The Art of Poetry Translation (Week 7)

Introduction

• Poets rely heavily on the nuances of a given language, where each word is essential to convey meaning and evoke emotions.
• Poetry thrives on linguistic variety, enriching language and culture with unique expressions.
• The variance in different languages enriches poetry as a comprehensive art form.
• Great poetry may lose some of its initial qualities during translation.
• The challenge in translating poetry lies in its inherent nature rather than just metrical patterns.
• Translating poetry compels a critical examination of a poet's task and poetry's function.
• Translators and theoreticians define poetry as the music of words, which helps one interpret the world.
• Poetry enhances the listener's awareness, achieved through concentrated metaphors and carefully crafted words.
• Formal patterns in poetry are shaped by syntax and prosody rules, which vary across languages and can be accepted or rejected based on social and historical factors.
• Jorge Luis Borges stated that German distinguishes between Umdichtung (poem modelled on another), Nachdichtung (free translation), and Übersetzung (translation).
• Borges suggests that any translation is a new poem, a model that may or may not resemble the original.
• Focus should be on the similitude rather than the difference
• Both the original poem and its translation are original works, interconnected unilaterally where the translation relies on the original.

Poetry and Translation - Contemporary Theories

• Translation studies mostly focus on literary translation.
• There is a need to focus on approaching methodological problems from a non-empirical position in translation studies.

Methods Employed by Translators

• André Lefevere's catalogue outlines various methods used in poetry translation
• Phonemic translation aims to reproduce the original's sound in the target language while offering a paraphrase of the meaning.
• Literal translation involves word-for-word conversion, distorting the original sense and syntax.
• Metrical translation focuses on replicating the meter of the original poem.
• Poetry into prose sacrifices sense, communicative value, and syntax.
• Rhymed translation creates a "double bondage," potentially resulting in a caricature of the original.
• Blank verse translation imposes restrictions while offering greater accuracy and literalness.
• Interpretation retains the original's substance but sacrifices its form.

Deficiencies of Translation

• Translation deficiencies stem from overemphasizing certain poetic elements.
• Translators should maintain the system of all elements, and consider them equally.
• Translating poetry is bringing a dead piece back to life, a "literary resurrection".

Pound's Theory

• Edwin Gentzler notes that Pound's theory centers around "energy in language".
• Pound's words are not mere marks but "sculptured images engraved in stone".
• Words are "electrified cones" with tradition, race consciousness, agreement, and association.
• Pound saw the vortex as the point of maximum energy and words.
• Imagism deeply influenced Pound; the image has mood, not form.
• The image, a radiant node or cluster, embodies the VORTEX where ideas rush.

Language Energized by Pound

• Language's energy manifests in melopoeia (musical property), phanopoeia (visual property), and logopoeia (intellectual property).
• Logopoeia employs words considering usage habits, context, acceptances, and ironical play.
• Logopoeia holds aesthetic content unique to verbal manifestation, defying containment in plastic or music forms.
• Logopoeia does not translate, requiring an understanding of the author's state of mind to find a derivative or equivalent.
• Melopoeia can translate "half a line at a time", but phanopoeia can be translated almost or wholly intact.
• Translators need to grasp the logopoeia to integrate the text into the target culture.
• Then translator then becomes an active demiourgos, uses matter to create new forms.
• The translator must empathize, understanding both the original and present cultures.

Translation of Poetry - Three Hypotheses

• Poetry embodies human mind and spirit and is a literary work of metrical form.
• Poetry has sound, sense, and suggestion and appeals to understanding through imagination.
• Poetry conveys deep feeling by interpreting the hidden meanings of life.
• Sydney defines poetry as imitation to teach and delight.
• Coleridge defines the poem as a composition for pleasure.

Coleridge's Definition

• A poem aims for pleasure, distinguishing itself through distinct gratification from each component.
• Coleridge identifies poetry with the poet, blending the soul and subordinating faculties, creating unity.
• The synthetic and magical power, which is of imagination, produces unity.

Linguistic View of Poetry

• Definitions help translators understand poetry's nature and significance.
• Bantaş defines poetry linguistically as synonymy at lexical/grammatical levels.
• Bantaş and Croitoru identify three hypotheses for translation.

First Hypothesis: Poetry as Synonymy

• Poetry's initial code is a set of patterns which refers to the style, metaphors, and prosodic code to be preserved in translation.
• A translation might be possible; no losses are permitted.
• The translator rewrites, re-creates, and analyzes the original's structures, transferring them into the translated poem and adding nothing.
• Roger T. Bell's analysis includes syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses on phrases/sentences.
• Synthesis in the target language may be preceded by stylistic analysis, influenced by personal taste.
• Multilateral analysis prevents translators from omitting features and lets translators filter patterns.
• Popovič describes this as the 'invariant core' of the original.
• Susan Bassnett notes that the invariant includes tone; forms differ widely.

Approaching Translation

• Roger T. Bell describes communication as translation; communicators translate when receiving a message using a code different from their own.
• People must decode and re-encode into their code, which relates to translation.
• Translation includes monolingual and bilingual forms.
• The bilingual "transiator" re-encodes a message into another system.
• Translation is a tripartite process: transmitter, translator, and receiver.

Translation as Bilingual Communication

• Translation is synonymous with bilingual communication.
• Bantaş terms this "bilingual synonymy," meaning, forms of lexical-grammatical synonymy in two languages.
• Two things considered are that one must find the closest synonym and avoid mistakes.
• Synonymy is a relationship between hyponymy and antonymy.
• Hyponymy causes no trouble for translators, but synonymy is problematic as it only has a partial overlap of meanings.
• Antonymy is exclusion.

Translating Poetry

• Poetry is more challenging to translate as it is a higher form of synonymy.
• Musicality, style, and form are to be transferred.
• Needed is linguistic and literary competence, supported by talent.
• A translator must be aware of the poetic codes of the two languages and can implement examples of writings on a similar theme
• Finding a similar poem will not be that strict if the same period can be achieved, despite it being difficult.

Musicality in Poetry

• Musicality conveys meaning through a language's sound, allowing a poem to live; it keeps anonymous writings alive.
• Language imitates sounds, rooting communication almost undoubtedly in sounds.
• Poetry's musicality evokes associations through phonemes, mirroring natural sounds.
• Accumulated /r/ sounds create toughness, seen in Goethe's Erlkönig, and German recreates storm sounds due to linguistic sounds.
• Associations are lost when translating into languages lacking /r/.
• Chinese, void of rolled /r/, alters utterance meaning with pitch; these aspects are lost.

Other Expressions

• Onomatopoeia influences musicality, and alliteration/assonance are used to discuss based on examples.
• Each language possesses its sound; musicality makes the other phases complete.

Text Analysis

• A good translation requires analysis of the source-language text, which is accessible.
• Translation-oriented text analysis can be complex.
• Correct analysis excludes errors.
• Translators forget about the process of transferring translation, starting with initial stages to do before proper translation.
• Bantaş calls translation a duty of every translator.

Bantaş's Obligations

• Decipher source text's semantic code and formal code.
• Render elements at the same level, exclude losses/gains, including clarity.
• Complex analysis produces equivalent, as poetry is at the highest level of synonymy.
• The translator then experiences the same state of mind.
• An experienced poetry translator then chooses texts that are a fit between their intellectual spirits.

Translator Ability

• It is possible to understand the intentions of a poem and its author.
• Make translation explicit, clarifying meaning.
• Maintained must be the clarity for the author.
• Poems shouldn't become harder to understand by making meanings clear.
• No gains, no losses.

Conclusions

• Translations shouldn't obscure clear meanings in the original poem
• Balance in losses and gains needs to be maintained.
• Translated product needs to be a representation of the poet's thoughts/feelings.
• The translator should become the poet to produce a poem by that a particular author.