“That’s the thing about blogging. To truly consider what someone has posted, particularly if it’s contrary to what one believes, takes time. I like to have my ideas challenged.

I think what the last thread was saying was simply, why not entertain this idea too? Truly entertain another idea. And leave some room for other voices out there to come and enter the conversation. I addressed this in my slow blogging post–the fact that those skilled commenters are often so deeply involved in their own debates there isn’t much room for other voices, new voices, to enter.

Their are many more voices out there and many more shades to this conversation. It would be great to hear more perspectives.

I don’t need anyone to agree, but listening would be good.”

The implication of your remarks : I am not listening, I am not entertaining alternative ideas, I am making it difficult for others to participate… etc.

As I say, mine was a colloquial translation of the import of your remarks. If it was a mis-translation, my apologies… but then, according to some people around here, mis-translation is inevitable & to be applauded : it’s much better than imperialistic accurate translations.
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It’s interesting that there seems to be a desire for engagement and then an unwillingness to allow for other perspectives. I thought my statement was quite clear. People process differently. They debate differently. At different paces. Is the fact that I am considering your thoughts insulting to you? You may process faster than I do. Is that insulting to you?

I find it baffling.
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But actually that’s not bad advice–for everyone!–from time to time. If we don’t shut up occasionally, all we hear is our own babbling.
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Faithful & accurate translations have been part of the foundation of my own poetry : not just for the works themselves, but for the footnotes, the introductions, the biographical material that go along with careful work of this kind. The series of Montale translations by Arrowsmith, or the various trs. of Mandelstam, in conjunction with his wife Nadezhda’s 2-vol. memoirs (carefully translated) have opened a window for me not only into the compositional, aesthetic & ethical choices faced by these writers, but to the impinging culture & world & time they lived & inhabited. This has been of supreme value to me as a write.

& I’m sorry, Sina, but I dislike being repeatedly told to smile & shut up.
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And Henry, as I said in the last strand, why not both? Why not a lot of different approaches to translation? No one is saying your point of view isn’t valid. I went and read your interview with Kent Johnson–posted a decade or more ago in Jacket. I entertained your ideas on translation and went away to think on them along with all the other comments in that stream. Maybe I’m a bit slow, but my thinking could take a few more months. I’ll get back to you with a more precise reply.

That’s the thing about blogging. To truly consider what someone has posted, particularly if it’s contrary to what one believes, takes time. I like to have my ideas challenged.

I think what the last thread was saying was simply, why not entertain this idea too? Truly entertain another idea. And leave some room for other voices out there to come and enter the conversation. I addressed this in my slow blogging post–the fact that those skilled commenters are often so deeply involved in their own debates there isn’t much room for other voices, new voices, to enter.

Their are many more voices out there and many more shades to this conversation. It would be great to hear more perspectives.

I don’t need anyone to agree, but listening would be good.
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it should be reiterated that, in all cases, translation is an inherently violent act, that original intent is always betrayed insomuchas language is intent and the language we write in just as sure as the words w/in that language that we use are bound up in that intent.
there is just as much hypocrisy in the advocates of ‘straight’ translation.
the schools arise out of this desire for ‘sympathy,’ which doesn’t hurt or help any one’s poetics, so much as mask them–and that’s why frauds sneak in so effectively. the blandness of the rabble, the white noise of the spectacle, make their stands but are ultimately chromophobes. and it can be hard to resist, just as it is sometimes hard to resist calling names.
the reclamation of true memory, what would be the satisfaction of a true translation, cannot come before a final judgement. we may be late, but i don’t think we’re so late that we are facing any such judgement.
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Anyway, it seems that we agree that both modes of translation can be, at least, “interesting and exciting” and that’s cool. It’s nice to agree, sometimes, though even in our agreement a vast range of differences remain.

I think that if someone wanted to translate my poetry into Urdu I would be so happy that I wouldn’t care what they did. In any case, I wouldn’t know the difference. But when I came back down to earth I would probably, presumptuously, ask for both kinds of translation.

And thanks for pointing out the typo. I wasn’t trying to be deviant. By the time you read this I will have corrected it.
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& by the way, I’m not just arguing for arguing’s sake, or anybody’s “negativity”, or “meanness”. My own writing is grounded in & has grown from the soil of careful & accurate & beautiful translations (Montale, Pavese, Vallejo, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky, Virgil, Homer, the Bible, I. Zhdanov, Dante, Ariosto, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, etc. etc. etc.) of poetry I would otherwise neither know nor understand.
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This is where we disagree. I understand what you are saying about the “resistance” inherent in the original. I understand the point that different languages are, finally, not equal, & are not even similar, except in ways that accentuate their differences. But what I (as oppposed to you) find interesting & valuable is a translator’s effort to find & make a linguistic analogy as close to the original, & its historical & cultural roots & contexts, as possible. That I think is the standard of basic translation. Yes, poets & creative artists – from Lowell to Celan to the Bible to you name it – have appropriated & redesigned original works to meet new contexts : & yes, that is valuable & exciting.

But I ask you this : if a translator decided to translate your own poetry into Urdu or some other language, which would you prefer – a “creative appropriation” by Artist X, or a translation which gives Urdu speakers a smoky window into your own experience, your own art? This was John O. Simon’s point too.

By the way, in standard English, your phrase should read “its failure”, not “it’s failure”. Unless you were just trying to be deviant.
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