BY CARLOS
MIJARES POYER DATE
MAY 12, 2012
GENRE
LITERARY TRANSLATION
THE TURNS AND
TWISTS OF A LITERARY TRANSLATION
If
you have not read anything by american novelist Henry James, anyone who knows
would definitely recommend The Turn of
the Screw, indeed fluent and paradisiacal. One becomes enamored to this
novel that has reached the romantic screen of Hollywood and t.v.
The
novel does not seem, but it is a ghost story and a love story. A story of
serendipity deep in the English mansions, just read.
I
have never tried to translate this novel it would be a daring sin for me, I do
not compare, I could translate well, but its title addresses the twists and
turns of the literature it is composed of.
One must first as a literary translator, have humility in front of the
prose one is about to transform to another language, another world.
Sometimes
when translating literature from English to Spanish, the second language lacks
the pragmatism and nominalism of the first, and I will include here a
translation of a stanza of a poem I wrote in English and was translated by
someone else, to demonstrate the twist and turn of the prose. The stanza says:
Like an old turtle´s trot
In heavy steps that drop
A low hum from the heart.
Como el lento paso de
la vieja tortuga
Angustiosa pesadumbre
que entona
Un profundo murmullo
del corazón. (My translation).
If you like the translation, comment
on it, and add constructively to it; that´s what blogs are for.
Going
back to our novel, the Jamesian style, participates in that it propitiates the
fluency for translation, because James uses paratactic sentences the reader and
his imagination must add to. I am no
addict to structuralism but it helps. As
a matter of fact the whole story one must add great imagination to the love
theme and the obscure and terrifying ghost presence in the content of the
novel. This is hard to reach if you try
to translate this novel to Spanish, it has been done, but because I am always
learning and literature is infinite, this article dear reader encourages you to
pick up the novel and rehearse a translation to your language.
A
twist in language or the turn of the screw to tightened the art or loosen it
when possible, to reach new levels of talent in writing and translation, is
there, it´s when you try to work on it that the style reaches your mind and
heart. Students should be encouraged to
work on this.
The
stanza up top could have been more literally translated and say:
Como el lento paso de
la vieja tortuga
En pesados pasos que
intuyen (o que dejan abismalmente descender)
Un profundo gemir del
corazón. (another version of my own creation.)
By
the way, for you russian novel lovers, take a peek, I mean good vantage point
from your reading chair or desk, and observe how Sarah Burnett translates the
novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers
Karamazov, indeed a turbulent novel full of mysticism, parricide and of
course, literary talent. Read, something
always remains, that´s what translator are there for -in serious organizations.
Literary
translation, in my opinion, and only in my judgement, should be carried out by
a writer or poet with talent and control of the languages at hand. It takes time and it should be well paid,
only if the translator has the ability to transport his original writing talent
to the translation, and that not always happens. The style of the translator´s writing style
may show, it is almost impossible that it does not happen, but it is the style
of the prose that must come through, and in poetry, the mistake comes like a
boomerang when translating metaphors, or similes and other accented rhyme, like
when you try to translate metered rhyme in English Literature to another
language.
Who
is il miglior fabbro? (the best crafstman).
Poet means “maker” (maker or images), and these words sprawled like
stars over the vastness of the page may have a meter. Ezra Pound, the american poet, was a vast
greek, provencal, latin, and german translator, his translations of Dante´s
Inferno, specially the section of the “purgatory” reveal what english poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge would write years later in verse. His example is a grand example of comparative
arts (the relationships between the arts basically). Coleridge wrote in verse:
In the hexameter rises the fountain´s silvery column
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back
This is the example of the scansion
that must face a translator to meet or try to resemble the passion and the
essence of the verse into another language.
These are cadences of elegies (heroic epics) as was a historical
tradition in all literature to write, even Tolkien with his modern 20th
Century saga of The Hobbit is a form
an elegy, that has reached Hollywood. A
six meter rhyme line followed by a five meter line whether it rhymes or not, is
the scansion, the fall of the breath and the heartbeats and the motion of the
eyes over the verses, that could be translated to spanish as:
En el hexámetro asciende la columna plateada
de la fuente
En e pentámetro ay, cayendo en melodía una
vez más…
The knowledge of meter
in older poetry in any language and the new edition of free verse and its
cadences are of symbolic significance in the art of translation of literatura and poetry, and even prose,
for in my judgement; when I read the Norton Edition of Dead Souls by russian writer Nikolai Gogol, I find an inner rythm,
a sort of sound that emits order and song. And these artistic attitudes are to
be met professionally by the translator.
