Ronkainen, Jonika -- 4/20 Comments

    With the  "Competing Poems by Nobelist" piece, it’s really hard not to want to reconcile the two translations, and I wish I could see how they might have been reconciled in the original piece. For instance, the difference between “redemptive handrail” and “saving banister” feels massive to me, but they provide so much clarity to each other: I love the extra meaning Trzeciak creates (or maybe preserves?) with “saving banister”  where it evokes the sense of there being a staircase, as though the poet, or even the reader of poetry, has to try and clamber up some grueling staircase with a failing support in order to get at the “sort of thing” that poetry is, but I’m not sure I would’ve understood this kind of fail-safe quality of the insufficient answers to the question “what is poetry” without Baranczak and Cavanagh’s “redemptive handrail,” nor do I feel I would’ve gotten the same meaning solely out of Trzeciak “clutch” as I do looking at it in conjunction with Baranczak and Cavanagh’s “cling.” I also love the way Baranczak and Cavanagh’s description of “tumbling” fits precisely with Trzeciak’s staircase and the idea of climbing/falling, even though that idea does not seem elsewhere present in their translation. I would almost be persuaded that the best-poem might have been a secondary franken-poem of the two translations, where “saving banister” was simply the better choice for a closing line, where what you lose from the word "redemptive" is regained in the substitution of “saving banister” by the pervasive idea of climbing, falling, and reclimbing, but there are other points where the measure of difference between the choices seemed itself to display best the essence of the poem. Basically, I think a very good argument is made for competing translations, whether that takes the form of a franken-poem, or reading between the lines of multiple translations.

I think I'm too bad a reader of poetry to appreciate Ginczanka's on my own -- I need someone else to talk about it before I can figure out how I feel about it (eg. I was neutral on Julia Nemirovskaya's poems until I Dralyuk talked about them, and perhaps this is simply a merit of Dralyuk, but now I think he and Nemirovskaya are absolutely the greatest). However, this sequence in Physiology: 

I am happy: this is life! (exclamation point) I follow the orders of my breath, 

that allege: I am seventeen, 

that allege: I am happy,

 yet I am impaled on the stake of my own spine

was striking even to me. The last line in particular conjures such a poignant idea, and I wondered if the phrasing was more, or less, idiomatic (less creative? and I don't mean that to be derogatory) in the original Polish -- from what I could tell from google translate, "the stake of" was an addition from Trzeciak (the literal translation perhaps being "yet I am impaled, on my own backbone"), so I was curious whether that was because there was an idea of/word for impalement in polish that in itself capture this idea of there being a stake (instead of any other impaling object, i guess) that Trzeciak was trying to redeem.

4/20 Reflections

    Non Omnis Moriar, a poem that my fellow students in the MFA should know well, and now that I think about it, a large reason for why I decided that I would never willingly translate poetry in a language that I can understand. Knowing explicitly that in order to mimic the rhyming structure and meter of the original, things must be changed or added, or to maintain the semantic meaning and word order structure and meter had to be thrown aside, in a way almost completely dampens the joy I would have had reading it, the same way I enjoyed reading Boris's poems earlier this month. A thought that is only amplified by reading The Art of Losing, and the admittance that the translation of poetry is impossible. The ignorant reader who has no idea about the source material or the context it was written in is divorced from the struggles of the translator who is forced to make difficult decisions time and time again, repeated over each word of a poem. Then there is also the issue of necessary information; how wildly important context is in the case of Non Omnis Moriar, and even haikus, for that matter. How does the translator convey in a translation everything that is needed to be conveyed, while juggling decisions about what must be left behind? 

    Likewise in the Times article where two different translations were published in the same time frame, did the reactions to first time readers of Zuzanna truly differ that much? There are of course other ramifications of this double publishing, but without the context of the original poem, details about the structure and the context, I find it doubtful that any reader can make a precise judgement on either translation greater in detail then just stating that these nouns in this line elicit a certain emotional response, or relate to these lines here. It speaks to the reversed relationships between the informed translator who must bridge all these gaps between the reader and the writer, the language and the meaning, and the reader, who oftentimes does not even know there is a gap in their knowledge to begin with, happy to keep on walking forward through the translation blissfully unaware. A translator is lucky when they do not need to think about traversing the long and thorny path of translating a poem and all the problems it entails, and a reader is lucky when they know enough to enjoy a translation, but not enough that they would empathize with the problems the translator faced.

Steven 

Reflections 4/20 (Ginczanka, Joanna Huss)

    I found the article “Competing Versions of Poem by Nobelist” a little funny this week. Last week in Professor Vincent’s class, we read the first 100 pages of Kate Brigg’s (incredible) book This Little Art, and in the text, she suggests that actually, we probably aren’t getting any better at translation—we’re just making new ones, different ones. I love this idea because it allows for any number of different translations of a given to text to exist. One translation does not have to be written off as “bad” or “wrong” in order for someone to make another. One translator can translate the same text as another translator in a different way, a new way—one doesn’t necessarily have to be better or worse. The versions need not “compete.” And the two publications, The New Yorker and the New Republic, can certainly publish two different translations of the same poem. They should do so, in fact. The space for translations should not be finite.

     I liked Joanna Huss’ translations of Ginczanka’s poetry. I was particularly struck by the poem “Physiology” and the lines:

I am happy: this is life! (exclamation point) I follow the orders of my breath,

that allege: I am seventeen,

that allege: I am happy,

yet I am impaled on the stake of my own spine

(inevitable death is in me, like a needle circulating in the veins)

this is not subject to negotiation,

this is not subject to supplication:

The use of punctuation is striking, especially the exclamation point followed by the words “exclamation point.” The end rhyme with “negotiation” and “supplication” reads beautifully too. 

    I first encountered Ginczanka’s poetry last semester in Professor Valles’ class when she very kindly shared with us a few beautiful translations she was working on. We read a few different renditions of “I Shall Not Wholly Die.” I like the version shared in the article “Something or Other” translated by Irena Grudzinska-Gross and her students, as well as the one in the article “An Angel Against Her Will,” but there are other translations I preferred. Although usually I prefer keeping non-English words from the source text in their original language, I like when translators of this poem in particular render the very first line, the Latin “Non omnis moriar,” as “I shall not wholly die” in English. They are so immensely powerful in English. The translation of the material objects is particularly important here too. For example, while the translation that appears in “An Angel Against Her Will” writes of “jugs” and “candles,” Grudzinska-Gross’ translation uses the words “goblets” and “candlesticks,” establishing a haunting opulence that feels essential to this poem.

-sharon

4/20 Reflections

 I found the abstract imagery in Zuzanna Ginczanka's poetry to be vivid, poignant, and complete, especially in the translation by Joanna Huss. The fact that this quality of imagery is delivered in a distinct and neat rhyming form in Polish makes it a timeless poetry, indeed. I look forward to reading more poems by this author, and in different translations to catch all the reflections of their beauty. 

In the article "In Translation", quite a few parallels and metaphors were drawn. I would like to pose a question: "What would be the most useful and helpful metaphor for translation these days and why?" One of the parallels was drawn between translation, losing, and fleeing in the historical context of persecution. I believe more meaning lies not in this parallel but in the fact that parallels such as this can be made. Everything is interconnected to one degree or the other or, perhaps, to an equal degree altogether. Inventing or discovering such connections does little at this point, in my opinion - to me, a deeper question lies in what the existence of webs of connections mean in the grander scheme of things. It seems like at the moment these webs are used to define translation for themselves. There is always the question: "What is translation?" and there is restlessness in the search for answer. I believe the larger question is: "What makes us need to know what translation is? What makes us uncomfortable with ambiguity?" 

Articles about Zuzanna Ginczanka's poems sometimes mentioned possibility and impossibility to translate something. Possibility/impossibility can be seen as a duality similar to perfection/imperfection. Perfection is something that is accepted and desired. Imperfection is something that is rejected and deemed as undesirable. Possibility is something that is commonly believed to exist. Impossibility is something that is commonly believed to not exist. The reason for creation and maintenance of these artificial distinction is, in my opinion, human discomfort with what is vague. There is a need for labeling, definition through characteristics rather than function, and assortment into categories. An example of the latter would be: "Is this a precise or an imprecise translation?". Such question first and foremost exposes discomfort with not designating something as either precise or not precise. 

Thus, a path to progress for translation may be in becoming comfortable with what is seen as imperfection and imprecision, seeing beyond them and then abandoning such categories altogether. Similarly, when it comes to translation as a practice, going beyond the need to define and characterize it and instead exploring its potential as a tool and broadening the horizons of what this tool can be used for. 

-Ksenia

Reflections 4/20

     I love Joanna Huss' translations of Zuzanna Ginczanka's poems! Or perhaps it's more fitting to say that I love the poems themselves. The imagery and use of language is exquisite. I wondered about the line "With eyes like safety pins / I safely pinned myself onto the world", because the words in the Polish version don't look similar, like they carry the same wordplay. Of course, I don't speak Polish, so the wordplay might be there and it's just unrecognizable to a foreign eye. The line "amidst matters of overt color and covert, obscure content" made me wonder if "overt" and "covert" are rhyming antonyms in Polish, as well, but it's hard to tell just looking at it. "Niejawnej / niejasnej" could be the original equivalent. Overall, it seems the translation stays true to the punctuation of the original. I would love to hear the Polish read out loud so I could compare the sounds of the translation to it, and see if Huss took the aural quality of her translation into account or tried to be more literal.

    After reading the "Competing Poems by Nobelist" piece, I can honestly say that I prefer Joanna Trzeciak Huss' translation to the competition, and not just because she's the one who will be visiting us on Friday haha. "Mr. Baranczak, referring to Ms. Trzeciak, said, ''My translation clings to the uncertainty; she clings to poetry itself.''", but the excerpts just seem antithetical to that statement? Baranczak and Cavanagh's language seems very awkward and doesn't have much flow. It seems like they were the ones clinging to the original poetry, while Huss finessed the language of the translation to sound much more natural.

    The first paragraph of the "Something or Other" piece is gold and sums up our class so well. I re-read it ~three times to soak it in. I love, love, love the way Grudzinska-Gross puts it. I love the ten-syllable per line meter that the translation at the end has, but it did make me curious what the other one sounded like, and what perhaps this translation had to sacrifice in order to make the meter work in English.

    Okay! After reading the translation in the "An Angel Against Her Will" piece, I'm stumped. I love the meter and rhythm of the former translation, but there are rhymes missing from it that I love in the latter (namely the initial sheets / replete rhyme). I also really love the "May they serve you and yours. For why should it be / Outsiders? Neighbors, you – that’s more than empty name" line that seemed to have been cut from the former. Maybe reading multiple translations and forming some sort of hybrid/best of both worlds version in one's own mind is the way to go? There is certainly a give and take, depending on what the translator values, and I can see pros and cons to both sides. 

     Overall, Zuzanna Ginczanka sounded like an amazing woman and I cannot wait to talk about her poetry on Friday!

Sarah

Polyphonic Polish Poetry Put Into Translation

Any translation of poetry—and the translation of these poems in particular—seems to corroborate the thesis Gregory Rabassa advanced with respect to prose: if literature is a metaphor for experience, literary translation is a metaphor for a metaphor, a word for a word.  Therefore, rather than the “competing versions” juxtaposed by Dinitia Smith—a metaphor in itself which likens concurrent translations to a sports contest, to a vying for supremacy in which one must necessarily prevail—I’d favor the idea of complementing translations, neither of which, as Clare Cavanagh describes, is a facsimile for the original.  Each accentuates a distinctive feature of the source.

In a similar spirit, it’s not exactly clear—or, at best, it’s arbitrary—by what criteria Grudzińska-Gross identifies bad translation.  The test, seemingly, is olfactory.  If she, as a reader of at least Polish, Russian, and English, detects a whiff of the original wafting through, the poem is a success.  One sure way to stifle this aroma is, for example, to make the “tragic” mistake of translating into white verse when rhyme or meter are a hallmark of a Russian or Polish original.  This facile argumentation mars the writer’s point by turning personal preference into the highest trump card, foreshortening the poetics of translation by applying the vapid, totalizing heading of good/bad precisely when Grudzińska-Gross wishes to amplify their dimensions.

But despite the glaring paucity of her rationale, Grudzińska-Gross confirms the importance of situating a text in literary, historical, and biographic contexts.  In this case, if a translator does not identify the allusions to Polish literature, or position the poem against the backdrop of the Nazi invasion, or know that the author was pursued, imprisoned, and finally murdered by the German war machine, that translator would likely deliver a skewed or diluted representation of the original.

I, for my part, admire Grudzińska-Gross’ translation.  The irony, reinforced by the rhythm and the meter, is sharp, even jagged, culminating in the enigmatic last line.  The angels exist on two planes.  They represent, on the one hand, the horror, the injustice, and the deprivation of the poet’s circumstances transmuted into the eternal, ethereal space of literature.  She will perish, the historical circumstances will expire, but her symbolic rendition will continue, immutable, in the realm of verse.  On the other, the supposedly good neighbors who betray her out of envy, greed, or cowardice wear their maleficence like a badge upon their arms.  The traitors are as conspicuous as angels walking the surface of the earth, and in effect, the woman who informed against Ginczanka is, after the war, singled out and sentenced for her crime.

Eve Bigaj’s translation, although blunting the poem’s acerbic irony, culls out a meaning whose echo is very faint in Grudzińska-Gross.  Here, we have a poet who not only proposes literary patrimony as a formula to outstrip her material circumstances but also to transcends the vindictive pettiness of bitterness.  The clarion call for justice exists alongside the moral prerogative to forgive.  The atmosphere, the tone, and the timbre of the poems, so distinct each from the other, only together approximate the texture and the thematic compression of the original.

Finally, Joanna Huss, completing this eclectic portrait of the divergent but equally successful emphases in translation, finds vivid images in abstractions and extracts the poetic marrow from the often eschewed Latinate contingent of the English lexicon.  My hunch is that her choices, far from an imposition on the translator’s part, respond to the poems’ unique necessities.  The variety of forms and the breath of voices present in the translations probably stem from the differentiated complexity of the poet herself.

-Josh

Jiayi's reflections

 

Boris Dralyuk’s talk on his translations of Julia Nemirovskaya’s poems on Friday was absolutely enthralling. On top of being super knowledgeable and skillful in translating, he was also humorous in the way he delivers the speech, which made the entire event all the more enjoyable. From this speech, I gleaned a couple of enlightening perspectives and the methodology of translation that he brought up. First, he asked us a question. “What does this poem in Russian sound like to you? Have you heard of anything similar in English?” Then he gave us a hint that it isn’t anything we would expect to hear at a funeral, and indeed sound a little like a nursery rhyme. I was first shocked by his direct mentioning of “nursery rhyme” because I have deemed nursery rhyme sounding poems as a failure in my translation which made me extra cautious and scared to use rhyme in poetry translation. However, he would let the rhyme guide his translation instead of avoiding it. He points out that if you can’t very well resolve the pun and carry it over into English, you would go through “isolation and combination”. Feel the poems’ general atmosphere and interpret it in your own way, and then intuitively come up with the translation that rolls off the tongue the way it does in its original, and then go back to the translation to fine-tune word choices. I think this is the main takeaway of how to translate poems I learned from his talk. Indeed, an example of him using this is the use of the third “O”. There were only two Os in the Russian poem, but he used a third O to compensate for the untranslatable Russian phrase that encompasses both meanings of “oh if only time were to work differently” and “oh if only there were time” that cannot be achieved in English. I also loved how he said, “compared to any other objects, human is the hardest thing to empathize with.” Perhaps this is precisely why poetry is hard to translate–it is so densely intimate and personal, and any attempt to translate such a condensed piece could seem inadequate. 

In Bassnett’s piece, the analogy that the Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi used to define translation was very intriguing and reminded me of how Boris approaches poetry translation. Rossi described translation as “an act of love, as a kind of obsession where the translator pursues an unobtainable object, unobtainable in that no one can entirely possess another’s text, ‘just as one cannot rewrite it without changing it.” (Peri Rossi, 2002: 58). And Bassnett continues to tell Rossi’s argument: “as in love, absolute fidelity is impossible, as is total textual identification.” This analogy indicates the free-spirited and intuitive nature of translation that Boris takes on, where the perfect translation is almost unattainable, and that the translation is a creation that stands alone. 

Through the Bassnett piece, I have come to realize for the first time how the translator is viewed by some as “a servant or handmaiden of a superior original.” Not being a translator myself made me think that translation is a fair industry for everyone to fairly participate in, but as argued in the Godayol piece, it is important for us to recognize the effort and unease in translating work and treat the translation with the same amount of respect we pay the original author and see the translator as an author too. This leads me to the debate on Gorman’s translator. I personally didn’t find Rijneveld’s appointment as Gorman’s translator problematic, and I think that as long as a translator is qualified and skilled enough, they deserve the appointment. Janice Deul, though, points out that the appointment was “really ridiculous” and “incomprehensible” because “this is not about who can translate, it’s about who gets opportunities to translate,” and listed 10 Black Dutch spoken-word artists who could have done the job but had been overlooked. I think she does have a point there, where it is important to give young and lesser famous translators chances, but I still am not sold on how not being black would disqualify Rijneveld in the professional front as a translator. 

 

Jiayi