TranslationThinking back on Pushkin and Nabokov's translation of him has made me spot many holes in my shoddy framework, so many in fact that a breeze trickles through with enough definition that I grab for a blanket. It's no bother, first drafts are meant to be drafty, I suppose. His main objective for translating Eugene Onegin was to provide the world (Academia, specifically; that little orbiting body outside of the main, big, bulky planet of normal-readers) with a faithful translation that keeps within it every breath of the original work. This means that diction has dug its roots and wont be transposed, if the Russian reads: "verb adjective noun" then the Englished version reads the same. If the original uses a word we don't use anymore, the translation keeps the word pinned down exactly where it is with a lengthy footnote affixed to it like a grave marker. Purely literal, and completely unashamed in its literalness - in some ways, his translation is actually a non-translation simply because he adds little to none of himself, as "translator" into the book. The home of Onegin was kept, nail for nail and plank for plank, exactly as it originally appeared; no added eaves, no patching of the holes, no placement of cumbersome but pretty furniture in order to block a muddled view, none of the rearrangement of the facade or the innards beaming from within. Where the bulk of the work is done, the bulk of the actual "translating" (IE: taking an idea from another language/world and remaking it to suit our own) is done in the index, which spans more than quadruple the space that the actual text takes up. Of the original work, he cannot change a single word; it is only in the explaining of those words that the true translation takes place and with it he adds layer upon layer of understanding to an otherwise foreign, and quite alien object. We, in our world without duels or morals, cannot rightly enter into the world of that story without the translator's faithful adherence to his principles: that he adds nothing and removes nothing from the text itself, and that the only place he has room to add is in the index outside of the text itself. In other words: the translator approaches the original with the understanding that it cannot (and mustn't) be altered, the artwork itself is untranslatable whereas the facts that make up that artwork are. Or, once created, a work is a world unto itself and lends not a single fingernail of itself up for translation (translation in the common form of the word: where a person takes the work of another person and tries to make it easy to read in another language, and is usually done with a lot of alteration on the part of the translator for he must make translate not only the language, but the ideas and feelings as well - we, today, need a lot of help picturing the baron wasteland of a world that occurred before our computers and automobiles and lack of proper vocabulary) and it seems the less the translator imposes his world onto the world of the original work, the better the outcome.
I had a delightful penpal for a number of years who was born in Germany and spoke/wrote/understood the language as naturally as I to English. Curious about how someone who is not a poet and not a translator would handle translating a poem by Rilke for me, I asked if she might take the original German text supplied by me and return her own translation of it. I forget whether or not I had noted who had originally written the poem, though I think I didn't so that she would approach it as freshly as possible without perhaps letting the fact that the thing was originally written by the best Poet to ever write in German somehow guide her, or misguide her, hand in translating the thing. What I received back was stunning, and astonishing, especially compared to the somewhat "standard English" translation that was done by Stephen Mitchell, and even more amazing compared to the other, lesser English translations with their horribly forced rhyme where none had been to begin with. A friend casually translating the thing reads better, to me, than the scholar who took great pains and several years to churn out his version. If you cannot make out the text in the photo above (a scan of the translation, as she mailed it to me) then please read:
The Blind Girl
She sat like the others at tea.
It was to me, at first, as if she grasped her cup
a bit differently than the others.
She laughed once. It was almost painful.
And as one at last arose and spoke
and slowly as if by chance
through many rooms went (talking and laughing)
there I saw her. She followed the others
behaved, like one who, suddenly would have to sing
and before many people;
On her light pleased eyes were light
from outside as if on a pond.
She followed slowly and needed long.
as if something were not yet overcome;
and yet; as if, after a crossing,
she went not, but rather flew.
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The first thing that sticks out to me are all of the "as if"s and "and yet"s and the other bits of phrasing that seem to stick out like raised hands alerting the eye to the fact that something clunky is going on. I have had at least four poetry professors, followed closely behind by even more of their assistants, all tell me as specifically as possible "feel free to just erase any and all ITs ANDs and BUTs from all of your poems" -- which, in most capacities, is a pretty good rule to follow, those little words usually can be excised and generally provide a much cleaner reading when they are left out. They have their place, though, in translation - especially if the original text has it written as "And yet; as if, after a crossing, she went not, but rather flew." The sentence can just as easily be translated further, to account for the cumbersome diction as well as the outmoded way of speaking (a kid today might not even be able to extract any meaning from "she went not, but rather flew"!) But in crossing the line from literal translation to the type of translation where a lot more liberties are taken and a lot of the original work is left out, the very heart of the poem is lost. Had this particular translator taken the Rilke and glossed it up, edited around her initial first impressions, and took her own pains to shine it in such a way that it glows from the outside in (in reverse to the usual illumination of a poem) the translation would have passed through so many iterations that it'd be rendered useless - the fruit all chewed and spit out, the seeds untouched. Of course, being that I cannot read the original German text, I can't actually confirm that she even translated it right, or faithfully - though the fact that she decided to leave in the very telling signposts of "and yet" and "as if" tells me that little if any attempt was made to "poetry" the thing up.
And, for good measure, the Mitchell translation goes:
Going Blind
She sat just like the others at the table.
But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.
She smiled once. It was almost painful.
And when they finished and it was time to stand
and slowly, as chance selected them, they left
and moved through many rooms (they talked and laughed),
I saw her. She was moving far behind
the others, absorbed, like someone who will soon
have to sing before a large assembly;
upon her eyes, which were radiant with joy,
light played as on the surface of a pool.
She followed slowly, taking a long time,
as though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome,
she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.
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We have the girl at the table, holding her cup, smiling painfully. We have the other party goers standing and walking through rooms as the girl follows behind, embarrassed and socially weary. We have the light playing on her eyes, a bit more dazzlingly than in my penpal's variation. And, lastly, we have her walking and flying. While the latter is more pleasing to the ear and eye and mind, I miss the sense of vagueness that cloaks the former in such a fetching way. This poem has always been for me a little bit of a mystery (we're dropped into it and removed from it so quickly that it is a blur), and I have to admit that I am a sucker for any piece of writing about a girl at tea who is different from the rest and eventually takes on some sort of phenomenal power (like flight.) As a rule, anyone who panics at the thought of being in front of people is immediately placed in the warmest corner of my heart.
Translation is a strange thing. I translate my day each evening and my dreams each morning and they are strange. The world, at times, translates the day and the dream for me and when that happens I am grateful. I wonder, though, how much a part translation plays in the dailiness of our lives. This happens, we process it, we explain it, we have translated it three times. Once upon receiving the audio and visual information, twice when we try to understand that information and a third when we then express that understanding of that information. Yes, a lot of room in that pool to dive into. And me, without my bathingsuit. It is funny how I really only wanted a place to save this scrap, this piece of paper torn from some old magazine and typed with the translation of a poem - and now, and now, and now I have a subject facing me with a smile that bares its teeth only slightly: "Oh poor fellow, what have you gotten yourself into?" It's heavy, and huge - and some day I will handle it.
