I am working on translations of Heather Dohollau poems. I have pasted one, 'Penarch Beach' and have recently completed another calling it 'Slowly Onwards' based on her poem ('Cette Lente Démarche').

In the former I kept to the measurement of each of the lines in the original and tried to maintain the enjambment. The original is written in open verse as is my own take.

With 'Cette Lente Démarche' I did not use the form of the original (which was a single stanza prose-poem. I divided the argument into five stanzas.

I then ask whether I had not created my own version of a Dohollau poem rather than a translation (which suggests a clinical approach, I feel).

The poet Don Patterson's recent collection of on versions of Rilke's Orpheus Sonnets, states that his intent was not simply a straight-forward translation but versions, making the resulting works his own.

Many poets have translated other poets works and they lay claims such as keeping to the spirit of the original (The poet Linh Dinh has translated Nerudu's odes to a cat and the sea; making the same claim).

I felt that I had kept to the spirit of the original Dohollau poems, yet I feel that the intent (meaning) of a poem by the poet counts for little once it is in the public domain and, once there, open to the interpretation of the reader (subjectively validated). I subscribe to this view and hence any translation can only be a version of the theme (or argument) of the original.

What would you say?

Hi Denis,

What attracts you to translation?

I guess the idea that one could translate word for word, finding an exact counterpart in English for the poem's originating language, died out with Johnson.
No translation is exact. It is an innacurate re-enactment. A bravura personal interpretation.

I've read Don Patterson's versions of Rilke, but did not find them satisfying. I've read other translations and have enjoyed them more.
Rilke, like Samuel Beckett, wrote in French as a second language. They maybe produced variations -- works -- that thinking in their respective first languages would have failed to access. Can it be called 'translating' when you're shifting from your own thoughts in one language to your own thoughts in a second language? Is the baseline of those thoughts the same?

I've always loved Rilke's Duino Elegies. There is the rousing first line of the first elegy which has been rendered into English as:
Who, if I called out, would hear me from the angelic hosts.
A more colloquial version has been rendered:
Angels, are you deaf?

Yes, when you translate I believe you're creating variations on a theme, a theme that becomes entangled by conscription into a different language and which also gathers the second(ary) poet's personal bias.

It can enrich the original as much as it can denude. But it is always going to excise.

Nothing wrong with that. But why do you want to translate another poet's work, rather than working on a poem of your own origination? What is the impulse?

Over the years I have drawn great pleasure from the works of Arthur Waley, and in the first part of the twentieth century he brought the Tang poets Li Po, Tu Fu and Po Chui (somebody tell me that Po Chui wasn't a Tang poet, I can't be arsed looking it up at this time of night) to a wider audience. From what I have read, despite spending long periods in the British Museum he had scant knowledge of the arcane forms of Chinese script used in 8th Century China. (Arthur forgive me if I'm wrong). His "translations" (perhaps like Fitzgerald's of Omar Khayam) obviously owe a great deal to his perception of life. To what extent ithey represent an aberration or a bastardisation of the original, a dunce like me will never know. Is it not suffiient to enjoy what is before us, and draw from it what we want or need?

No I didn't spend long hours in the British Museum, he did!

Yes, translations give a writer permission to be 'other.'
To take on attributes and qualities and experiment with voice and perceptions. I guess it can be a form of guided creative liberation:
an exoticism of self.

And you can lurk round the British Museum.

Just another thought -- I suppose it could be said that by translating a poem you're actually creating a new self.

Here's are two translations of the same verse - it's the last verse from Baudelaire's "The Albatross" - which do you think is better?

The poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings

The poet is the rider on the storm
Mocking the arrow, prince of all the winds.
An exile here on earth, tormented, scorned
Trying to walk, dragging his giant’s wings

What about to share the love of the thing being translated. Baudelaire spent many years of his life translating Edgar Allan Poe poems & stories into French. He felt a special affinity to Poe and wanted to share his passion with the French!

I'd say Baudelaire was doing the literary equivalent of eating Poe's brains to acquire Poe's qualities.
He was, after all, that kind of poet.
Baudelaire's nature was certainly not that of a literary philanthropist.
He was pure animal appetite.

Baudelaire is charnel carnal incarnate...
Not 'Come and read Poe French people!'
No: 'I dine on Poe -- watch me masticate, rip, rend, and digest him.
Now I am Poe. I defecate Poe.'
Oh, and he'd be able to earn francs since his own work was often considered unpublishable because unpalatable!

Hi Sophie,
I've always thought he was using 'we' to shock -- indicating that the 'bourgeouis french socialites who so despised him' were really just like him. It's the scary inclusiveness, the drunk and the prostitute and the (please fill in the blank) grabbing you by the shoulder and saying 'we' -- giving you the nod that you're no different from what you despise.
I like the fact that he always seemed to be in his dressing gown.
I'm a Rimbaud fan myself.

Rimbaud with a sugar cube, ignited, on his head.
I always see him in burlesque. Tattered clothes and perfect, ruched, oyster silk gloves that end at his armpits in pearly flames.
But then that's just me ain't it?

Shelly always has a carved wooden body like Pinocchio, painted red with a flared base. His ears are canvas sails with matchstick struts.

Byron is a die cast pig iron zero. Upended.

But that's just me. Ain't it?

Sorry, Shelley slipped an 'e' there.
But I guess that sort of thing went on a lot when he was in Italy.

Thank you Sophie - at last some one who admires and respects my beau, Shelley was a visionary!

Wow - things move so fast when you're away for a couple of hours.
I'm not saying that Baudelaire wasn't trying to make a bob or two out of Poe, of course not. But he did feel he had a special relationship with Poe, he even talked about Poe's stories and poems being a priori and embryonically, in his own head. I think I can understand that kind of recognition when you meet someone or someones ideas that resonate in a peculiarly intimate way with your own thoughts. He was pretty obsessed with the Gothic before reading Poe. So I'm not quite as dismissive and cynical as you are Moxy.

'But he did feel he had a special relationship with Poe, he even talked about Poe's stories and poems being a priori and embryonically, in his own head.'

In his own head? I refer you back to my previous posting.
Meanwhile, here's a brief comparative interlude...

Wuthering Heights:
Cathy: But Nelly, I am Heathcliff

Parisian Greasy Spoon:
Buadelaire: Waiter, more offal! (gobble gobble) Now I am Poe.

Ha Ha!

Thank you my honey.
xxx

Well Miss Sophie
My original post was not supposed to be definitive but only to suggest another reason why someone might want to undertake translation.
I've actually worked in this field* and it is quite a different from your own writing and demands quite different, yet similar disciplines. Whilst sometimes frustrating and irritating it can help one to reflect on ones own writing and can be oddly satisfying in a way I would find hard to describe.

* I don't speak another language fluently enough to do the translation on my own but have worked closely with a translator developing English versions of stuff.

Oh Miss Sophie, maam,
I'm not offended. I don't consider it as personal at all
I've worked on several things from a World Wildlife book on Rhinos, to scientific documents, a Swiss instruction manual on how to keep your home clean (they take it incredibly seriously), hotel instructions, menus and the odd story & poem. It pays very well especially if you can get the rights to edit the work. So that's another reason why people translate

I guess one of the reasons for translating is an exercise. It isn't a question of entering the persona of another writer but the challenge that brings.

I think, in essense, I have taken some of the metaphors and the overall theme of Hollodeu's but it could be said that I took from it that which I saw.

I liked what Patterson did with Rilke. They are only the concepts and not a translation (word-for-word). This is what I did with Hollodeu. I think that by changing the language one immediately changes the poem. It can never have the same 'meaning' that it had with the original.

Hi Sophie
Why don't you try a translation and maybe you'll begin to understand some of the problems. Here's a simple one I came across.
In the Swiss "Cleaning" manual is very important to understand what they mean as you may by law lose some of your deposit on your flat if you don't clean your flat properly and to the exacting standards.

So when it said some thing like "ensure the electricity meters and fuse boxes are clean" that's how I kept the translation thinking no more about it.

Now what would that mean to you?

To me (and my guess would be most British people) it would mean cleaning the outside of the boxes, but to the Swiss it means cleaning the inside as well. A detail, maybe, but if you are a Swiss tenant it would lose you money if the inside of the fuse box was not clean.

So to make it clear exactly what the regulations mean to foreign nationals to do a straight translation would not be good enough, one has to make an interpretation to make it clear to a foreigner and remember this is in a fairly easily understood set of instructions.

Imagine how much more difficult it is to "translate" a poets work with it's intricate language and imagery some of it based on parables, jokes, fairy stories, tales etc. that are unknown in another culture/country with words & phrases that cannot be translated word for word or literally as it loses all meaning.

It is a challenge and can be incredibly frustrating but rewarding too especially when you think you have hit upon a solution which whilst not exactly what it says in the original somehow conveys the original message in a poetic way.

Have a look at the two variations of Baudelaire's "The Albatross" earlier in this thread and I hope you see what I'm getting at. Each writer has had a crack at "translating" the poetry, they are both saying, more or less the same thing, but, in my view, one is more "poetic" than the other, though both have short comings I would argue. Maybe the less poetic one is truer to the original but the other one works better for me on the whole.

Take both of the translations and maybe others and give us your version and you'll find how hard, frustrating but ultimately satisfying it is. So solving a set of puzzles is perhaps another reason for undertaking translations.

By the way I'm totally pissed having been out since 6 o'clock so maybe none of this makes sense!

ha ha ha ha ha!