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Jim Doss
Senior Member
Username: jimdoss

Post Number: 2226
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 5:49 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Chris,

Here is one of the most egregious examples of what was termed a “translation” that I am aware of in this issue of Poetry magazine. It is the poem by Rilke (clearly not one of his best).


The original:

Das Lied des Zwerges


Meine Seele ist vielleicht grad und gut;
aber mein Herz, mein verbogenes Blut,
alles das, was mir wehe tut,
kann sie nicht aufrecht tragen.
Sie hat keinen Garten, sie hat kein Bett,
sie hängt an meinem scharfen Skelett
mit entsetztem Flügelschlagen.

Aus meinen Händen wird auch nichts mehr.
Wie verkümmert sie sind: sieh her:
zähe hüpfen sie, feucht und schwer,
wie kleine Kröten nach Regen.
Und das Andre an mir ist
abgetragen und alt und trist;
warum zögert Gott, auf den Mist
alles das hinzulegen.

Ob er mir zürnt für mein Gesicht
mit dem mürrischen Munde?
Es war ja so oft bereit, ganz licht
und klar zu werden im Grunde;
aber nichts kam ihm je so dicht
wie die großen Hunde.
Und die Hunde haben das nicht.


Aus: Das Buch der Bilder


A “near literal” translation:

The Song of the Dwarf

My soul is perhaps straight and good;
but my heart, my twisted blood,
everything that is hurting me
cannot be carried upright.
It has no garden, it has no bed,
it hangs on my sharp skeleton
with a terrified beating of wings.

From my hands can come nothing more.
How stunted they are, see here:
they move in hops, clammy, moist and heavy
like small toads after a rain.
And the other things about me
are threadbare, old and dreary;
why does God hesitate
to lay everything on the dung heap?

Is He angry at me for my face
with its sullen mouth?
It was ready so often to turn bright
and clear in its depths;
but nothing ever came so close
to it as the big dogs.
And dogs do not have that.

-- translated by Jim Doss



Translation in Poetry:

Song of the Little Cripple on the Street Corner

Maybe my soul’s all right.
But my body’s all wrong.
All bent and twisted,
All this that hurts me so.

My soul keeps trying, trying
To straighten my body up.
It hangs on my skeleton, frantic,
Flapping its terrified wings.

Look here, look at my hands,
They look like little wet toads
After the rainstorm’s over,
Hopping, hopping, hopping.

Maybe God didn’t like
The look on my face when He saw it.
Sometimes a big dog
Looks right into it.

-- translated by David Ferry



To his credit David Ferry tries to back away from calling this a translation, but not strongly enough. His poem is clearly an independent creation that uses the Rilke poem as a starting point. However, I am disappointed with the editors of Poetry in labeling this a translation to begin with and including it in this issue. They clearly did not do their homework.

Jim

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Gary Blankenship
Senior Member
Username: garyb

Post Number: 7468
Registered: 07-2001
Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 8:56 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jim, in a similar case, Sam Hamill writes of Basho's frog, generally translated as

Old-pond
leap-splash
a frog

(this Stryk's)

Hamill writes that Basho would not have included the sound, that as a Zen poet, he would esentially leave the poem unfinished letting the reader add the splash.

And consider these versions of The Tao

There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.
--Raymond Blakney

There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.
--Peter Merel

and my favorite

The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
is the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
--Ursula Le Guin

The latter says that she is delibrately poetic and translates a more feminine version to cut the often war-like nature of the book.

While I understand your point about Ferry's version, I also agree with him. An accurate translation may be unreadable or lack poetics.

To close, Tony Barnstone states we need a creative element in translation. Having read many good translations but poor poems, I agree.

Smiles.

Gary


A River Transformed

The Dawg House

March 2006 FireWeed
Gary Blankenship
Senior Member
Username: garyb

Post Number: 7470
Registered: 07-2001
Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 - 8:26 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Never work from memory. Hamill wrote that Frog is often seen as

A old pond.
A frog leaps in.
Kerplop.

and that better is

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water.

And that we as the reader should supply the sound/noise instead of the translator.

Smiles.

Gary





A River Transformed

The Dawg House

March 2006 FireWeed
Christopher T George
Senior Member
Username: chrisgeorge

Post Number: 4715
Registered: 12-2004
Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 - 12:01 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Hi Gary and Jim

A very interesting conversation. I am glad you found the works included in the Translation issue of Poetry to be provocative. I do agree with you, Jim, that on a general basis the translator should stay true to the spirit of the original work being translated, that is, try to capture what the poet was saying in the original language.

If the translator veers away from the original author's intentions, then clearly it is another work, inspired by the original, perhaps, but not a translation.

I will say that I realise that every writer is going to bring something of themselves to whatever they do. So, for example, if William Stafford, say, is translating a poem, he is going to bring some William Stafford schtick to the work. But, then, as I say, the end product should preferablely even so respect the original work rather than give us something new.

Jim, I see in your version of the Rilke poem that David Ferry has left out entirely the idea at the end of stanza 2, "why does God hesitate
to lay everything on the dung heap?"

Then at the end of the poem, Ferry gives a very loose interpretation of the original that you render in the final stanza as

Is He angry at me for my face
with its sullen mouth?
It was ready so often to turn bright
and clear in its depths;
but nothing ever came so close
to it as the big dogs.
And dogs do not have that.

-- and that he gives as

Maybe God didn’t like
The look on my face when He saw it.
Sometimes a big dog
Looks right into it.

-- whereas, it looks as if Rilke's intention was to talk about the face of the dog, isn't that right, rather than that the dog was looking at the speaker's face? Hmmmmmm....

I do like Ferry's lively interpretation of the hopping toads going in his third stanza --

Look here, look at my hands,
They look like little wet toads
After the rainstorm’s over,
Hopping, hopping, hopping.

-- but that again is going further than Rilke's orginal as reflected in your translation --

From my hands can come nothing more.
How stunted they are, see here:
they move in hops, clammy, moist and heavy
like small toads after a rain.
And the other things about me
are threadbare, old and dreary;
why does God hesitate
to lay everything on the dung heap?

-- where as I mentioned earlier, the idea of God's hesitation is left out entirely, as is the concept of the dung heap.

So I agree with you that Ferry has gone further than the translator should and created a whole new poem. I also agree that it is disappointing that the editors of Poetry would publish something that would appear to contravene the rules of translating another poets work and blur the lines as to what a translation should be.

All my best

Chris

(Message edited by Chrisgeorge on April 17, 2006)
Editor, Desert Moon Review
http://www.desertmoonreview.com/
Co-Editor, Loch Raven Review
http://www.lochravenreview.net/
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/
Jim Doss
Senior Member
Username: jimdoss

Post Number: 2229
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 - 2:14 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Chris and Gary,

Thanks for engaging me in this discussion.

I am not trying to say that all translations should be literal, but that they should be loyal to the spirit, logic and basic form of the original while striving to successful poems in English. I think David Ferry has created an original work of art that is loosely based on Rilke’s poem, but should not be represented as Rilke’s work. I would have no quarrel if it were listed as the work of David Ferry with a footnote to indicate it is based on Rilke’s poem. But to label “Song of the Little Cripple on the Street Corner” as Rilke’s work strikes me as a misrepresentation.

Even as eminent a translator as Robert Bly caught flack from the literary community over deviations from the original far less pronounced than Ferry’s to the point where he now labels some of this work versions instead of translations.

So my fundamental question is-- what is

1) a translation
2) a version
3) an original work based loosely on someone else’s poem

The answer are, of course, subjective, and show a clear progression down the creativity scale.

Of the poems I can speak authoritatively on in this issue of Poetry, I would say
Michael Hofmann’s translation of Bertolt Brecht’s Of Poor B.B. is clearly a translation, while David Ferry’s translation of Rilke’s Song of the Little Cripple on the Street Corner is the work of David Ferry using the Rilke poem as his starting point.

* * * *

I would have found this issue of Poetry even more interesting if the editors would have elected to take their readers deeper into the translation process by showing multiple version of the poems from the first to the last revision as the translators struggled with their task to render a successful poem in English.

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Loch Raven Review Editor

Trakl Translations
Gary Blankenship
Senior Member
Username: garyb

Post Number: 7487
Registered: 07-2001
Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 - 4:03 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jim, re your last point, may I recommend the best book of that kind ever: 19 ways of looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger, actually 25 ways and The Poem behind the Poem edited by Frank Stewart.

The latter is longish essays on translating East Asian poetry. Weinberger does a critical look at translations of Deer Park up to about 1980. Three are more that I someday hope to review.

Smiles.

Gary


A River Transformed

The Dawg House

March 2006 FireWeed
Jim Doss
Senior Member
Username: jimdoss

Post Number: 2232
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 5:46 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Gary,

I'll track down the book you mention. However, I'd say there must be a great deal of difference between translating eastern and western poetry. The creative challenge in western poetry revolves more around how the translator turns a word or phase into something that is meaningful in English since the alphabets and grammers are somewhat similar to English.

Jim
My Books

Loch Raven Review Editor

Trakl Translations
kdnxdr
New member
Username: kdnxdr

Post Number: 33
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 8:22 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Hello,

I am new to your community and have become brave enough to join your discussion of Poetry magazine's translations. Sadly, I don't have the knowledge background of the originals and or other translations for comparison. That said, I hope it won't be awkward for anyone if I give comment regarding the translated poem's content as published in this issue. After reading your discussion thus far, I realize I would only be commenting on partial elements of the poems, if you all prefer I not comment, I will respect your censure. Until notified, I would like to participate, even in my crippled state, standing on my corner.
kdnxdr
New member
Username: kdnxdr

Post Number: 34
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 9:28 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

I understand that by definition, it's essential for a translator to capture what the poet was saying in the original language and that a translation should respect the original work. A tranlator should adhere to the rules of tranlating. The spirit,logic and basic form of the original should be respected.

That said, version being distict from translation, I would like to wonder, did the translator abide by the previous covenant? Perhaps. I have no way of knowing how many hours/days/weeks/months/years he spent in actual work translating. In his defense, he states throughout the purpose of his work: an experiment, plundering for the three figures, a kind of abstraction of a poem. Ferry sees his own work as a theft, "larcenous", and doesn't really apologize but rather, takes a different perspective, as the observer's conscious of the observed, rather than Rilke's subjective lament of paltry condition. Rilke IS the street person, the abject; Ferry is the diassociated soul, free to question condemnation. Rilke accepts his condition and participates in it's demise. Ferry resists. Life is ultimately the poem and, in fact, we are all tranlators of something original.

(Message edited by kdnxdr on April 21, 2006)
Jim Doss
Senior Member
Username: jimdoss

Post Number: 2239
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 8:06 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

kdnxdr,

Thanks for engaging the discussion. I can speak authoritatively on two poems in the issue—Brecht and Rilke.

The Brecht poem is definitely a traditional translation, though I would quibble over a number of the word choices.

I would have no problem with the Ferry poem, regardless of how long he worked on it, if he listed it as an original work based on several images taken from a Rilke poem. Ferry's long apology/explanation for this non-translation ends with him referring to the poem as an adaptation of Rilke. He should have just put that label on the work in the first place.

Jim

My Books

Loch Raven Review Editor

Trakl Translations
kdnxdr
New member
Username: kdnxdr

Post Number: 36
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 8:28 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jim,

Thank you for welcoming me. I can't speak authoritatively on anything, I'm sorry to say. May I ask, when you all have these discussions, do you primarily discuss only the mechanics of translating? Do you ever discuss the actual content and intent of the message of the poem and whether the translator attempts to replicate that intent to the letter or whether the translator attempts to present the same poem with a different perspective? Or, do you ever discuss how well the translator conveys the original intent of the poem and what that intent was attempting?
Jim Doss
Senior Member
Username: jimdoss

Post Number: 2240
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 6:15 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

This is first time we have tried to have these types of discussions on Wild so we are breaking new ground here. Please feel free to take this discussion in any direction that you want or to start a new thread.

Is there a particular poem from the issue of poetry you are interested in discussing?

Jim
My Books

Loch Raven Review Editor

Trakl Translations
Kathy Paupore
Senior Member
Username: kathy

Post Number: 3222
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 8:22 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jim, I know no other language than English so translation is beyond me, but I do believe the translator should stay as true to the original work as possible. Some rearrangement of the words may be needed for clarification or understanding though. The translation should be pure, a version more what the translator brings of himself, and I have been inspired by other poets and based my work on their style or what the poem opens in me (but English poets only), these I consider my work, but would nod to the original poet if I used some of their wording.

BTW, when I got my issue I scanned for your name as a translator.

Gary, I have a list of about 25 different translations and interpretaions of Basho's Frog poem. It was an interesting find. Maybe you have the same.

:-) K
Wild Flowers
kdnxdr
New member
Username: kdnxdr

Post Number: 38
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 4:53 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Jim,

It would be a great disservice to you all if I were to initiate discussion of a particular poem. I'm happy to be an observer/learner that just happens to "peep up" once and awhile. I am enjoying reading the poems. This is my first experience to even consider the world of translation. I am not fluent in spanish, however, this has got me thinking that it would be an interesting experience to attempt a spanish poem.

I was intriqued with "The Power of a Question" and, in my ignorance, I found myself arguing with the translator as to who had asked "the question". The translator suggests it was "staleness" that the poet was suffering from in this piece. I found myself saying, "No, the poet was distracted from his work by infatuation". But, as I don't have the original, nor the knowledge base to back that up, I can only say that it is something I took from the poem itself. The translator mentions, "The poem was written in the same period in which Howe was working with Ruth R. Wisse...." and that makes me wonder what was that relationship about.

(Message edited by kdnxdr on April 22, 2006)

(Message edited by kdnxdr on April 22, 2006)

(Message edited by kdnxdr on April 22, 2006)