http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/01/more-thoughts-on-translation/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:12:11 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/01/more-thoughts-on-translation/#comment-2378 Reginald Shepherd Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:04:28 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=647#comment-2378 Dear Vivek, I'm glad that you found my response satisfying. I appreciated the opportunity to hone my thoughts on this matter. With regard to the relative ease with which Celan and Mandelstam can be successfully translated, I think that it's a very simple matter. Free verse, defined in the most basic sense as poetry that neither rhymes nor is in regular meters, is easier to translate than rhymed, metrical verse, as that's a significant element for which the translator need not find an analogue in English. Celan's mature work is in free verse. Much of Mandelstam's poetry is in rhyme and meter. The bad translations I've read have tried (unsuccessfully) to reproduce that in English. (I should emphasize that I don't think that it's impossible to successfully translate rhymed, metered foreign-language poetry into rhymed, metered English poetry, or that the attempt to do so automatically makes a translation bad.) The one that comes to mind is 50 Poems, published by Persea Books in 2000 and translated by Bernard Meares, in which the translator contorts syntax and resorts to archaic inversions (and sometimes diction) for the sake of the rhymes. Take good care, and thanks for reading and commenting. Reginald Dear Vivek,
I’m glad that you found my response satisfying. I appreciated the opportunity to hone my thoughts on this matter.
With regard to the relative ease with which Celan and Mandelstam can be successfully translated, I think that it’s a very simple matter. Free verse, defined in the most basic sense as poetry that neither rhymes nor is in regular meters, is easier to translate than rhymed, metrical verse, as that’s a significant element for which the translator need not find an analogue in English. Celan’s mature work is in free verse. Much of Mandelstam’s poetry is in rhyme and meter. The bad translations I’ve read have tried (unsuccessfully) to reproduce that in English. (I should emphasize that I don’t think that it’s impossible to successfully translate rhymed, metered foreign-language poetry into rhymed, metered English poetry, or that the attempt to do so automatically makes a translation bad.) The one that comes to mind is 50 Poems, published by Persea Books in 2000 and translated by Bernard Meares, in which the translator contorts syntax and resorts to archaic inversions (and sometimes diction) for the sake of the rhymes.
Take good care, and thanks for reading and commenting.
Reginald

]]> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/01/more-thoughts-on-translation/#comment-2377 Vivek Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:02:51 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=647#comment-2377 Dear Reginald, Thank you for the greater detail, and for your gracious reply. I think I was completely off the mark on one point for sure-- you are indeed arguing for multiple translations and not otherwise, and, as you say, it is precisely your reading of all the Celan translations together that then informs your intuition about which are the best. This runs counter to the position that one should only stick with one translator-- that's a different kind of faithfulness that some cling to, and I for one don't feel the need for it. I don't agree with your assessment of Hamburger's Celan*, but then again I haven't read as many Celan translations as you have!! So thanks for this. Your posts are bold in that they assert the reader's right to Celan even in English. Although it's a quixotic place to write from, I think there's something very important there, something that runs counter to authenticity claims while at the same time somehow insisting on the presence of a spirit, an afterlife (after WB) or, indeed, a reincarnation, in the way that I often end up thinking of translations. Your point about there being bad Mandelstams but no bad Celans is fascinating: do you there is something about Celan's experiments with language that make this more possible? I look forward to catching up with the longer essays on your blog. Yours Vivek *I have no idea what the critical opinion on this is, but my own unknowing intuition seems to be telling me that he takes exciting risks and leaps too--so much so that as I read him I am constantly asking myself, "Wait a minute, is this a Hamburger, or is this a Celan?" Dear Reginald,
Thank you for the greater detail, and for your gracious reply. I think I was completely off the mark on one point for sure– you are indeed arguing for multiple translations and not otherwise, and, as you say, it is precisely your reading of all the Celan translations together that then informs your intuition about which are the best. This runs counter to the position that one should only stick with one translator– that’s a different kind of faithfulness that some cling to, and I for one don’t feel the need for it. I don’t agree with your assessment of Hamburger’s Celan*, but then again I haven’t read as many Celan translations as you have!! So thanks for this.
Your posts are bold in that they assert the reader’s right to Celan even in English. Although it’s a quixotic place to write from, I think there’s something very important there, something that runs counter to authenticity claims while at the same time somehow insisting on the presence of a spirit, an afterlife (after WB) or, indeed, a reincarnation, in the way that I often end up thinking of translations. Your point about there being bad Mandelstams but no bad Celans is fascinating: do you there is something about Celan’s experiments with language that make this more possible?
I look forward to catching up with the longer essays on your blog.
Yours
Vivek
*I have no idea what the critical opinion on this is, but my own unknowing intuition seems to be telling me that he takes exciting risks and leaps too–so much so that as I read him I am constantly asking myself, “Wait a minute, is this a Hamburger, or is this a Celan?”

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