Prompt: Translation

Image by Oli Lynch from Pixabay

As a teacher, the poet John Ashbery gave as a prompt Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo” in its original German for his non-German speaking students. He made it a translation exercise in which students sounded out the German words and wrote down English words resembling those sounds. They might have translated “sich hält und glänzt” as “sick halt and glance.” It would actually translate as "holds up and shines," but being correct in your translation was not the point. He didn't want students to focus on meaning and subject or try to crack the puzzle of the Rilke poem. The exercise was about sound and rhythm.

Their "translations" might have looked somewhat nonsensical but then they could try to find logic in this rough draft but maintain the original line breaks and stanzas.

We have selected for this prompt an unpublished poem that was written in English and used a translation app to put it into Portuguese and Latin. (see the translated poems here) They look quite different. We avoided more common Spanish, French and Italian versions in the hope that you might be less likely to know Latin or Portuguese and not be influenced by the words.

As with the Ashberry exercise, don't focus on being "correct." Don't cheat and run the poems through an app to put it into your native language! Choose one of the two translations. The goal is to focus on sound, meter and perhaps some similar cognates. The result will probably be a first draft that needs some logic applied to it. Revise but maintain the three stanzas and line breaks which will allow readers to see some of your path to the final poem.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 31, 2021

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Love and the Ink Dark Moon

Izumi Shikibu, a poet at Empress Teishi's court.
(Shown here in a c. 1765 Kusazōshi by Komatsuken)

When my desire
grows too fierce
I wear my bed clothes
inside out,
dark as the night's rough husk
    - Ono no Komachi



I was gifted with a copy of The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu which are translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani. Besides the poems, I found the story of these poets from over a millennium ago very interesting. It seems that in Japan's imperial Heian Court, female poets were well accepted. I would have assumed the opposite. They were given a voice and could have a place in literary circles.

In this particular time and culture, the arts were valued and women had a place. No other period in Japan’s literary history was as dominated by women as the Heian Period. Hirshfield writes that this court setting "proved to be a uniquely auspicious environment for women writers for several reasons, but foremost is the central role of the arts in the conduct of daily life."

This collection is subtitled as "love poems" and there are certainly many that concern matters of the heart, but there are also poems about the passage of time and other themes.


This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.

    - Ono no Komachi



Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu were important poets during Japan's Heian Age (795-1185). Their poems were generally waka (tanka) poems in form. Hirshfield says that "Komachi and Shikibu stand out as two of the greatest poets in an age of greatness not simply because they achieved technical virtuosity in their chosen form, the thirty-one syllable tanka verse, but because they used this form as a medium of reflection and introspection... each confronted her experience with a directness and honesty unusual in any age."

Izumi Shikibu was religious but also passionate - two qualities that are not always equally present. She did spend time in Buddhist monasteries and once contemplated becoming a nun. But she never denied her femininity, and her extramarital affairs made her the subject of ostracism by her family. While married, she fell in love with the Empress' son. After the death of the Prince she had an affair with the Prince's married brother.

the scandal caused the Prince's wife to leave him and Shikibu lived with him for five years. The Prince died during and during a period of intense mourning, she wrote more than 200 poems to her departed lover.

Remembering you...
The fireflies of this marsh
seem like sparks
that rise
from my body's longing.

    - Izumi Shikibu

Ono no Komachi as an old woman, a woodcut by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

A life in vain.
My looks, talents faded
like these cherry blossoms
paling in the endless rains
that I gaze out upon, alone
    - Ono no Komachi

Jane Hirshfield is a well known poet with many connections to Japanese forms and philosophy. With the help of Mariko Aratani, she translated into the English language these poems, many of which were not available in English.

If you are interested in the tanka genre, women poets, or this period  and gives us new insight into life as lived during the Heian Era, considered by many scholars as a golden age for Japanese poetry and literature.

If you have ever read classical Japanese literature by women, you probably are more likely to know Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book or Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji than these poets. (Shikibu is a title, not a name, so the two writers are not related except both were  part of the court of Empress Akiko. Komachi wrote 100 years earlier.)

All of these works deal with the Heian Period life and the sexual intrigue that was well known but usually happening under covers of silk and darkness. Court poets wrote about  almost anything happening around them from an affair, rain and snow storms, aging, or returning a fan. The poems are devoid of the politics of courtly life.

In this world
love has no color — 
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

Besides the poems, the book has a fascinating introduction and information about the process of translation. The latter topic has interested me of late, as I may take on some translation myself.

Hirshfield writes about that process:
"Anyone who attempts that impossible task, the translation of poetry, must at some point wonder what exactly a poem might be, if not its own body of words. For surely, all can attest who have made the hard and joyous effort to write a poem of their own, poetry dwells in words: absolutely particular in meaning, irreplaceably individual in rhythm and sound... the act of translation constitutes a leap of faith, a belief that somehow this part of a poem that lives both through words and beyond words can be kept alive, can move from its life in one verbal body to another."

Look at their translation of one poem by Komachi, and then compare it to another translation.

I know it must be this way
in the waking world,
but how cruel ---
even in my dreams
we hide from others' eyes

Another translation of that poem by Edwin Cranston, a translator who makes no claim to being a poet himself, renders that poem in this way.

In the waking world
Such caution may be well advised,
But even in dreams
To see him watching others' eyes ---
This is wretchedness itself!

Which translation is "correct?" Or is no translation really correct? As a poet, I prefer the Hirshfield version which is probably less literal. But there have always been those purists who would claim that literature should only be read in its original language. Of course, that takes a great deal of literature away from us.

This pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too:
after a thousand years,
see how its branches
lean towards the ground
     - Izumi Shikibu


No way to see him
on this moonless night ---
I lie awake longing, burning,
breasts racing fire,
heart in flames.

    - Ono no Komachi

          

Prompt: Translation

Translations are an important part of the poetry world.  Even translating the deceptively-simple haiku is difficult and worthy of argument. We use the phrase "lost in translation" more often in situations that don't have to do with going from one language to another.

You probably have tried one of the translation tools online, such as Google Translate, and very likely found the results to be so literal that something was lost in the process. This is more likely when translating poetry and literature and language that is more figurative.

The poem "On Translation" by Mónica de la Torre suggests that the translator's job is:

"Not to search for meaning, but to reedify a gesture, an intent.
As a translator, one grows attached to originals. Seldom are choices
   so purposeful."

Translations can be far-reaching, such as those done for politicians in places like the United Nations.

Our prompt this month deals with translation in poetry, but not necessarily of poetry.




One poem in Charles Baudelaire's collection Fleurs du mal  (a title that easily translate to Flowers of Evil) is "Harmonie du soir."  Just looking at the first stanza of that poem in several translations shows us the "problem" with translations.

Baudelaire wrote:

Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

That stanza was translated by William Aggeler as:

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

But in the translation by Roy Campbell, the stanza becomes:

Now comes the eve, when on its stem vibrates
Each flower, evaporating like a censer;
When sounds and scents in the dark air grow denser;
Drowsed swoon through which a mournful waltz pulsates!

Cyril Scott translated that stanza in this way:

The hour approacheth, when, as their stems incline,
The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,
And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn;
A melancholy waltz — and a drowsiness divine.

And the version translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks looks like this:

the hours approach when vibrant in the breeze,
a censer swoons to every swaying flower;
blown tunes and scents in turn enchant the bower;
languorous waltz of swirling fancies these!

Which translation is the right one, or the best one, or the closest to what Baudelaire would have wanted to say in English?

I can't ask you this month to do translations of poems since many of us don't have multiple languages to use. Let us think about other instances of translation in our lives.

In "Elegy in Translation" by Meg Day, she notes something we have all done - hearing a song lyric incorrectly:
"I saw Joni live and still thought a gay pair of guys put up a parking lot." 

Even after hearing the song sung live - like hearing a poet at a reading - she didn't hear the correct Joni Mitchell lyric ("They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.") though she may have known that was the actual line.

In the haiku-like "Elvis in Translation" by Elaine Equi, she writes about one of the other kinds of translations we do in our lives.

"Sometimes the blue in Blue Hawaii
gets lost. But Elvis’s eyes speak
pure Esperanto."

My own thought is that we are all translators, whether it be in our everyday lives or in the ways that we take experiences and translate them into poems for others to read and experience.

For this month's prompt, I ask you to focus on the act of translation in any form - actually translating from one language to another, interpreting and translating a conversation in our own language or a gesture or a facial reaction, a baby's cry, a pet's attitude, the meaning of clouds moving towards you - the possibilities are wide open and many. Is that translation accurate, successful, or is something lost or mistranslated?

I offer up my own take on translation as this month's model poem.

Translation

My grandparents would speak Slovak
with my father, the aunts and the uncles
at the Sunday dinners at their home in Newark
when they didn’t want us to know.
In those days, the priests spoke Latin.
That was the mystery of the faith.
The boys on the #42 bus spoke Spanish
as I rode to my afterschool job
and when they laughed, looking in my direction.
Too fast for my B+  Spanish III  understanding
but enough that it hurt.
The waiter at the Chinese restaurant
changes my order into words
that I want to understand, 
but will  never know.
Translation.
This is the poet’s job, 
and the job of the reader too.
We have been in training
all our lives.

by Kenneth Ronkowitz

Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2018

Translation

When the U.N. General Assembly listens to a speaker, how much is lost in the translations?

"As you know, translation is really a problem-solving task. Every once in a while you see the original and something comes into your head that is also a formal solution to the problem of getting it into lively English, and you feel like you've written a poem. But that's pretty rare. I wouldn't exactly say it's more like doing crossword puzzles than it is like writing poetry, but it's a mix of the two. "                    

- Robert Hass, "Interview: A Common Language"

Ask Google Translate to do its work on "poets online" and you will get in Italian "poeti in linea" and in French "poètes en ligne" and though I can't read Japanese, I'm sure that  詩人オンライン is also a "poet on a line" of some type. Something is certainly "lost in translation."

Translation is difficult. Edward Hirsch says that "Strictly speaking, total translation is impossible, since languages differ and each language carries its own complex of linguistic resources, historical and social values. This is especially true in poetry, the maximal of language."

The translation of poetry needs something more than simply translating words and getting the same general meaning. In defining "translation" for his Poets Glossary, Edward Hirsch notes:

That’s why its untranslatability has been one of the defining features of poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the word untranslatableness. Robert Frost famously said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” An Italian pun captures the idea: traduttore/traditore, translator/traitor.

You can find advice about translating poetry, but I am interested here more in using poetry to talk about translation.

We sometimes say, "Let me translate that for you" meaning that we will rephrase something complex into a more understandable form.  We use the expression "in simple English"  in this way.

Richard Blanco's poem"Translation for Mamá" begins:

What I’ve written for you, I have always written
in English, my language of silent vowel endings
never translated into your language of silent h’s.
               Lo que he escrito para ti, siempre lo he escrito
               en inglés, en mi lengua llena de vocales mudas
               nunca traducidas a tu idioma de haches mudas.

He writes his poems and also translates it into his mother's Spanish.

But "How do I say it?” is what Joy Harjo is really concerned with in her poem “Deer Dancer..”  Though she can be referring to the language of her own Mvskoke/Creek Nation, she is also talking about the inadequacies of all languages. 

How do I say it?  In this language there are no words for how the real world
collapses.  I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into
focus, but I couldn’t take it in this dingy envelope.  So I look at the stars in
this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever
make sense.

Harjo is trying to tell a story about an incident in a bar, but language can't quite convey all that happened there that night.

Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the
hardcore.  It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but
not us.  Of course we noticed when she came in.  We were Indian ruins.  She
was the end of beauty.  No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we
recognized, her family related to deer, if that’s who she was, a people
accustomed to hearing songs in pine trees, and making them hearts.

The word "translation" derives from the Latin translatio, which in turn comes from trans- and fero, meaning “to carry across” or “to bring across.” It usually mean the transfer of meaning from one language to another, but it also is what we do in interpreting the world around us every day.

One of my poems is about this everyday translating we do - from other languages, in interpreting the world and certainly in writing and reading poetry.

Translation

My grandparents would speak Slovak
with my father, the aunts and the uncles
at the Sunday dinners at their home in Newark
when they didn’t want us to know.
In those days, the priests spoke Latin.
That was the mystery of the faith.
The boys on the #42 bus spoke Spanish
as I rode to my afterschool job
and when they laughed, looking in my direction.
Too fast for my B+  Spanish III  understanding
but enough that it hurt.
The waiter at the Chinese restaurant
changes my order into words
that I want to understand,
but will  never know.
Translation.
This is the poet’s job,
and the job of the reader too.
We have been in training
all our lives.

- Kenneth Ronkowitz

Our writing prompt for November is a poem about translation in any of those three ways: from other languages, in interpreting the world, or in writing and reading poetry.

Translation and Robert Fitzgerald

Ulysses and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse (1891)

“I think that one poet is lending himself to the other poet, that the obligation is to the other poet, and that one is taking on for the time being the spirit and impulse and intent of the other poet, and so the wish is to make all that clear in one’s own language rather than express oneself, so to speak.” - Robert Fitzgerald

Robert Fitzgerald is best known for his English translations of Homer’s The Odyssey (1961) and The Iliad  which are pretty much the standard works used in schools.

I recently read about when he was a student at Harvard University. He read T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land" and said that it changed his life. He began to write poetry. He got published in Poetry magazine.

While still a student, he got to met Eliot while in London and gave him one of his poems. Eliot studied the poem for several minutes and then looked up and said, “Is this the best you can do?” I can imagine such a remark having a devastating effect on a young writer.

He graduated in 1933 and worked as a reporter, but kept writing poetry. He published Poems (1935) and A Wreath for the Sea (1943).

He served in the Navy during World War II, including time in Guam and Pearl Harbor. He had with him the works of Virgil and a Latin dictionary and, though he had no training in translation, he would translate Virgil a line at a time into a notebook.

Fitzgerald teaching at Harvard

After the war, married and with a family, he began teaching, first at at Sarah Lawrence College and later at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Washington, Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University and Harvard. He also served as poetry editor of the New Republic.

He went back to his wartime translations and convinced an editor to advance him money for five years to translate Homer’s The Odyssey. With that and a Guggenheim award, he took his family to live in Italy for a time.

He was very much a formalist in his poetry, something certainly influenced by the classics. His own influence on his students helped drive the New Formalism of the late 20th century in American poetry. That approach promoted a return to metrical and rhymed verse.

His verse translations of Homer’s The Iliad (1974) and The Odyssey (1961) and Virgil’s The Aeneid (1983), as well as other classics and his own poetry brought him many honors.

From 1984 to 1985, he was the consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (the position now known as Poet Laureate).