Words on the Move

Just came back from Words on the Move. It was a fascinating event, where at least 8 translations of each poem were read out. The translations differed quite widely -- but I tell you, there were phrases from each one I would steal, quite viable interpretations that would never have crossed my mind. Makes one think that some sort of composite translation would be the best approach. I've added highlights to my translation in the post below.

Most, I imagine, would think that it would be tedious to hear 8 versions of the same poem -- but really, quite the opposite is true. As a translator-participant, it helps one to improve one's prowess, and to think outside the box of one's own perceptions.

Words on the Move

Every year the Literary Translator's Association of Canada stages "Words of the Move". Members of the general public are invited to translate an English or French poem by a living Quebec poet into the language of their choice. Their translations are posted on the association website, and they share their work with the poets who wrote the originals at a round-robin reading, which will take place this year on Friday April 4 (7 pm) at the Depanneur Cafe. I'm sure the event is always pleasant; it's also the first one I'll be able to attend, because it doesn't fall on a teaching night.

The English poet this year is Catherine Kidd (you can read her poem here); the French poet is Patrick Coppens. The Coppens poem was fun to recast into English: I did that last weekend. I don't know if it's an extract from a larger work, or meant to be a complete poem in itself. Here's my translation, followed by the original:

Secret Notebooks
of Agathe Brisebois

Patrick Coppens

******

I work for eternity,
in evanescence.

Space invades forms
mind intimates colors

…regarding colors,
those that fade
were not made to last.

Sleigh: words. Bells: chill.

Poetry puts in disorder
my forgotten memories.

*****

He asked me the time.
I refused.
At his befuddlement, I said:
worry not, it will come.

It was noon.
One day, I lived my life,
the next day, yours.
Then it was done.

"I think you are a poet
but you will never find the new,
that is to say, the essential,
except in contemplating your own naval."
(Max Jacob,
letter to Francois Gachot, May 7, 1926)

*****

Don’t forget the photos,
us dancing in Sospel,
near Merlanson.

Summer love
a gooseberry in the head.

Mysteries breed
like rabbits. Hat!

"The assemblage of illusion and reality
in the same subject made him
the disturbing mirror of our inner selves. "
(Bernard Noël,
Les peintres du désir, 1992)

I love abstraction
in the interstices of the real.

*****

Anonymity,
some days, weighs on me,
on others, hurts;
I welcome it all the same:
none can take that away from me.
But when I write, when I draw,
I am the Queen, adulated by my subjects.

Pleasing exhausts
those who do not love themselves enough.

*****

Style.
What can I do?


LUCK IS A PAINTING
BY WINNING NUMBERS

-- translation by Brian Campbell ©Mar. 2008

Carnets secrets
d'Agathe Brisebois

Patrick
Coppens


*****

Je travaille pour l'éternité,
mais dans l'évanescence.

formes occupées d'espace
raison intime des couleurs

À propos des couleurs,
celles qui passent
n'étaient pas faites pour durer.

Froid de grelots, traîneau des mots.

La poésie met du désordre
dans mes souvenirs oubliés.

*****

Il s'approcha pour me demander l'heure,
Je lui refusai.
Devant son air interloqué, je précisai :
ne t'inquiète pas, elle viendra.

Il était midi.
Un jour, j'ai vécu ma vie,
et le lendemain, la tienne.
Apres, c'était fini.

« Je crois que tu es poète
mais tu ne trouveras du nouveau,
c'est-à-dire l'essentiel,
qu'en contemplant ton nombril à toi. »
(Max Jacob,
lettre à François Gachot, 7 mai 1926)

*****

Ne pas oublier les photos ;
celles où nous dansions à Sospel,
au bord du Merlanson.

amours d'été
une groseille dans la tête

Les mystères se reproduisent
comme des lapins. Chapeau !

« L'assemblage de l'illusion et de la réalité
dans un même objet fait de lui
le miroir troublant de notre intériorité. »
(Bernard Noël,
Les peintres du désir, 1992)

J'aime l'abstraction
dans les interstices du réel.

*****

L'anonymat,
certains jours, me pèse,
d'autres, me chagrine;
je m'en réjouis tout de même
car personne ne peut m'en priver.
Mais quand j'écris, quand je dessine,
je me sens reine, adulée par mes sujets.


Plaire épuise ceux
qui ne s'aiment pas assez.

*****

Le style.
Qu'y puis-je ?


LA CHANCE EST UNE PEINTURE
À NUMÉROS GAGNANTS.

Just came back from Words on the Move. It was a fascinating event, where at least 8 translations of each poem were read out. The translations differed quite widely -- but I tell you, there were phrases from each one I would steal, and quite viable ones that would never have crossed my mind. Makes one think that composite translation would be the best approach. Will add some highlights to the post below.

Most, I imagine, would think that it would be tedious to hear and read 8 versions of the same poem -- but really, quite the opposite is true. It helps one to improve one's own prowess, to think outside the box of one's own perceptions.

Here are some highlights from other translations:

Where I translated,

I work for eternity,
in evanescence

Maxianne Berger wrote,

I towards forever
but within evanescence.

Where I translated,

Sleigh: words. Bells: chill.

Maxianne Berger translated

Chill of sleighbells, sledding words.

and Hugh Hazelton translated

Shivering bells, sleighing words.

Karin Montin

jingling cold, sleighful of words

and Greg Kelm wrote

Jingle jangle, words in a tangle.

Where I translated,

Poetry puts in disorder
my forgotten memories.

Maxianne wrote,

Poetry makes a muddle
of the memories I don't recall.

and Hugh Hazelton wrote,

Poetry messes up
my forgotten memories.

and Greg Kelm wrote,

Poetry jumbles up
my forgotten memories.

Where I (and others) wrote, quite literally

Summer love
a gooseberry in the head

Maxianne wrote

summer love
pudding head

Jonathan Kaplansky wrote

summer loves
giddy-headed

and Claire Maryniak

summer loves
berries for brains

and Greg Kelm

summer love
a currant in my brain.

And for the final line, where I wrote

LUCK IS A PAINTING
BY WINNING NUMBERS

Maxianne wrote

BY NUMBERS THAT WIN

Jonathan Kaplansky

WHOSE NUMBERS HAVE WON

while Karin Montin wrote,

FORTUNE IS A PAINT-BY-NUMBER KIT
WITH LUCKY NUMBERS

and Aviva Shimelman

LUCK IS A PAINT-BY-NUMBERS
MASTERPIECE

From a Cafe Volver table: LEURS YEUX TOUJOURS PURS by Paul Eluard

LEURS YEUX TOUJOURS PURS by Paul Éluard
(click through to see large)

I'll try my hand at translating the above:

YOUR STILL PURE EYES

Days of sluggishness, days of rain,
Days of broken mirrors and scattered pins,
Days of eyelids closed to horizons of lost seas,
Days all alike, days barred shut –

For all that, I saw the most beautiful eyes in the world,
Silvery gods that held sapphires in their hands,
True gods, birds in earth and water,
I saw them.

Their eyes are your eyes, nothing exists
But their flight that shakes free my misery,
Their flight of star, of light
Of earth, of stone
On their floating wings
My thought sustained by life and death.

Paul Éluard
(trans. Brian Campbell)

A remarkable poem -- and the translation (or "trans version"), not bad, if I may say so myself.

Some crits, though, of the original:

The poet/editor in me would ax the whole final stanza: it's all implied by the second stanza anyway, and the final line is a classic false tail, abstract, weak. The revelation is all contained in "I saw them". (Then I might have kept the title literal -- "Their eyes still pure". Some instinct in me -- my dramatic instinct, I suppose -- made me go with the more definite "Your Still Pure Eyes".)

There are, though, some good things in the final stanza's "leur vol d'étoile," etc., but if they are to be saved they should be reshaped to make them to make them revelatory in a conclusive way. Merely asserting that "only they exist...", and falling back on "my thought sustained by life and death" -- that's commentary, not revelation.

To my mind, "mes jours de captivité" (final line, first stanza) -- translated literally it would be "my days of captivity" -- is also weak, since again all he's doing is summarizing abstractly what's already suggested by the previous lines. So I went for the more physical "days barred shut" -- at least that adds something, some emotional/sensational punch.

French is a gentle (should I say gentille?), whispery kind of language, and seems to sustain abstract nouns and adjectives more felicitously in its rhythms and passions than English. French poets, in my limited experience, embrace abstraction far more frequently than do Spanish or English poets, but it often translates tritely and seems rather ineffectual even in the original, to my mind. That's why, quite frankly, I'm no great fan of French poetry. Only two poets I've encountered really do it for me: Baudelaire and Rimbaud. May I be introduced to others.

LEANING OUT...

Si, poeta es asomarse
a las puertas
del misterio
y volver de el
con una
vislumbre de
lo desconocido
en los ojos

Rubén Darío
(Semblanzas)


Yes, to be poet
is to lean out
through
the doors
of mystery
and turn back
with the light
of the unknown
in your eyes

Rubén Darío
(Biographical Sketches)

FRANCISCO SANTOS: R.I.P. LEONEL RUGAMA + poem by Rugama

R.I.P. LEONEL RUGAMA

One afternoon Leonel recommended
-- to improve my vitality, strength -- that I exercise
going on to say that by this he did not mean
"spiritual exercises."
We talked also about the girls
who passed on their way from work or school
about others that went into and came out of a certain
shoe store
about another on the corner selling fried pork
then he read me a poem about a young girl
who had died in Vietnam.
Today, another afternoon,
I see on the front page of a daily
the photo of his body riddled by the G.N.
and recall how José Coronel Urtecho
once said to me,
"Poets? They're good for nothing."

That's my translation. Here's the original:

R.I.P. LEONEL RUGAMA

Una tarde Leonel me recomendó
-- para la flacura -- hacer ejercicios
aclarándome que no se trataba de
"ejercicios espirituales"
Hablamos acerca de las muchachas
que iban o venían del trabajo o del colegio
de las que entraban o salían de una tienda
de zapatos
de otra que pasaba vendiendo chancho
también me leyó un poema sobre una guerrillera
Vietnamita.
Ahora -- otra tarde que veo su cuerpo acribillado
por la G.N. en la foto de un diario
recuerdo que José Coronel Urtecho
una vez me dijo: "Los poetas no sirven para nada."


Leonel Rugama, Nicaragua's best-known Sandinista guerrilla poet, died in combat against Somoza's infamous Guardia Nacional at the age of twenty. José Coronel Urtecho was a widely respected older poet who survived peacefully through both the Somoza and Sandinista regimes.

Apparently (in a scene whose description irresistably brings to mind the denoument of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid -- please pardon my semi-relevant synapses) Rugama and two others held off an entire batallion of armed regulars, including tanks and cannons, for quite a long while before they were finally killed.

His death profoundly affected an entire generation of Nicaraguan writers.

At least one talented contemporary -- Franklin Caldera (who has written some words of praise for the jacket of our upcoming bilingual edition, translated by yours truly) -- writes in a highly engaging account that he was so affected by Rugama's death that he stopped writing poetry for 30 years out of the feeling that as he himself didn't have the courage to die for his convictions as his friend had, he would always be unworthy to be a poet. Francisco Santos, also a personal friend, responded with the elegy above.

Looking up Rugama on the net, I discovered he was indeed quite a poet. A bilingual edition of his work can be found here. Quite a few poems of his -- as well the best portrait photo on the net -- can be found here.

This is a translation I just did of perhaps his most famous poem. Well, actually, it's a "composite" translation, because in researching what follows I came across at another translation of the same poem on the net, and as mine was still a bit rough in spots, I adopted a few nice turns of phrase (particularly the ringing final phrase) from that one.

A fact that is worth knowing before reading the poem: Acahualinca is the Nahua name of the area of present-day Managua. In the lower class barrio that bears that name (where Francisco's parents now live, incidentally), near Lago de managua (Lake Nicaragua, also known by its Nahua name Lago Xolotlan), anthropologists found a lengthy track of deep, perfectly preserved human footprints all going in one direction, towards the lake. The prints, buried under layers of hardened lava, have been dated at six thousand years old. Part of the excavation is on display -- a mysterious, peculiarly awe-inspiring site, if only because it is so old... I've seen it, and you can see pictures of it and a good account of it here. A number of Nicaraguan poets have written about it, and perhaps some day I will too. Anthropologists speculated for the longest time that the footprints were made by people fleeing a volcanic eruption. That's what it looks like to the casual eye. Now, though, it is known that they were simply walking.

Clearly, though, "the people of Acahualinca" are an extinct people -- but their blood flows in the veins of any Mestizo or native person from Nicaragua today.

Anyway, here goes. I hope I (rather, we) managed evoke at least some of the spellbinding qualities in the original.

THE EARTH IS A SATELLITE OF THE MOON
Leonel Rugama

Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
and Apollo 1 cost a lot.

Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
and Apollo 1 cost a lot.

Apollo 4 cost more than Apollo 3
Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1
and Apollo 1 cost a lot.

Apollo 8 cost an enormous sum, but no one minded
as the astronauts were Protestant
and from the Moon they read the Bible
to the joy and amazement of all Christians.
On their return Pope Paul VI gave them his blessing.

Apollo 9 cost more than all these put together,
including Apollo 1, which cost a lot.
The great-grandparents of the people of Acahualinca were
less hungry
than the grandparents.

The great-grandparents died of hunger.
The grandparents of the people of Acahualinca were less
hungry
than the parents.
The grandparents died of hunger.
The parents of the people of Acahualinca were less hungry
than their children.
The parents died of hunger.
The children of the people of Acahualinca will not be born
because of hunger,
and they hunger to be born, only to die of hunger.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the Moon.

FRANCISCO SANTOS: FIN DE SEMANA

FIN DE SEMANA

Esta noche en Las Vegas, Nevada
una colina de sal renace mujer
y abre de nuevo las piernas
y un Lot anónimo sufre raros sueños.


WEEK END

This evening in Las Vegas, Nevada
a column of salt retransfigures into woman
who once again, spreads her legs wide --
while an anonymous Lot suffers rare dreams




Why am I posting this poem on a Wednesday? Well, people do call it hump day-- although I've wondered about that, since most people hump on the weekend.

All kinds of discrepencies here. Those middle two lines would literally, word for word, go --

a hill of salt is reborn (with connotatoins of appears again as, aquires new vigour as) woman, even more literally rebirths woman
and opens anew its/her legs (literally the legs)

I had to make choices -- among pronouns, verbs, adjectives -- and for certain strict literalists among us, may have strayed unacceptably wide. "Colina" (hill) and "columna" (column) are similar in sound, and one subtly evokes the other here, unlike hill and column or pillar; "colina" is also more melliflous than "hill". At the same time, however, the literal translation of the biblical "pillar of salt" is "estatua de sal". Pillar of salt therefore wouldn't do -- just too hackneyed, and nor did he write the corresponding cliche in Spanish. Hill of salt to me was boring -- and I imagine there are lots of columns in those Vegas casinos; indeed, casinos are columns of sorts. So I went with column, to mirror the sonic values of the poem. "Retransfigures" -- well, that coinage has an exalting connotation that captures the invigourating feel of renacer better than simply "is reborn", "turns into" or "transforms into..." so there you go. I went rare. Including rare dreams.

Rare dreams could be more simply strange dreams, remarkable dreams, unusual dreams, uncommon dreams -- all perhaps more accurate on literal levels, but, as adjectives, boring as they proclaim they aren't. But then there are the Sp. expressions "rara excepcion" and "rara perfeccion", lit. "rare exception/perfection", and the use in physics meaning "rarefied". "Rare" also mirrored the original. So I went rare, as I said. Not just medium-rare...

FRANCISCO SANTOS: FIESTA

FIESTA

El vaso fuera de la fiesta
los libros en el oído
lo cotidiano en la sangre
El loco con el puño sucio
sale de la mina mostrando
la flor.



        FIESTA

The glass beyond the fiesta
the books within the eardrum
the quotidian in the blood --
and the madman with his dirty fist
comes out of the mineshaft
waving a flower
                  

This one is from Francisco's book Viendo y volviendo, and will be included in the upcoming Undressing the Night bilingual edition. The poem was easy to translate, due to the striking juxtapostions and a certain parallel musicality in English.

Flor has so many implications in Spanish: it can mean praise, as in decir (echar) flores a una "saying/pouring out flowers at one" is to pay pretty compliments to a girl, flirt; there is an expression de flor "of flower"(common in Cuba, Peru, Venezuela) that means "very good, splendid", and then hijos como una flor "children like a flower" -- lovely children. Then there's en la flor de la edad -- in the flower of one's life -- and en la flor de la vida, in the prime of one's life. You get the idea. Hence FS can get away with the generality "sale de la mina mostrando la flor" -- literally "comes out of the mine showing the flower" -- because flor is so rich in connotations in his language. I made the madman wave the flower, making up for the comparitive paucity of connotation in English with a more vivid image (perhaps -- yeah, I think so). Seemed a good idea. (Actually the choice was quite instinctive. And frankly, I didn't know how rich flor was in Spanish until after doing the translation. But I stick by it, after a careful examination of the dictionary.)

Vaso by the way can be translated variously as glass, tumbler, vessel, container, vase, urn, glassful, blood vessel, even ship (unlikely, yes, but...) So much choice -- and in Spanish, all these meanings are possible. I chose glass I suppose mainly because soundwise it plays off fiesta, and then, it just seems more vivid and party-like than vessel. Also, blood is used in the next line, so that puts blood vessel out -- but who would want blood vessel there? An interesting suggestion or two -- but yuck.

I won't go into reasons why I feel this is a marvellous little construction of ultra-rapid associations. Literary analysis -- the whole effort of translating the experience of poetry into plodding (or even dashing) prose -- is not really my thing. But over the next while I'll be posting some of these translations and talking about the translation choices. To me that's fascinating.

Other news: I just got three poems accepted by Prairie Fire. Yahoo!

WORDS ON THE MOVE: Translation of Carole David's Bouche à Bouche

This year, for the second time, members of the public were invited by the Literary Translator's Association of Canada to translate poems by two of Quebec's best-known poets in an event called Words on the Move. The poets this year were Carole David (Bouche à Bouche) and Robyn Sarah (Once, Desire). Some twenty translators participated in rendering the David poem into English, including yours truly (two others translated it to Italiano). Other notables in the Montreal English literary scene who participated include Maxianne Berger, Elise Moser, and Hugh Hazelton.

The original poem can be seen here.

My translation can be seen here.

All the translations can be accessed here.

The call for translations took place back in January. A reading of the translations took place, appropriately enough, at the best-known hangout for Montreal francophone writers, the cafe-bistro Les Gâteries, on Feb. 9. I unfortunately couldn't be present because of teaching commitments. The translations just got posted on the web last week.

Obviously, it was an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. I look forward to the chance to do it again in coming years.

The David poem seemed pretty easy to intelligably render using obvious, viz. literal word choices . There were relatively few awkwardnesses. Hence what is most striking, perhaps, is the similarity between the translations.

I'm sure, however, that all the translators found they were in immediate contact with quite a different sensibility than one ordinarily finds in English, a sensibility that is all but impossible to satisfactorily render. French is an exceptionally subtle and gentle kind of whisper-language (yet forceful within its gentleness, an iron-fist-in-velvet-glove quality) that sustains passionate expressions of abstraction with far more authority than English. "Nous sommes depuis sortis de la réalité", for instance, has far more elegance -- and punch -- than "We have since left reality" or anything like that we can muster.

In my own translation, I departed from the literal in a number of places. I translated "prends moi sur la sol" -- literally "take me on the ground" -- to "take me on the trestle" -- I liked the rhythms and sound and in the train context it seemed to work better. Translating the final question -- "faut-il que je te le rappelle aujourd'hui" -- as a statement is perhaps a more questionable departure, and looking at it today, I still have reservations. Somehow, though, in French the word "rapeller" (with its internal "appelle", call, naming) has greater strength than "remind " or "tell you about", or even "recall"; as well, the multisyllabic way of phrasing the question -- which word-by-word comes out as "Must it be that I you it recall today" -- contains an echo-chamber of subtle relations that cannot be reproduced in English. In English the question "Must I tell you this today" (or whatever... see other translations for possible alternatives) seems at once bald and weak. So I opted to preserve paralellisms and a kind of breathless "I have to tell you this today." (If the narrator internally questions why she must tell him this today, she still has to tell him, right??? Well, yes...)

As Borges put it in an interview back in the early eighties (Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges: Interviews by Roberto Alifano 1981-83) "At present, literal translations are in vogue... from the very beginning we lose the rhythms -- which to me are more essential to the poetry than the abstract meaning of the words... I believe that literal translations only offer help in understanding a text, but nothing more. It is now common to publish bilingual editions, which lead the translator to a more literal version, perhaps too literal, since he knows that the reader compares the original with the translation. I disagree with this editorial format, which surely works against the translator."

Funny -- usually I prefer bilingual editions, because through them I get the chance to taste the original for myself, even if it's a language I don't know. But I have to agree with him on the limitations of literal translation they enforce.

Of course, I wasn't at the reading, but I imagine it may have gotten monotonous if they had read out more than four or five translations, since they were all so similar. Perhaps next time if the LTAC chose a more problematic poem, one that could be translated several strikingly different ways, it would reveal more about the dilemmas translators always face. (This, I recognize, is a tall order...)