Comments on: A Few Thoughts About Translation

By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:33:39 +0000

With regard to Emily’s question, I don’t presume to know what Simon meant by his comment, but from my studies of language in general and of writing systems in particular, I know that it’s incorrect to speak of Chinese writing as ideograms. While the Chinese writing system, like every other early writing system, began on a pictographic basis, Chinese characters are neither pictograms or ideograms; they are logograms. That is to say, they don’t represent either images (pictograms) or ideas (ideograms), but words.
As linguist Steven Roger Fischer writes in A History of Writing (Reaktion Books, 2001), “The logographic, or ‘word-writing,’ nature of Chinese writing dominates the system, reproducing units of spoken Chinese. British philosopher Bertrand Russell [along with Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound] once thought Chinese characters were ‘ideogaphic,’ believing each ‘represents an idea.’ This is incorrect. Chinese characters, as whole units or blocks of components, are words–single monosyllabic morphemes–in the Chinese language, and nothing else” (172).

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:30:33 +0000

Simon,
I’m curious. When you write that the translations of the Modernists under the influence of Fenollosa became “bizarre fabrications of a complete misunderstanding of how ideograms function.” what do you mean? In what way did Fenollosa and they misunderstand ideograms? How should ideograms function, especially in a poem? Thanks, Emily

By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:04:25 +0000

AE,
Thanks for your comment. I agree that translation is both dependent upon and is a variety of close reading. To quote John Felstiner, who’s done some amazing and richly informed translations of Paul Celan, “in translating, as in parody, critical and creative activity converge. The fullest reading of a poem gets realized moment by moment in the writing of a poem. So translation presents not merely a paradigm but the utmost case of engaged literary interpretation.”
Take care.
Reginald

By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:17:52 +0000

With regard to Kwame Dawes’ comment, I would appreciate it if people would respond to (or at least take note of) what I actually wrote rather than what they project into that writing. Certainly if they’re going to write about, and criticize, what I write, it would be helpful if they had an accurate idea of what that actually is.
Dawes writes that I should “Talk about the quality of the poem, its music, its language–treat it as a poem not a translation.” That is exactly what I did in this post–I wrote about the way in which most translations I have read fail as English language poems. I have read many poetic translations (that’s why I tend not to read them any more), and very few have conveyed any sense of why one would actually read the translated poet, or given any sense of the qualities of the work that, say, the introduction lays out. One reads about a poet writing in some other language and then reads a translation and there’s a disconnect; one gets no sense of the work as poetry.
Dawes claims that I judge translation for its efficacy (I’m not sure what he means by that word in this context) and its “accuracy” (the quotation marks are his), but I don’t. I think that there is an inevitable element of inaccuracy in translation (as I quote Clarence Brown, to translate is to change), and I write that as a reader I am willing to trade literal accuracy, faithfulness to the particulars of the original text, for a text that works as English poetry. My last paragraph, quoting translator and scholar Clarence Brown, was quite explicitly a defense of “taking liberties” in the service of producing a poem that works in English.
To adapt Dawes’ wording, I will no longer take seriously the commentary of people who willl not read with care or simple accuracy in their own language, let alone any other. So we can agree not to take one another seriously.

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:40:41 +0000

Thanks for bringing translation to the fore, Reginald. This is a topic that obsesses me–partly because my life is lived here in a sort of translation (there is a constant negotiation between two languages), and partly because that is much of what I do professionally and much of what I deal with.
I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that translation must be bold to succeed; but that boldness is paradoxically a result of intimacy with the original. You cannot be “bold” or “free” with a text when you do not really know what you are being bold with or free about. Sometimes boldness might mean hewing as literally to the text as possible. Sometimes it might mean making an intuitive leap. But you can’t leap if you don’t know where you are standing.
And I certainly agree that translation is a kind of close reading. The closest reading perhaps.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:07:24 +0000

Simon may be referring to the work you'll find collected in the handy (for this purpose) The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, edited by Eliot Weinberger, which features work from Ezra Pound's Cathay and versions of Chinese poems from such New Directions / Modernist luminaries as William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gary Snyder, rounded out with work by David Hinton.

By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:14:21 +0000

Let me partially relieve your puzzlement, at least as someone who reads plenty of translations from languages he doesn’t know and presumes to judge it as something other than an English-language text.
For any translation beyond the literal or interlinear, I think one call that can always be made is about the “strangeness” of the translated text. If Sappho comes out musically like Emily Dickinson, there’s something going on. It’s a bare problem of causality and the infinite number of possible sounds.
That said, one of the most famous “strange” translations from C20 are those from the Chinese, done by the Modernists under the influence of Fenollosa. Which are bizarre fabrications of a complete misunderstanding of how ideograms function. So I suppose strangeness is a necessary, but not sufficient, criterion for a “true” translation.

By: Vivek Narayanan

Vivek Narayanan — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:53:16 +0000

Hi Reginald,
Frankly, we have no choice but to read poetry in translation. It’s as simple as that.
And I agree with Kwame. And Simon too. The “faithful” translation, that is, the translation with fidelity and reflections, is often the closest reading. We miss the importance of that, sometimes, in the rush to sign one’s own name below, to appropriate everything into familiar idioms and rhythms. I’m not saying I don’t like to hear that kind of stuff from the mouth of a good poet. I’m saying that too often that’s all that turning the translation into a “poem” ends up meaning. Check out a book of dreadful “free” translations of Ghalib by top American poets, edited by Aijaz Ahmed, to see what I mean.
Cheers
vivek

By: Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:02:53 +0000

I remain puzzled by monolingual, non-translating commentators who seem to speak with authority about the failure of translation and the “liberties” taken by some translators. What? How do you know? So I will no longer take seriously commentary about the quality of translation from people who only have one language. Talk about the quality of the poem, its music, its language–treat it as a poem not a translation. but if you are going to tackle translation for its efficacy and “accuracy” then please, get the other language or get help from someone who has both…
One love
KD

By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:46:08 +0000

Dear Simon,
Thanks for your comment. My next post will briefly discuss a few poetry translations that I have found powerful and effective, though it makes no attempt to be a comprehensive or representative list.
Reginald