Comments on: Lost in Translation

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:31:25 +0000

I’m all for translating translations, but I can’t be OK with babelfish! The computer aspect is way too absurd for me… though it does make for fun new lines!

By: Lucas Klein

Lucas Klein — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:31:44 +0000

Thank you, D. A. Powell, for your response. I don’t imagine that you were trying to be cute or smug, though I do think that certain aspects of your entry enable smugness, especially in regards to translation. Nor do I think that discussion of translation should be left to the experts; just like poetry, it (and we) could benefit from a broader discussion. Still, that broader discussion will only really be beneficial if we understand that translation is about something beyond loss and paraphrasing, just as we need to remember that poetry is about more than what you say, it’s at least as much about how you say it.

By: D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:35:36 +0000

Hi Lucas Klein,
I wasn’t trying to be cute or smug, and I wasn’t trying to tell people what they already should know. I’m sorry if it came off that way. I was trying to say that poetry, at its best, is unparaphraseable, and that it’s okay to spend hours revising. I guess I was operating under the assumption that some of the readers of this site are coming here to learn about poetry, or to remind themselves or their students of certain principles of writing. If this is a site for people who already know all of these “tired” refrains, then I can imagine it’s not just me who’s coming off as smug.
In any case, I was using the idea of translation as a metaphor for poetry’s reliance upon exact diction. But I didn’t want to say “hey, this is a metaphor.” I was also trying to keep the conversation entertaining, so I leaned heavily upon irony, since that’s the mode du jour for so much poetry of late. And isn’t it odd that your response included an example that was similarly ironic? Mine were translations generated through an “artificial” intelligence, and yours was an example that seemed to rely, at least in part, on a human intelligence. So much more fascinating, really, in your example.
Well, but that’s a whole other discussion that I wasn’t really intending: impossibility of translation. I should have just said “unparaphraseable” and chosen, if any, a less ornate comparison than translation. From now on, I’ll leave any discussion of translation to the real experts.
Thanks!

By: Lucas Klein

Lucas Klein — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:22:37 +0000

A cute guessing game to remind us of what we all know, that word choice is important to poetry. But in achieving this destination, where did we pass through? The same tired refrain that translation constitutes loss. What’s really lost, in my mind, is the opportunity to understand translation itself as a poetic practice (enough poets have been translators that I’d have thought this was common sense by now). Babelfish and Chinese menus, on the other hand, could teach us by negative example how important and difficult good translation is, and how human translators succeed by paying at least as much attention to their word choice as human poets do to theirs. Instead, we get a vision of all translation as machine translation, and a dismissal, as I see it, of the work involved in translation. All so we can smile in smugness at figuring out what Yellow Submarine might sound like in Japanese.
A better question might be how word choice does and does not contribute to the meaning of poems, as seen through translations into other languages. I had a German friend of mine quote me his recollection of a Dylan lyric, in English: “Everybody must smoke pot!” Well, not exactly. Why did that change happen in the mind of a fluent English-speaker from Germany? Why does language do that?

By: Anne Haines

Anne Haines — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:48:47 +0000

I think I got them all except for the “pursuit dog” one (and “Ohio state” threw me at first) … but maybe I shouldn’t be admitting in public just how many pop lyrics I have in my head, eh?
How about this one:
At day as for us, we passing by the large residence of glory of the suicide machine, ride at the night when you sweat that of sort of American dream of escape
(I’ve done this with a few poems when I’ve been stuck. If nothing else, it usually kicks me out of the rut of taking my own words too damn seriously!)

By: dylan

dylan — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:32:50 +0000

The chisel which has education does that.
Wow! There’s a metamorphosis! From a flea to a chisel!

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:02:13 +0000

I can guess a few of the easy ones (this was done with no googling):
Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again….
Someone left the cake to the rain. I do not think that I can take that. It meaning that that takes so long in order to burn that. And I do not have the cooking method under any condition for the second time.
Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again.
Today darkness my old friend. I came speaking with you for the second time.
Stop in the name of love, before you break my heart.
As for stop, with name of love before you, my center is broken. Think of that.
Mothers, don’t bring your boys up to be cowboys.
Mommas to the cowboy where is your baby does not make that you are brought up possible.
The only boy who could ever reach me was the son of the preacher man.
The only boy who can teach me was the son of the preaching person person. Only boy who can reach to me was the son of the preaching person person. It was, there was he. There was he. Mmmm… it was, there was he.
Well, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen lonely days when I could not ….dum de dum.
Well, I the fire and looked at that I looked at the rain. I looked at the lonely day thing which I thought, it does not end under any condition. You looked at the lonely time when I me find the friend and is not possible. But I thought that always my oven it is it meets.
You know that I would be untrue. You know that I would be a liar. If I was to say to you, girl, we couldn’t get much higher. Come on, baby, light my fire. Try to set the night on fire.
You know that I am untruth. You know that I am the liar. If I should call to you, “the girl, we greatly may become higher.” You coming to the baby, apply my fire. Do to come to the baby, apply my fire. Try the fact that the night of fire is put in place.
“apply my fire” — lol.