Using the 'Five-fold Thought-ring of the German Language' to Write Poems: Joshua Daniel Edwin on Translating Dagmara Kraus
For the translation section of issue 22 of Drunken Boat, the editors "decided to indulge [their] love for experimentation and playing around the margins of what translation is and does," seeking out "alternative, exploratory projects along the lines of translators' notes as translations; adaptations that move beyond genre- or time-shifting and into a kind of commentary on/conversation with the original; critical essays that play with translation to reflect on literature, poetics, and translation; and new translation manifestos."
On that note, we're particularly drawn to "Doppelgänger Doppelganger: a translating essay," by Joshua Daniel Edwin, who details translating Polish-German poet Dagmara Kraus, noting that the essay is "a brief and playful investigation of my attempt to translate near a kind of limit."
Edwin received 2012 PEN Translation Fund fellowship for his translation of Kraus’s poetry collection, kummerang (gloomerang), which came out as a chapbook from Argos Books. Here, he works in the poetry of Uljana Wolf, whose False Friends was translated by Susan Bernofsky (UDP, 2011); and in which he finds a common "goosing of the German tongue." (Aside: Wolf's newest, i mean i dislike that fate that i was made to where, debuts in October from Wonder, translated by Sophie Seita.) Got all that? In color:
The uncanny can be got at in many ways, often involving play, and Dagmara Kraus dug up a gut one while writing kummerang, her debut poetry collection. In translating the book, I had the good fortune to discuss with her one of her methods for goosing the German tongue: the Fünffacher Denckring der Teutschen Sprache (Five-fold Thought-ring of the German Language), a pre-digital language computing device invented by 17th century German literary man Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (our bolding!).
Using a rotating concentric-circle layout similar to a color wheel, it breaks German words down into constituent parts (prefixes, suffixes, mid-fixes, etc…) and allows the user (player) to re-combine these parts into new words with a spin of the wheel. These new words often resemble standard German words, or funhouse-mirror versions thereof. In Kraus’ hands, the new words are arranged so that a German reader can’t quite avoid seeing and hearing distorted versions of standard language hiding in the invented words. At the same time, the familiar sounds and meanings of German are not quite available. A ghostly version of a poem floats just off the page, impossible to grasp and impossible to ignore; we get two words for the preis of one.
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herz taub für hupe herz taub für hupe, jupiter auch; zwingkern, kerder – gorliwsze niz supel
zerkrenckling ob hinot enternig geif nachoss umaper klucklich zereill verorler verutter geist pluftig verhielt fortoten zupling ?
mitiurck vollhöngs zuhömm einsik durchschnurn cuhllich-puthlich schlihnen pfigen trossem blitter schlungfen glarber wausen griegin vagen rannem indarg ertrimter
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translate: erase, replace, encase the poem on another (en face) facing page
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Mashup/Echo translation is my attempt to bring Kraus’ Fünffacher Denckring words and poems into English by combining homophonic, traditional, and suggestive translation strategies. When translating one of these words, I translate the sound of it as it stands, and/or translate the sense of the word it resembles, and/or translate the sound of the word it resembles, and/or spin myself dizzy...
At top: Fünffacher Denckring der Teutschen Sprache. Read more at Drunken Boat (much more!).