From Literary Translation to Creative Writing di Barbara Carle (TRADUTTOLOGIA)
TRADUTTOLOGIA
Barbara Carle
From Literary Translation to Creative Writing: Practitioner Perspective
Octavio Paz[1]
I.
Myths
on Literary Translation – Negative Views and Fear of Translation
Translation
is intrinsic to all verbal exchanges: when we talk, we interpret the phrases of
the other or we unconsciously transpose them into our own idiom. However, when
it comes to literary translation, there is still much mistrust and there are
many prejudices. Let’s try to understand the roots and the range of these
preconceived and still pervasive notions.
Here are a few typical examples: the first comes from Elizabethan
England, from a well-known play by Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream: the verb “translated;” is used to depict the transformation of a
character’s head into that of a donkey.
Quince: Bless thee, Bottom!
Bless thee! Thou art translated.
Bottom: I see their knavery.
This is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could.
But I will not stir from
this place, do what they can. […] [2]
These
lines have double meaning, since Bottom, one of the actors rehearsing in the
woods, does not realize that Puck, the fairy, has changed his head into an
animal. He thinks the other actors of
the company are mocking him, and uses the phrase metaphorically, when in fact
it is true.
The
second example comes from a Baroque French poet and translator, Guillaume
Colletet (1598-1659). Although he adopts the traditional view berating the
ingrate task of translation, he also distinguishes manners in which the
translator improves and interprets the original. The translator must rewrite
the source poem and in so doing he clarifies obscure meanings and renders
contorted syntax more fluid. His poem is followed by my translation, which
serves to render Baroque French more comprehensible to our contemporary
sensibilities just as Colletet transformed old Latin into “modern” French.[3]
Guillaume
Colletet
C'est
trop m'assujettir, je suis las d'imiter,
La
version déplait à qui peut inventer,
Je
suis plus amoureux d'un Vers que je compose,
Que
des Livres entiers que j'ay traduites en Prose.
Suivre
comme un esclave un Auteur pas à pas
Chercher
de la raison où l'on n'en trouve pas,
Distiller
son Esprit sur chaque période,
Faire
d'un vieux Latin du François à la mode,
Eplucher
chaque mot comme un Grammairien,
Voir
ce qui le rend mal, ou ce qui le rend bien ;
Faire
d'un sens confus une raison subtile,
Joindre
au discours qui sert un langage inutile,
Parler
assurément de ce qu'on sait le moins,
Rendre
de ses erreurs tous les Doctes témoins,
Et
vouloir bien souvent par un caprice extrême
Entendre
qui jamais ne s'entendit soy-mesme ;
Certes,
c'est un travail dont je suis si lassé,
Que
j'en ay le corps faible, & l'esprit émoussé.
Against
Translation, An Elegy
No more service, I’m
tired of imitating
to copy irks one who’s
fond of creating
I’m more enamored of a
verse I compose
than all the books I’ve translated
in prose
Follow the author like a
slave from behind
Search for a reason you
will never find
Pour out your mind on a
historical phrase
Change old Latin into
the French of the day
Dissect each word like
an old philologist
What doesn’t succeed,
what gets the right gist
Transform twisted lines
into limpid reason
Fill a sound discourse
with embellished treason
Speak with assurance on
what you know the least
Reveal your mistakes to
the haughty elite
Too often pushed by
another’s extreme whim
Listen to one who never
heard himself sing
Clearly I’m so very
outdone by this work
That my wits are weak
and my body hurts.
The
third example comes from a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, written while he was
translating Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1833). This poem appeared in the New
Yorker magazine on January 8th, 1955, with the subtitle: (An
Illustration of the “Onegin” Stanza – Meter and Rhyme Pattern). With remarkable
images, rhymes, and metaphors echoing the original Russian poem and in a
polished style it conveys many ideas, among them the inadequacy of Nabokov’s
own version. Here is the second stanza[4]:
Reflected
words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task—a poet's patience
And scholiastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your
monument.
These
examples all share the traditional belief that the original source version
cannot be questioned nor altered without impoverishing it. This commonplace
perception assumes, as Jorge Luis Borges wrote that “[...] every recombination
of elements is necessarily inferior to the original form [...]. The concept of
the “definitive text” corresponds only to religion or exhaustion.”[5] Yet if we accept the
fact that all verbal exchanges are a form of translation and that all literary
texts are rewritings and translations of others, then, we can also recognize
that paradoxically translation can improve the original as in the case of
Baudelaire’s version of Poe or Chapman’s Homer.
II.
Shifting Views and Translation Theories
Many negative views and preconceptions have been dispelled by the emergence of translation studies in the past 30 years. Several well-known writers are also translators and they have helped to improve the image and status of translation. Paul Auster, a major American author who translated French poetry, wrote on the importance of literary translation. I quote:
Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often-forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.[6]
Today,
most translation theories distinguish between the types and functions of
different forms of translation. Unfortunately, many still believe that translation
is word to word transposition. If we use a form of artificial “intelligence,”
such as Google Translate, we don’t understand certain phrases such as: È
stata una Caporetto - Google translate: It was a Caporetto, but it actually means:
“to suffer a terrible defeat” as in that of the famous WWI Battle of Caporetto
in October-November 1917. Another
example: Non è pane per i tuoi denti becomes: it’s not your match, while
this really means: “to bite more than you can chew” or mettere una mano sul
fuoco becomes: “to put a hand in the fire” but it truly means “to be
absolutely certain of something, not to have any doubts.” Since no two
languages have the same structure, word for word translation will always
fail. We must work within the rules of
grammar, syntax, and rhythmic patterns, rhetorical figures (which are rooted in
each particular language), therefore there will always be several ways to
render sentences from one language into another. Syntagms or structural units
occur in language which means that literary operations such as metonymy and
metaphor are produced in all forms of translation. Octavio Paz explains it
well:
The original text never
reappears in the other language: this would be impossible. Nevertheless, it is
always present because, although the translation does not explicitly state as
much, it refers to the original text constantly, or else converts it into
a verbal object that differs from it yet reproduces it by metonymy or
metaphor. Both of these, as distinct from explanatory or free translations, are strict
forms that are not incompatible with exactness. Metonymy is an indirect
description; metaphor is a verbal equation.[7]
Saint
Jerome, not the first translator, but one of the most accomplished, long ago established
a method similar to that which Paz supports and which today we can call
“dynamic equivalence,” or sense to sense translation.
Indeed, I not only admit, but freely proclaim
that in translation [interpretatione] from the Greek – except in the
case of Sacred Scripture, where the very order of the words is a mystery – I
render not word for word, but sense for sense. In this matter I have the
guidance of Cicero, who translated Plato’s Protagoras and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus
and the two most beautiful orations that Aeschines and Demosthenes
delivered against each other.
Letter from Jerome to
Pammachius
Translated by Kathleen
Davis. [8]
Any
experienced translator knows that the practice may not be explained by these
two opposing methods, on one hand, word to word, minute attention to the
lexical equivalence and punctuation, what we can call a literal focus, nor, on
the other hand, so called “dynamic equivalence”, i.e. sense to sense, or
greater emphasis upon syntactic structures. The passage just quoted by Jerome
shows that he is, in fact, aware of both. Word for word renditions will clash
with the particular syntax of each language; sense to sense could lead the
translator to subjectively project meanings and patterns on the poem. The ideal practice is in between, especially
when we deal with literary translation, specifically translation of poetry.
Poetry distinguishes itself from everyday prose by achieving meaning through
form. If you strip away a poem’s form, its material dress, it no longer exists
as a poem. A semantic rendering that focuses exclusively on meaning while
ignoring specific structural patterns is not translation.
III.
Poems
About Translation of Poetry - A New Field of Study[9]
The
poems by Colletet and Nabokov confirm the commonplace assumption that poetry
cannot be successfully translated. While such assumptions have been changing
over the past years, they have not entirely disappeared. My own point of view
here is that of a practitioner and critic. After many years of translating, after
having written a double poem on translation,[10] I became more and more
convinced that I should place my own work in context: the importance of
learning about the past of other poems written about translating poetry. In
fact, this opens a new field of study upon which little work has been done.
As
often happens, my research led me through different historical epochs and
national literary traditions. In parts of Renaissance Europe many writers were
concerned with issues of poetic translation. In Italy the question of
translation was less urgent, but that of imitation, rewriting, and affirming
the literary language of Tuscany as dominant was much debated. In France the
question of translating from Latin, Greek, and Italian while establishing a
national tradition was intensely discussed in poetry and prose. In post Elizabethan
England there were numerous poets who wrote poems to each other about
translation.
Seventeenth
and Eighteenth-Century poets such as Ben Jonson (1572-1637), Sir John Denham
(1614-1669), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Thomas Francklin (1721-1784), all
wrote poems about translation, often apologias in its defense or impassioned
verses on good and bad practice. The most interesting of these is Denham, who
actually decries word for word translation in favor of sense for sense or what
we have called dynamic equivalency. I quote a passage[11]:
That servile path thou
nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word,
and line by line.
Those are the labour'd
births of slavish brains,
Not the effects of
Poetry, but pains;
Cheap vulgar arts, whose
narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts,
but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way
thou dost pursue
To
make Translations and Translators too.
The
more recent poems about translation I have been able to find so far are Lost
in Translation (1974) by
James Merrill, L’imballatore (1992) by Valerio Magrelli, and Con testo a fronte (With Facing Page Translation)
2006, by Viviane Ciampi. We have much to
learn from each. The title of James Merrill’s poem, Lost in translation, has generated many
misunderstandings. Its wonderful labyrinthine structure of embedded narratives
shows that as much is found in translation as is lost.[12] The poem contains an
epigraph of Rilke’s translation from Paul Valéry’s Palme. While
recounting a childhood memory involving a boy and his French German governess
who assemble a puzzle, it keeps evoking the same poem from the epigraph; the
poem is paraphrased and quoted in English and then reappears, masked by
Merrill’s own translation of it. Since the epigraph has no title, the reader
does not immediately know that the text is then re-elaborated throughout the
poem. Like the puzzle, the reader must
reread several times before putting together all the pieces. Here is the ending[13]:
But nothing's
lost. Or else: all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it
(Or found – I wander through the ruin of S
Now and then, wondering at the peacefulness)
And in that loss a self-effacing tree,
Color of context, imperceptibly
Rustling with its angel, turns the waste
To shade and fiber, milk and memory.
Assembling
the pieces of a puzzle is parallel to poetic translation, removing them from
their original box seeing them vanish and merge into the new order of the
puzzle. Merrill’s poem clearly envisions translation as an unavoidable and
fundamental operation in our understanding of the world. Jefferson Humphries
has written a brilliant essay on this subject which I find quite convincing
since it succinctly summarizes many key aspects of the art.
Anyone
who has tried to render a text, poem or prose, into another language, knows how
much translation is like assembling a puzzle whose pieces have been left in
rain and sun and warped, swollen, shrunk. The pieces, the language, seem to
"disappear" in the image they comprise, in the original poem.
Transposed into another language, however, the pieces take on new shapes, and
it becomes difficult to press them into a coherent whole, much less one
resembling the original. Here is a metaphor not just for translation, but for
writing and reading as well. […] Every reading is a distorted
reflection, a reassembly of the puzzle, a new translation.[14]
Transposition
is one of the key elements of Valerio Magrelli’s L’imballatore. Literary translation is explained by using a
non-literary comparison. What stands out the most in Magrelli’s view is the
upheaval translation entails. It
signifies moving, transferal, uprooting just as when we physically must leave a
house, pack everything and settle again in a new place. One of the striking
elements of translation Magrelli captures is paradoxical. Using words that are
not his own, the translator also moves and engages in time travel. Key words are “presente,”
“futuro,” “stanza,” “lavoro,” “casa,” “spostando” (repeated in lines nine and
ten), “viaggio,” “spola,” “traslato,” “trasferimento,” viaggia,” and
“trasloco.” Most
of these indicate forms of movement. Both Magrelli and Merrill turn to external
metaphors, packing up and moving from one house and country to another and
assembling a puzzle. What both concepts have in common is movement and
rearrangement. Here is the poem in the original Italian version and in my own
translation.
L’imballatore
L’imballatore chino
che mi svuota la stanza
fa il mio stesso lavoro.
Anch’io faccio cambiare casa
alle parole, alle parole
che non sono mie,
e metto mano a ciò
che non conosco senza capire
cosa sto spostando.
Sto spostando me stesso
traducendo il passato in un presente
che viaggia sigillato
racchiuso dentro pagine
o dentro casse con la scritta
“Fragile” di cui ignoro l’interno.
È questo il futuro, la spola, il traslato,
Il tempo manovale e citeriore,
trasferimento e tropo,
la ditta di trasloco.
The
Mover
The
mover bent over
emptying
the room
does
my very same work.
I
too make words change homes
words
that are not mine,
and
turn to things
I
don’t know since I don’t understand
what
I am moving.
I
am moving myself
translating
the past into a present
that
travels sealed
locked
in pages
or
in crates marked
“Fragile”
whose contents are unknown.
This
is the future, the commute, the transported,
labourer
time and hither,
transfer
and trope,
the
moving company.
Viviane
Ciampi’s Con testo a fronte (dialogo immaginario con un traduttore) is an
engaging poem composed of dualisms that reproduce the mechanisms of poetic
translation, material and immaterial. Unlike Magrelli’s piece which uses the
first person “io” to consider the art of translation, Ciampi uses a dialogical
layout beginning with the second person “tu”. The italics indicate the other.
The poem’s various syntactical couples consist of words which repeat such as
“fiume” in lines four and five, or “suono” in lines six and seven, or “verso”
in lines ten and fourteen or “sogno” in line twenty-two. Other such dualisms
occur as rhyme: “impianto” “canto” or “scrivi” “inseguivi.” We note the marked assonance
in line 7: “fruga la cruna del suono.”
Yet another variation of these couples are pairs of synonyms or words
with similar yet distinct meanings such as “impianto” and “tracciato”,
“confine” and “recinzione”, “pende” and “sporgeva”, “saliva” “schiuma”, and
“fonema” and “parola.” The poem presents an in-depth vision of translation.
According to Con testo a fronte,
it begins with an exploration of the framework of the text which is rooted in
its language with its peculiar constructions and sounds. This thorough reading is
the groundwork needed for the transformation of the text. The translator must
completely understand is hidden structures and meanings before trying to
reproduce them. Doubling or dualisms follow which progressively shift to
variations and the search for phonetic equivalencies not only repeating similar
content. There are also meetings between the poet and translator in which a
sort of alchemy occurs and which may not always be explained: the translator is
a poet simply because he or she rewrites the poem in another language. Ciampi
compares him to a gardener who sweeps away the pollen to discover the imprint
of poems that flower in the new tongue. Her poem is fully quoted in the Italian
followed by my translation.
CON TESTO A FRONTE
(dialogo immaginario con un traduttore)
Mi scrivi:
La lingua sorregge l’impianto dell’erba,
un canto, mentre nasce.
Appartiene al fiume
come il fiume alla saliva.
Dove il suono fruga la cruna del suono,
lì, risiede la bocca interrogatrice.
Mentre ella pone domande
un verso pende da quelle labbra.
… Da tempo, lo inseguivi.
Le scarpe tue – quelle
buone – si logoravano.
Nella stanza attigua alla
solitudine,
da una prominenza della
gola, il verso sporgeva.
Oh farlo accedere – buttate
le stampelle –
agli orecchi più disparati!
Pensavi confine
e saltava la recinzione,
lo respingevi
e tornava al petto.
Si moltiplicava col sigillo
dello scriba.
Ti chiesi quale parola
quale fonema fa del sogno
il tuo sogno?
Non so; cerco il virile dell’acqua
la schiuma del verbo
dovessero le pupille annegare.
Eh, giardiniere che ramazzi polline, guarda,
hai scoperto il tracciato della poesia nella
sua lingua.
Quello cardiaco, per domarlo.
With Facing Page Translation
(Imaginary
Dialogue with a Translator)
You write to me:
Language
supports the framework of grass,
a song,
while it is born.
It
belongs to the river
just as
the river does to saliva.
Where
sound
delves
into the needle eye of sound,
there,
the enquiring mouth resides.
Posing
questions
a line
hangs from those lips.
… For a while now, you pursued it.
Your shoes – the good ones – wore out.
In the room adjacent to solitude,
from the prominence of your throat, the line
protruded.
Oh let it in – throw away the crutches –
to the most disparate ears!
You thought borders
and
the fencing vanished,
you pushed it away
it
retuned to your chest.
Multiplying itself along with the scribe’s
seal.
You asked yourself which word
which phoneme
turns the dream into your dream?
I don’t know; I seek the virility of water
the foam of the verb
even if my pupils might drown.
Hey, gardener sweeping up the pollen, look,
you discovered the poetry path in its tongue.
The cardiac one, to tame it.
We
note that Magrelli’s text highlights the syntactical and rhetorical elements of
translation, their rearrangement, while Viviane Ciampi focuses equally on the
material elements, sound and structure, as well as on understanding the
original linguistic system. Finally, I will conclude by sharing two texts I
wrote about translating poetry. They are meant to be read together and create
meaning as a dual unit. Like Magrelli’s L’imballatore,
my poem uses the first person and we assume that the “I” is translation itself
and or the “I-Translator” speaking. This text shares the notion of Con testo
a fronte or With Facing Page Translation. However, it
focuses on what translation achieves more than on how it occurs. Nevertheless,
the practice of translation is shown by example, by reading the two versions
together.
In bilico tra due zone esisto
traduco la morte in vita e la vita
in morte sospesa sull’arco instabile
di Hermès dove insisto nel trasporto
resisto levando le vele d’aria
traghetto ponti rigenerabili
collego continenti epoche lingue
lemmi antichi con mille echi e quelli
appena sbarcati senza permessi
sono genitrice di connessioni
di reincarnazioni acrobatiche
restituisco senso all’incompreso
chiudo porte per aprire mondi
sono la curva sinuosa del varco.
Translation II
My
tranche lately runs among two ridges
where
I exist between opposing peaks
since
my task is to translate death into life
and
life into death, suspended on the bridge
of
Hermès, as I continue to seek
yet
another epiphany of flight
I
ferry nascent parallels to beaches
connect
continents, echoes of speeches
antique
words living with a thousand reaches
and
those just arrived that no one teaches.
I
am a creator of reflections
and
acrobatic reincarnations.
I
restore meaning to incomprehension;
renewing
literature with my art
I
close doors while opening new worlds.
I
am the curving arch of each fresh start.
[1] Paz, Octavio, On translation.
UNESCO Courier, vol. 39, no. 5,
May-June 1986, p. 1.
[2] Emphasis mine. From: William Shakespeare, A Midsummer’s Night Dream III. I, 112 (1564-1616).
[4] The complete poem by Nabokov may be
read online at:
https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/on-translating-eugene-onegin
Nabokov’s
view should not be reduced to this admirable poem on the insufficiency of
translation. In an article written earlier in 1937 for the Nouvelle Revue
Française he shares a few of his own versions from the famous Russian poet.
He also confesses to enjoying the art of translation, as a manner of plunging
more deeply into the poems, if only at moments:
« Mais je dois avouer que petit à petit je prenais plaisir au
travail ; ce n’était plus le mauvais désir de montrer Pouchkine au lecteur
étranger, mais tout bonnement la sensation exquise de plonger tout entier dans
cette poésie. J’essayais non pas de rendre Pouchkine au lecteur étranger, mais
de me mettre moi-même dans une sorte de transe pour que, sans ma participation
consciente, un miracle se produisît, la métamorphose complète. » NRF,
25ème année, N. 282, 1 mars, 1937, Vl. Nabokov-Sirine, « Pouchkine ou le
vrai et vraisemblable, » p. 373.
[7] Paz,
Octavio, On translation. UNESCO Courier, vol. 39, no. 5, May-June 1986, p. 1.
[8] The
Translation Studies Reader, Edited by Lawrence Venuti, London; New York:
Routledge, 2012, p. 23.
[9] One of the few writings on this new field study, which considerably enriched the research undertaken for this article, is: Kelly Washbourne’s “Poems about translation: a neglected form of theory” in The Translator, 2023 29:1, pp. 28-44.
[10] The poem is cited at
the end of the article and now appears in Vestigia, poesie in italiano e
inglese, Caramanica Editore, 2023, pp. 102-103.
[11] The title of this poem
is: To Sir Richard Fanshaw upon his
Translation of Pastor Fido. The full poem may be read at:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A35654.0001.001/1:24?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
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; […]
For
the complete text please see:
BARBARA CARLE
BIONOTA Barbara Carle poeta, traduttore e critico. È italianista emerita all'Università statale della California a Sacramento. Ha pubblicato diversi libri di poesia bilingue e un libro di poesia e prosa in italiano. Ha tradotto molti poeti dall'italiano all'inglese e dall'inglese all'italiano.
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