Four Translators Talk About Their Methods
May 1, 2008
During the Poetry International festival each year various poetry translation projects take place. The Chinese Whispers programme is a kind of fun relay race in which a poem moves from Dutch through as many languages as possible and back again into Dutch during the course of the week. The participating poets provide the flow. The resulting poem is usually rather different from the original and its differences are often humorous, the project is not so much to be considered poetry translation as an exercise in linguistics and a demonstration of the foibles of language.
Alongside this, there are more serious translation ventures. Supervised workshops enable participating poets to translate festival poets (this year Iwakiri and ter Balkt) into their mother tongues. The ways in which a poet might be better or less well- equipped to translate a fellow poet than a professional translator is something I’ll be considering when I report on the workshops during the festival.
Beforehand, it is interesting to take a look at how the professionals go about their job. How does one even begin to translate poetry? I’ve invited four translators from the PIW site to share their expertise.
Alongside this, there are more serious translation ventures. Supervised workshops enable participating poets to translate festival poets (this year Iwakiri and ter Balkt) into their mother tongues. The ways in which a poet might be better or less well- equipped to translate a fellow poet than a professional translator is something I’ll be considering when I report on the workshops during the festival.
Beforehand, it is interesting to take a look at how the professionals go about their job. How does one even begin to translate poetry? I’ve invited four translators from the PIW site to share their expertise.
ALOK BHALLA
Alok Bhalla is a Professor of English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He has translated a range of poems, plays and fictional texts from Hindi and Urdu and, as a critic, has published extensively on literature, politics and translation theory.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I think that choosing a poem for translation is always a startling and an enigmatic process. Sometimes, I am sure, it is similar to throwing coins to find the right hexagram in that I Ching that suddenly seems to speak to one’s peculiar emotional state or one’s present political anger That doesn’t mean one is ‘fated’ to translate a particular poem. Rather, a poem ‘asks’ to be translated by someone with whose present anguish or sentiment resonates with its own. That is how, I think, the poems I have translated with a degree of pleasure ‘found’ me. Poems by Udayan Vajpai, Kedarnath Singh and Kunwar Narain seem to have become accessible to my need to understand specific personal and political conditions – sometimes of power and base surrender, sometimes of private loss and grief, and sometimes of public acknowledgement of a poet’s gracefulness and my own gratitude at reading an ordinary spoken Hindi that was not first required to pay homage to Sanskrit. These poems became ‘visible’ in bookstores, or arrived by mail, or insistently placed themselves along my intellectual journey so that I had to either glance at them or push them aside, be either irritated by them or notice that they had a remarkable clarity which I could translate for others. I translated them because I knew that they deserved another ‘life’ in another language, another hearing by others located somewhere else.
Where do you go from there?
I have always refused to mingle the ‘art’ of translation with any of the ‘theories’ of translation. I think both have their protocols. Theorists of translation are not always so generous. Many a time they adopt the tone of stern law-givers for whom the translator is always a guilty thing who does or does not, must or must not reveal, deform, explain, improve, expand, rationalize, eroticize, clarify, infect, simplify, defer, ennoble, rewrite, natives, destroy, exoticism, feminize, domesticate, minorities, foreignism, impoverish, colonies, subvert or misrepresent the meaning of the original text – there are other spurs on their whips of flagellation (the poor translator is always at the receiving end). They inevitably speak about the impossibility of translating the ‘original’, the ‘primal’ glory of a culture or its language. I don’t believe that a translator is required to carry the ontological burden of our times or be the messianic voice of a civilization. Let me at least assert, even if my assertion does not have the melodramatic bass of the theory: It is possible for a translator to imagine another language and hence other forms of living and being; and, it is possible for a translator to speak to others who understand how we become ‘human’ when we find ourselves in conversation with others who have an utterly different way of ‘being human’ than we have. My own claim to intellectual cosmopolitanism (which I need to declare again and again for I live in the midst of sectarian arrogance and the genocidal virulence of identity politics) depends upon the labour of a community of translators, as does my claim that for a translator to be part of a literary habitat we need to understand the important ways in which translation contributes to the creation of cultural and moral pluralities.
If the task of the theorist is to craft critical tools so as to understand what may have determined the rhythms, phrases, cultural presuppositions, philosophic or moral preoccupations of the original text, the translator is guided by radically other considerations. Or, at least, I as a translator I am. A translator must fulfill two ethical or aesthetic tasks simultaneously. Even as a translator crafts a new work, the translated version must respect the integrity of the original so that the vision of the original is made available. This is a minimum ethic (I know this has a naive edenic nostalgia attached to it, just as I am aware of the theoretical temptations to make translation part of our more suspicious and skeptical age which distrusts the power of all ‘originals’).
I almost always begin my translations by making a literal draft which is so shamelessly dependent on dictionaries and thesauruses that the lines on the page are as depressing and meaningless as marching ants. The first scribbles almost inevitably confront me with the inadequacy of my qualifications and imaginative competence to the task. Just because the draft seems mock the ego, I put the original aside and try to remake each line so as to meet of Coleridge’s definition of a poem as the best possible arrangement of words best suited to the sentiments and thoughts expressed. That involves listening to each line within the surrounding silence. Only after I am seemingly satisfied that I actually ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the translated words as well as I can, do I begin to attach them to the sentences, lineation or spaces that precede or follow them. Once the poem begins to ‘speak’ well in English, I dare myself to return to the original to ensure that I haven’t violated the two ethical and aesthetic imperatives I have laid down for translators above.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
Before speaking about my translations of poems which have been posted on this website, I should like to mention that the poetic translation which took me the longest of time, and of which I am the proudest, is that of Dharamvir Bharati’s play, Andha Yug (The Blind/Dark Age, OUP). The play, which is perhaps one of the finest written in post-independence India, posed great difficulties because it functions on three different levels of religious, ethical and personal awareness. I had to find, in English, a language and a rhythm which is, at times, hieratic and is, at other times, recognizable as a song of ethical lament. I also had to craft a dramatic speech for characters that is tormented because men and women find themselves participating in a war that humiliates and debases each of them.
Of the poems on the website, the prose-poems by Udayan Vajpeyi were perhaps the most difficult to translate. The first problem that confronted me was the shape of the texts. Along with the original Hindi versions of the poems, Udayan had sent me copies of their French translations also. The visual shape of the French translations, which had Udayan’s approval, was different from that of the Hindi text. In the original the poems appeared like blocks of lines which so crowded each other as to create a sense of claustrophobic walls from which the consciousness of the poet was trying, with growing sense of futility and despondency, to escape into spaces where it could breath more freely. In the French version, the lineation was looser as each cluster of images or emotions was given its own space. The arrangement had its virtues. Instead of creating a feeling of entrapment by opaque and relentlessly indifferent circumstances within which a consciousness finds itself placed, it suggested spaces of silences from which the self could not escape as well as abysses of memory and time which faced the self in its attempt to deal with loss or find meaning. I offered both kinds of arrangements to Udayan to choose from when I translated his poems into English. I could ‘hear’ the sounds of both the versions and accept the virtues of each arrangement.
The other difficulty I faced as I translated Udayan’s poems was to find a way to communicate in English a mode writing which was simultaneously austere in its language and surreal in its vision. A literal translation of the tone (as distinct from the images and emotional situations concerned with memories of grief and consequent bewilderment) of the original Hindi could well have turned into bathos and sentimental excess. Fortunately, English has the possibility of understatement that can at the same time accommodate a feeling of the strange and the surreal in the affairs of human beings.
DAVID COLMER
David Colmer was born in Australia and has lived in the Netherlands for seventeen years. His poetry translations include work by Benno Barnard, Tsead Bruinja, Anna Enquist, Ramsey Nasr and Mustafa Stitou. His translation of Nijhoff's Awater will appear later this year from Anvil Press.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I read the original and quickly try to see elements that I need to try to reproduce in the translation. I mainly look for technical elements such as metrical structure, internal rhyme, sound patterns. I don’t explicitly think about the meaning or the mood at this stage, because I get those implicitly at first. It is however easy to miss some technical aspects because you read over them and it's important to check whether there is a specific structure.
Where do you go from there?
Then I just start translating. Draft after draft, comparing the translations to the original. If possible I leave time between the different drafts so that I can see the translation with fresh eyes. (Forgetting why I did certain things and just seeing how they work or, more often, fail.) I do the first four or five drafts on the computer and then carry on on paper. The longer I work on it, the faster each run-through becomes. In the end I might just be reading it out loud and changing a word or two, or not changing it at all. When I start changing the same words back and forth between two variants it’s time to make a decision and call it finished. (Although I would always revise it if given a chance at a later date.)
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
I think Benno Barnard’s, ‘A Kiss in Brussels’. The difficulties are obvious to anyone who reads the original, but that of course requires Dutch. The poem really has it all: rhyme and rhythm, images that are simply beautiful and images that make you think. At the same time, there's something mysterious about it despite its clarity. For me the translation just fell into place and I feel like I have gone a long way toward producing a poem that can stand in English on its own merits. Obviously I failed to do full justice to lines as beautiful as “mijn hand blijft steken in een teer gebaar”, but that failing is somehow compensated by what I see as the compelling simplicity of the English version. Even the line I most doubt (“my fingers...”) has something moving about it and every time I think about changing it I can’t help but think that it might be its awkwardness that makes it so moving and appropriate. Will I still think so in a year or two? I don’t know.
TAKAKO LENTO
Takako Lento was born in Japan and has lived in the US for over thirty years. He was educated at Tsuda College and Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Iowa in the US, with MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Lento writes and translates prose and poetry from Japanese to English as well as from English to Japanese.
How do you go about translating a poem – where do you start?
I identify a poem I want to translate. I read, chew, taste and digest the poem. I try to understand my experience of the poem.
Where do you go from there?
I prepare the first draft by recreating in English my experience of the original, following each original line. At this time I focus on the original poem’s overall tone, messages, and overt or subtle references. My revisions of this draft focus on the original words, their usage, intended effects, implications, or associations or references, often culturally loaded. I try to reflect these elements in my translation as fully as I can manage. I ask a native speaker to check the English. Then I prepare a final version incorporating the checker’s linguistic corrections as well as any changes that I sense need to be made based on the native speaker’s reading or understanding of the translation.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of; what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
‘Invisible Tree’ by Ryuichi Tamura. The problem I faced was in relation to the use of the word “mind.” This is a poem I love, but I am not sure if the difficulty is resolved in my translation. The Japanese word “kokoro” means either “heart [emotionally charged entity]” or “mind [mind’s function].” This is a perennial issue in translating Japanese poetry. Of course, when someone’s ‘heart is aching,’ no one would argue against choosing to use “heart.” Or when someone ‘imagines in his mind,’ the choice of “mind” is probably universal. But in Tamura’s poetry, the heart and the mind are so closely tied together that I often find it difficult to choose one against the other.
RICHARD ZENITH
A native of Washington DC, previous PIW-Portugal editor, Richard Zenith has lived as an adult in Colombia, Brazil, France, and – since 1987 – in Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and researcher in the Fernando Pessoa archives. Zenith has rendered a number of other Portuguese and Brazilian poets into English, as well as novels by Portugal’s António Lobo Antunes and Angola’s José Luandino Vieira.
How I translate a poem...
I don’t begin by producing a slavishly literal translation. Or rather, I don’t distinguish between ‘literal’ and ‘literary’. The moment I begin translating, I’m already searching for the word or phrase that works in English. My first drafts are full of alternate possibilities placed in brackets, or I’ll place question marks after words or phrases that don’t seem quite right. The written word gains a false authority; we’re more liable to give it credence just because it’s already there on the page. So I’m nervous, as a translator or as a writer, about jotting just anything down, with the idea that I’ll improve on it later.
After establishing an initial multi-translation (‘multi’ because of all the variant wordings I still have to choose from), I look at what I've done against the original, very closely. A translation should not be a close reading, or an interpretation, but the translator must read closely and carefully interpret — without, however, revealing that interpretation in the translation.
At a certain point I abandon the original text and just read the English. And when it seems right enough (perfection, of course, is never achieved), then I'll read it once more alongside the original.
I seek out all the help I can get, asking native speakers to clarify even the tiniest doubt. If the poet is living, I always ask her or him to see what I’ve done, but only when I’ve achieved what seems to be a relatively final version. If her or his English is poor, I explain any hesitations or uncertainties I may have and listen attentively to what the author has to say.
I feel especially proud of certain translations right when I finish them, but once they’re out there, published, they become public property and I don’t feel that they belong to me anymore. So I can’t really name a translation I feel especially proud of, unless it’s one I did yesterday. [Editor’s note: Richard Zenith’s most recent translations are of A.M. Pires Cabral ]
Alok Bhalla is a Professor of English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He has translated a range of poems, plays and fictional texts from Hindi and Urdu and, as a critic, has published extensively on literature, politics and translation theory.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I think that choosing a poem for translation is always a startling and an enigmatic process. Sometimes, I am sure, it is similar to throwing coins to find the right hexagram in that I Ching that suddenly seems to speak to one’s peculiar emotional state or one’s present political anger That doesn’t mean one is ‘fated’ to translate a particular poem. Rather, a poem ‘asks’ to be translated by someone with whose present anguish or sentiment resonates with its own. That is how, I think, the poems I have translated with a degree of pleasure ‘found’ me. Poems by Udayan Vajpai, Kedarnath Singh and Kunwar Narain seem to have become accessible to my need to understand specific personal and political conditions – sometimes of power and base surrender, sometimes of private loss and grief, and sometimes of public acknowledgement of a poet’s gracefulness and my own gratitude at reading an ordinary spoken Hindi that was not first required to pay homage to Sanskrit. These poems became ‘visible’ in bookstores, or arrived by mail, or insistently placed themselves along my intellectual journey so that I had to either glance at them or push them aside, be either irritated by them or notice that they had a remarkable clarity which I could translate for others. I translated them because I knew that they deserved another ‘life’ in another language, another hearing by others located somewhere else.
Where do you go from there?
I have always refused to mingle the ‘art’ of translation with any of the ‘theories’ of translation. I think both have their protocols. Theorists of translation are not always so generous. Many a time they adopt the tone of stern law-givers for whom the translator is always a guilty thing who does or does not, must or must not reveal, deform, explain, improve, expand, rationalize, eroticize, clarify, infect, simplify, defer, ennoble, rewrite, natives, destroy, exoticism, feminize, domesticate, minorities, foreignism, impoverish, colonies, subvert or misrepresent the meaning of the original text – there are other spurs on their whips of flagellation (the poor translator is always at the receiving end). They inevitably speak about the impossibility of translating the ‘original’, the ‘primal’ glory of a culture or its language. I don’t believe that a translator is required to carry the ontological burden of our times or be the messianic voice of a civilization. Let me at least assert, even if my assertion does not have the melodramatic bass of the theory: It is possible for a translator to imagine another language and hence other forms of living and being; and, it is possible for a translator to speak to others who understand how we become ‘human’ when we find ourselves in conversation with others who have an utterly different way of ‘being human’ than we have. My own claim to intellectual cosmopolitanism (which I need to declare again and again for I live in the midst of sectarian arrogance and the genocidal virulence of identity politics) depends upon the labour of a community of translators, as does my claim that for a translator to be part of a literary habitat we need to understand the important ways in which translation contributes to the creation of cultural and moral pluralities.
If the task of the theorist is to craft critical tools so as to understand what may have determined the rhythms, phrases, cultural presuppositions, philosophic or moral preoccupations of the original text, the translator is guided by radically other considerations. Or, at least, I as a translator I am. A translator must fulfill two ethical or aesthetic tasks simultaneously. Even as a translator crafts a new work, the translated version must respect the integrity of the original so that the vision of the original is made available. This is a minimum ethic (I know this has a naive edenic nostalgia attached to it, just as I am aware of the theoretical temptations to make translation part of our more suspicious and skeptical age which distrusts the power of all ‘originals’).
I almost always begin my translations by making a literal draft which is so shamelessly dependent on dictionaries and thesauruses that the lines on the page are as depressing and meaningless as marching ants. The first scribbles almost inevitably confront me with the inadequacy of my qualifications and imaginative competence to the task. Just because the draft seems mock the ego, I put the original aside and try to remake each line so as to meet of Coleridge’s definition of a poem as the best possible arrangement of words best suited to the sentiments and thoughts expressed. That involves listening to each line within the surrounding silence. Only after I am seemingly satisfied that I actually ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the translated words as well as I can, do I begin to attach them to the sentences, lineation or spaces that precede or follow them. Once the poem begins to ‘speak’ well in English, I dare myself to return to the original to ensure that I haven’t violated the two ethical and aesthetic imperatives I have laid down for translators above.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
Before speaking about my translations of poems which have been posted on this website, I should like to mention that the poetic translation which took me the longest of time, and of which I am the proudest, is that of Dharamvir Bharati’s play, Andha Yug (The Blind/Dark Age, OUP). The play, which is perhaps one of the finest written in post-independence India, posed great difficulties because it functions on three different levels of religious, ethical and personal awareness. I had to find, in English, a language and a rhythm which is, at times, hieratic and is, at other times, recognizable as a song of ethical lament. I also had to craft a dramatic speech for characters that is tormented because men and women find themselves participating in a war that humiliates and debases each of them.
Of the poems on the website, the prose-poems by Udayan Vajpeyi were perhaps the most difficult to translate. The first problem that confronted me was the shape of the texts. Along with the original Hindi versions of the poems, Udayan had sent me copies of their French translations also. The visual shape of the French translations, which had Udayan’s approval, was different from that of the Hindi text. In the original the poems appeared like blocks of lines which so crowded each other as to create a sense of claustrophobic walls from which the consciousness of the poet was trying, with growing sense of futility and despondency, to escape into spaces where it could breath more freely. In the French version, the lineation was looser as each cluster of images or emotions was given its own space. The arrangement had its virtues. Instead of creating a feeling of entrapment by opaque and relentlessly indifferent circumstances within which a consciousness finds itself placed, it suggested spaces of silences from which the self could not escape as well as abysses of memory and time which faced the self in its attempt to deal with loss or find meaning. I offered both kinds of arrangements to Udayan to choose from when I translated his poems into English. I could ‘hear’ the sounds of both the versions and accept the virtues of each arrangement.
The other difficulty I faced as I translated Udayan’s poems was to find a way to communicate in English a mode writing which was simultaneously austere in its language and surreal in its vision. A literal translation of the tone (as distinct from the images and emotional situations concerned with memories of grief and consequent bewilderment) of the original Hindi could well have turned into bathos and sentimental excess. Fortunately, English has the possibility of understatement that can at the same time accommodate a feeling of the strange and the surreal in the affairs of human beings.
DAVID COLMER
David Colmer was born in Australia and has lived in the Netherlands for seventeen years. His poetry translations include work by Benno Barnard, Tsead Bruinja, Anna Enquist, Ramsey Nasr and Mustafa Stitou. His translation of Nijhoff's Awater will appear later this year from Anvil Press.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I read the original and quickly try to see elements that I need to try to reproduce in the translation. I mainly look for technical elements such as metrical structure, internal rhyme, sound patterns. I don’t explicitly think about the meaning or the mood at this stage, because I get those implicitly at first. It is however easy to miss some technical aspects because you read over them and it's important to check whether there is a specific structure.
Where do you go from there?
Then I just start translating. Draft after draft, comparing the translations to the original. If possible I leave time between the different drafts so that I can see the translation with fresh eyes. (Forgetting why I did certain things and just seeing how they work or, more often, fail.) I do the first four or five drafts on the computer and then carry on on paper. The longer I work on it, the faster each run-through becomes. In the end I might just be reading it out loud and changing a word or two, or not changing it at all. When I start changing the same words back and forth between two variants it’s time to make a decision and call it finished. (Although I would always revise it if given a chance at a later date.)
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
I think Benno Barnard’s, ‘A Kiss in Brussels’. The difficulties are obvious to anyone who reads the original, but that of course requires Dutch. The poem really has it all: rhyme and rhythm, images that are simply beautiful and images that make you think. At the same time, there's something mysterious about it despite its clarity. For me the translation just fell into place and I feel like I have gone a long way toward producing a poem that can stand in English on its own merits. Obviously I failed to do full justice to lines as beautiful as “mijn hand blijft steken in een teer gebaar”, but that failing is somehow compensated by what I see as the compelling simplicity of the English version. Even the line I most doubt (“my fingers...”) has something moving about it and every time I think about changing it I can’t help but think that it might be its awkwardness that makes it so moving and appropriate. Will I still think so in a year or two? I don’t know.
TAKAKO LENTO
Takako Lento was born in Japan and has lived in the US for over thirty years. He was educated at Tsuda College and Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Iowa in the US, with MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Lento writes and translates prose and poetry from Japanese to English as well as from English to Japanese.
How do you go about translating a poem – where do you start?
I identify a poem I want to translate. I read, chew, taste and digest the poem. I try to understand my experience of the poem.
Where do you go from there?
I prepare the first draft by recreating in English my experience of the original, following each original line. At this time I focus on the original poem’s overall tone, messages, and overt or subtle references. My revisions of this draft focus on the original words, their usage, intended effects, implications, or associations or references, often culturally loaded. I try to reflect these elements in my translation as fully as I can manage. I ask a native speaker to check the English. Then I prepare a final version incorporating the checker’s linguistic corrections as well as any changes that I sense need to be made based on the native speaker’s reading or understanding of the translation.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of; what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
‘Invisible Tree’ by Ryuichi Tamura. The problem I faced was in relation to the use of the word “mind.” This is a poem I love, but I am not sure if the difficulty is resolved in my translation. The Japanese word “kokoro” means either “heart [emotionally charged entity]” or “mind [mind’s function].” This is a perennial issue in translating Japanese poetry. Of course, when someone’s ‘heart is aching,’ no one would argue against choosing to use “heart.” Or when someone ‘imagines in his mind,’ the choice of “mind” is probably universal. But in Tamura’s poetry, the heart and the mind are so closely tied together that I often find it difficult to choose one against the other.
RICHARD ZENITH
A native of Washington DC, previous PIW-Portugal editor, Richard Zenith has lived as an adult in Colombia, Brazil, France, and – since 1987 – in Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and researcher in the Fernando Pessoa archives. Zenith has rendered a number of other Portuguese and Brazilian poets into English, as well as novels by Portugal’s António Lobo Antunes and Angola’s José Luandino Vieira.
How I translate a poem...
I don’t begin by producing a slavishly literal translation. Or rather, I don’t distinguish between ‘literal’ and ‘literary’. The moment I begin translating, I’m already searching for the word or phrase that works in English. My first drafts are full of alternate possibilities placed in brackets, or I’ll place question marks after words or phrases that don’t seem quite right. The written word gains a false authority; we’re more liable to give it credence just because it’s already there on the page. So I’m nervous, as a translator or as a writer, about jotting just anything down, with the idea that I’ll improve on it later.
After establishing an initial multi-translation (‘multi’ because of all the variant wordings I still have to choose from), I look at what I've done against the original, very closely. A translation should not be a close reading, or an interpretation, but the translator must read closely and carefully interpret — without, however, revealing that interpretation in the translation.
At a certain point I abandon the original text and just read the English. And when it seems right enough (perfection, of course, is never achieved), then I'll read it once more alongside the original.
I seek out all the help I can get, asking native speakers to clarify even the tiniest doubt. If the poet is living, I always ask her or him to see what I’ve done, but only when I’ve achieved what seems to be a relatively final version. If her or his English is poor, I explain any hesitations or uncertainties I may have and listen attentively to what the author has to say.
I feel especially proud of certain translations right when I finish them, but once they’re out there, published, they become public property and I don’t feel that they belong to me anymore. So I can’t really name a translation I feel especially proud of, unless it’s one I did yesterday. [Editor’s note: Richard Zenith’s most recent translations are of A.M. Pires Cabral ]
