| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Translation of Poetry & Song Lyrics - mission impossible? Thread poster: Jack Doughty
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alitalia
United States
Local time: 02:20
Italian to English
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The translation of literature and poetry is indeed a very special art. Let\'s not be too critical of ourselves, however, if we cannot get every nuance down. There is also an art to reading and sometimes we may do what we believe is a brilliant job in uncovering the hidden depths of a word or phrase, but there is always the chance that it will fall on a deaf ear!
| | | | | It is hard, but not i,possible...:) | Nov 14, 2002 |
A small book on my desk - which is one of my favourites... \"Chinese lyrical poetry VIII - XIV c.c.\" Translated from Chinese to Russian and published in Moscow in 1979.
This remarkable translation of classical Chinese poems (of Wan Wej, Su Shi, Guan Han-Tsin, Gao Tsi) helps us to understand more of China and it\'s cultural and spiritual heritage...
I do agree, that one should learn Chinese language, especi... See more A small book on my desk - which is one of my favourites... \"Chinese lyrical poetry VIII - XIV c.c.\" Translated from Chinese to Russian and published in Moscow in 1979.
This remarkable translation of classical Chinese poems (of Wan Wej, Su Shi, Guan Han-Tsin, Gao Tsi) helps us to understand more of China and it\'s cultural and spiritual heritage...
I do agree, that one should learn Chinese language, especially the characters, to enjoy classical Chinese poems.
But as long as this is a privilege of only some special gifted people..., as I always thought about the translators of Chinese and Japanese languages, we\'ll read the translations...
You said, that You are afriad that classical Chinese poetry is basically unknown to the West World. It is sad, I agree. This book proves, that it is not unknown in this part of the world...
Hand-writing by calligraphers - it\'s another miracle...
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| | | | Jacek Krankowski (X) 
English to Polish
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| If you speak Polish, see for yourself | Nov 18, 2002 |
We held a KudoZ competition for the translation of Archibald MacLeish\'s \"Ars Poetica\" into Polish.
I announced today that the winner is Przemyslaw Szkodzinski whose translation can be compared with an existing published Polish translation at:
http://www.proz.com/?sp=bb/viewtopic&topic=6177&forum=35&13
| | | | Jacek Krankowski (X)
English to Polish
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| How about prose poetry then? | Nov 18, 2002 |
Christopher Kennedy
Question 9. Cultural critic Michael Benedikt suggests that \"there is probably a shorter distance from the unconscious to the prose poem, than from the unconscious to most poems in verse.\" In what ways do you think this is true?
I\'m sitting in my bedroom/office, writing at the computer, claustrophobic, myopic, on the verge of some kind of minor breakdown. I don\'t have the will to write a poem, nor do I have any desire to sort out t... See more Christopher Kennedy
Question 9. Cultural critic Michael Benedikt suggests that \"there is probably a shorter distance from the unconscious to the prose poem, than from the unconscious to most poems in verse.\" In what ways do you think this is true?
I\'m sitting in my bedroom/office, writing at the computer, claustrophobic, myopic, on the verge of some kind of minor breakdown. I don\'t have the will to write a poem, nor do I have any desire to sort out the facts of my life in order to create a construct of memory designed to misrepresent my actual experience, a fiction if ever there was one. So I write whatever comes to mind with no sense of what it might be. (...)
So what\'s my point? It\'s pretty simple. I wrote prose poems because I didn\'t care about any of the things that used to mean a great deal to me about poetry. I didn\'t care if I got the facts right, since I no longer thought it possible to know the past. I didn\'t care about line breaks or meter, because I didn\'t have the resolve to worry those things into place. I did, however, rekindle my love affair with metaphor; it kept me at bay from myself as I was writing and allowed me to write as unselfconsciously as I ever have. Of course, metaphor, being made of tenor as well as vehicle, eventually presented me with some irrefutable facts about myself. And if all this sounds a little too much like a form of autotherapeutic nonsense, that\'s because I left out the best part: I had a good time writing these prose poems. I felt liberated from myself in a way I didn\'t think was possible, and I had the rush of knowing that what appeared on the page in front of me was as direct a hit on my own psyche as I could muster.
So yes, I agree with Michael Benedikt. But only because he said \"probably.\"
BIO
Christopher Kennedy is the author of a collection of prose poems, Nietzsche\'s Horse, from Mitki/Mitki Press. ..., he is the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse Univeristy.
http://www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room/DR-CKBIO.htm
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Jacek Krankowski (X)
English to Polish
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| How about prose poetry then? | Nov 18, 2002 |
Maybe that would be easier to translate, I meant.
[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-11-19 10:49 ]
| | | | Lancelot
United States
Local time: 23:20
English to Chinese
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| There are impossible poems and songs, but there are possible ones too | Dec 12, 2002 |
I have attempted translating English poems and songs into Chinese. Of course I translate when I am sure I know what I translate and because I myself is poetic, I can convey the poetic nuance of the original texts pretty well. In translating songs, I translate mostly those I can sing so that I make sure my translations can also be put to the original melody.
| | | | Refugio
Local time: 23:20
Spanish to English
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| The ultimate untranslatable poem | Dec 16, 2002 |
Taught to me by a German-born Latin teacher many years ago. It goes:
Malo
malo
malo
malo.
Her rough version in English, based on four different meanings of the word in Latin, is:
I would rather be
in an apple tree
than an evil man
in adversity.
And it even rhymes! So maybe it wasn\'t untranslatable after all.
| | | | | Possible but difficult | Jun 17, 2003 |
The hard part, and one that most translators into English shy away from, is the rhythm and rhyme. Having had the consummate gall to try translating Dante's "Inferno" into English terza rima (I was inspired by Dorothy Sayers, and thought I could do better - boy, was I wrong), I can say from experience that it is indeed hard; but that is not a good reason to translate rhythmic, musical poetry into bland broken-up prose.
I've decided that my next translation project should be a Mayako... See more The hard part, and one that most translators into English shy away from, is the rhythm and rhyme. Having had the consummate gall to try translating Dante's "Inferno" into English terza rima (I was inspired by Dorothy Sayers, and thought I could do better - boy, was I wrong), I can say from experience that it is indeed hard; but that is not a good reason to translate rhythmic, musical poetry into bland broken-up prose.
I've decided that my next translation project should be a Mayakovski poem. Wish me luck. ▲ Collapse
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| Real things are untranslatable | Jul 15, 2003 |
Russian poet Zhukovski said that when translator worked with prose, he was a slave, but when he worked with poetry, he was a competitor. I have seen your translation of Vysotsky in Russian forum and admired with it, you were a real competitor for Vysotsky!
But, it was not a discover for me when one my colleagues from USA originated from Marocco admitted that she never met good translation of Koran’s suras into English. She mentioned that in Arab the language of Koran represented a kind ... See more Russian poet Zhukovski said that when translator worked with prose, he was a slave, but when he worked with poetry, he was a competitor. I have seen your translation of Vysotsky in Russian forum and admired with it, you were a real competitor for Vysotsky!
But, it was not a discover for me when one my colleagues from USA originated from Marocco admitted that she never met good translation of Koran’s suras into English. She mentioned that in Arab the language of Koran represented a kind of music for Arabs. It represent not only idea, but rather magic.
I could divide her feelings, because I, fully bilingual Ukrainian and Russian native, who can feel the beauty of both languages, never read a good translation made from Ukrainian into Russian of Shevchenko's poetry, even more, Dovzhenko's proza... ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:20
Russian to English
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TOPIC STARTER In memoriam | Belated reply to Nadia's posting | Aug 12, 2003 |
I don’t visit this forum very often, so I have only just seen Natalia Kudria’s posting of July 15. I am flattered to be called a competitor for Vysotsky, but I really don’t feel I deserve the compliment! My poems are very lightweight stuff compared to his.
The poems to which she refers can be seen at http://www.proz.com/?sp=bb/viewtopic&post=26096#26096
and illus... See more I don’t visit this forum very often, so I have only just seen Natalia Kudria’s posting of July 15. I am flattered to be called a competitor for Vysotsky, but I really don’t feel I deserve the compliment! My poems are very lightweight stuff compared to his.
The poems to which she refers can be seen at http://www.proz.com/?sp=bb/viewtopic&post=26096#26096
and illustrate one or two points relevant to this discussion. In my translation “Song of Reincarnation” I was greatly assisted by a Russian, Yevgeny Dubnov, who is a talented poet in Russian himself. And in another one, “He Didn’t Return From the Battle”, there was one phrase which I had completely misunderstood, but wasn’t aware of the fact until I sent it to a Russian through ProZ. He pointed out the error and it has been corrected in the version given here. So co-operation between native speakers of both languages is always desirable for the best result. But even so, I never feel I really do justice to Vysotsky.
Another point illustrated in the poems on that page is the difficulty of conveying irony. My own poem “Ode to Oblivion”, about how Khrushchev totally vanished from the scene when he was ousted by Brezhnev, was intended as an ironic attack on the system under which this could happen, but some people took it as an attack by me on Khrushchev himself, implying that he deserved to be treated this way. This problem is not confined to translated poems. I once wrote one about the way tourists were treated by some people in a holiday area where I was living at the time, and some of the locals took it as an attack on the tourists and detrimental to the tourist trade. So I am more cautious about the use of irony these days. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Ulvija Tanovic (X)
Local time: 08:20
English to Bosnian
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| get yourself a poet! but keep your distance | Sep 4, 2003 |
Jack Doughty wrote:
In my translation “Song of Reincarnation” I was greatly assisted by a Russian, Yevgeny Dubnov, who is a talented poet in Russian himself.
I agree that if you are attempting to translate poetry you have to be a bit of a poet yourself, or find a poet to collaborate with. However, you should not be "too much" of a poet and neither should your collaborator, because you may end up "inflicting" too much of your own poetic style onto the poem you're translating. It's a fine line, really...
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