http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/04/on-translation/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:24:02 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/04/on-translation/#comment-3458 Russian Translator Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:37:29 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=801#comment-3458 When I have a conflict with one of my collegues regarding the quality of his/her translation, I always select the moments that I do not like and do my variant of translation. When I have a conflict with one of my collegues regarding the quality of his/her translation, I always select the moments that I do not like and do my variant of translation.

]]> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/04/on-translation/#comment-3457 Henry Gould Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:47:15 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=801#comment-3457 Frost : "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." If there's an element of disembodiment in translation - like Elijah (in the King James version) being "translated" (beamed up) into heaven - an absent, digital, "virtual" quality - then maybe the poetry that "gets lost" at either end (of the paired languages) is the actual SOUND of the languages. The sound left over, a sort of remainder as you shift from one language to the other. The sound rooted in a matrix of phonology and the internal linguistic logic (the architecture of meanings) of each language. The particular music-intelligibility of each language (logo-melopeia). Like the sound hidden in the 19th-century phonautograph, only now being (digitally) reproduced. The British poet John Cayley recently did a "performance" in the Borwn Univ. Library, called "Impositions" - which linked up the library's computers & screens for a kind of surround-sound multi-lingual translation-chant screening. Curiously the (programmed, projected) chant involved breaking down & combining certain phrases, from 3-4 different languages, with a sort of sing-song recitation of the alphabets of those languages. It was as if in the process of "virtual" translation the languages themselves were reverting to a primitive state, sounding out their individual letters & phonemes. Frost : “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
If there’s an element of disembodiment in translation – like Elijah (in the King James version) being “translated” (beamed up) into heaven – an absent, digital, “virtual” quality – then maybe the poetry that “gets lost” at either end (of the paired languages) is the actual SOUND of the languages.
The sound left over, a sort of remainder as you shift from one language to the other. The sound rooted in a matrix of phonology and the internal linguistic logic (the architecture of meanings) of each language. The particular music-intelligibility of each language (logo-melopeia).
Like the sound hidden in the 19th-century phonautograph, only now being (digitally) reproduced.
The British poet John Cayley recently did a “performance” in the Borwn Univ. Library, called “Impositions” – which linked up the library’s computers & screens for a kind of surround-sound multi-lingual translation-chant screening. Curiously the (programmed, projected) chant involved breaking down & combining certain phrases, from 3-4 different languages, with a sort of sing-song recitation of the alphabets of those languages. It was as if in the process of “virtual” translation the languages themselves were reverting to a primitive state, sounding out their individual letters & phonemes.

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