
Here are three different translations of the opening paragraph of Kafka’s Metamorphosis
1.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was
lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided
into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His
numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
(Translated by Stanley Corngold)
2.
When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some
sort of monstrous insect. He was lying on his back–which was hard, like a carapace–and when he raised his head a little he saw his
curved brown belly segmented by rigid arches atop which the blanket, already slipping, was just barely managing to cling. His
many legs, pitifully thin compared to the rest of him, waved helplessly before his eyes.
(Translated by Susan Bernofsky)
3.
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a
monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen
divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in
place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
(Translated by Ian Johnston)
Here’s an interlinear word-for-word translation: http://www.interlinearbooks.com/german/#book
Discussion—Answer individually and discuss connections with your classmates’ thoughts:
1. Which do you like the best as a reader? Why? Try to really pin it down if you can.
2. Choose a distinct difference between the translations—i.e. a metaphor or a word or the syntax of a line that the translators
translate differently. What is the effect of each different choice?
3. What do you notice the translators adding, altering, rearranging, or explaining/clarifying?
4. What do you think of what Schulman says? Does it make you look at the text differently?
Overall:
5. What do you see as the benefits and the challenges of translation?
6. What do you see as the benefits and the challenges of reading world literature?
7. Do you have any personal experience with other languages, translation, or reading translated literature? Have you ever read
anything that you know is in translation from an original language other than English? Did you have a curiosity about the original?
If you’ve translated anything (doesn’t have to be literary), how difficult was it? How did you approach it?