can a poem be translated into different languages?

[mortalterror]

Mad props to StLukesGuild, covered nearly everything I wanted to say, with one or two exceptions.

I believe that translation is not only possible but that since all languages have a natural lifecycle, are born, evolve, and die, any poem that does not emphasize the translatable aspects of poetry are setting themselves up for inevitable failure. It's all well and good to play with sound, but what is most important to any work of literature should be the meaning of the words, and that is what is translatable. If a poem is true to life, if it has a universal theme that people of all kinds can relate to then every civilization should have the words and concepts necessary to describe the poem.

As far as keeping the flavor or exact impression of a poem goes, no poem is going to convey the same things from one century to the next in it's own language, let alone anothers. Read Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Borges to get a sense of what I'm saying. Even when the work of literature stays the same it's the people who come to it that will change, so you might as well worry about the tastes, and cultural knowledge of your readers as much as the poem itself for creating the so called "correct impression."

Aside from asserting that all languages die, I will end on a positive note and posit the fact that sometimes translators can make their poems even better. Edward FitzGerald's translations of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam are even more popular in English than they ever were in Arabic and are classics in their own right.

[el_rei81]

I think it's variable: there are poems that lend themselves to a satisfying translartions, rather than others, where translation can hardly explain the original significance;
I think it's difficult take a good translation of most post-modern authors, bacause of the most complex conceputal structure of the poetry, the frequent use of idiomatic forms etc.
mainly the ana-logical significance is impossible to translate: how can you reproduce, for example, the music, that often generates all alone new significances above the single words?

[stlukesguild]

I agree that the success or failure of translation varies... by poet... by translator... by individual poem. I also agree that almost no translation can reproduce all that makes up a great poem. Much of what makes up a poem is not merely the "meaning" of the individual words (which certainly can be largely reproduced... but no literal "meaning" or menu can be thought to succeed in even beginning to convey what makes up a poem). A great part of a poem is contained within the sound or the words... the music... and all these convey... suggest... allude to. Even capturing the rhythms and music of a mediocre poet like Poe must certainly be a challenge:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

How many more times impossible must it be to capture something far more subtle: Mallarme, Verlaine, William Blake, Emily Dickinson. I've often found many of Goethe's translations to be quite unsatisfactory... while Holderlin has been well-served by Michael Hamburger (among others). His larger, more didactic works are often the more satisfactorily rendered, while the more gem-like not. A particular favorite of mine is Eine Gleiches or Another Wanderer's Night Song. Both Longfellow and Christopher Middleton make strong efforts as this poem:

O'er all the hilltops
Is quiet now
In all the tree-tops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees
Wait, soon like these
Thou, too, shalt rest

-Longfellow

Over mountains yonder
A stillness
Scarce any breath
you wonder,
Touches
The tops of the trees.
No forest birds now sing;
A moment, waiting-
Then take, you too, your ease.

-CM

As fine as either of these are neither fully captures the "hushing" sound and music of Goethe's original:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hausch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

The original strikes me as far more gem-like... a far more perfect merger of sound and "meaning"... and certainly I can't imagine any translation perfectly capturing all that there is to be had in one of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience with their almost child-like language or one of Mallarme's poems. Of course the alternative to the imperfection of translation is to learn every language that you wish to read poetry in (and master it to a degree that includes an understanding of often archaic words and phrases and allusions to literary predecessors from high and low cultural sources) or give up upon reading anything outside one's own native tongue. Personally I lack the time for the former and refuse the latter and so I will stick with my translations when needed.

[mortalterror]

Someday, somebody is going to translate Finnegan's Wake into English, and then everyone is going to know what a great writer James Joyce was.

I consider the problem of translation in the same way that I consider difficult, obscure literature in my own language. T.S. Eliot considered translation impossible, and so when he composed The Wasteland he left chunks of untranslated poetry embedded in his text. When I read The Wasteland, I do not pause over translations, or footnotes, because that disrupts a read and hinders the pleasure I derive from the work. To me, it is not important that I fully understand everything that the writer is trying to convey. If he's a good enough writer, and I'm a good enough reader, then he's left a number of clues and I'll retain enough of the sense that I do not require the whole. I see that the pieces fit together, and I am content.

In the same way, it is possible to use technical language in literature which the reader may not be acquainted with. If a character is speaking the dialect of an accountant, or a movie director, or an aviator then it would be unnatural for them to speak in another way. If a writer knows the lingo of his characters then they should speak it, and though the reader may not be familiar with terms or the slang a character employs, the reader will appreciate the veracity of the exchange, and the effort to create authenticity. Certain things get lost in translation, between languages, cultures, trades, and ages.

I feel that a writer must approach a text from the standpoint that his readers are not going to get everything that he puts into it. That's okay. It's not important for them to get all of it. However, it is of the highest importance that he, the writer, must understand the whole of what he writes in order for it to be internally consistent. If a work is not consistent within itself, then that note of falseness, the wrong words, will stick out like a sore thumb. In such a case, the reader may not know what is wrong, but he will know that something is amiss.

As far as translating goes, I believe that if a translator has talent of his own and truly understands the poem he's working with, then he can depart from the literal, exact phrasing and make a poem of greater power and veracity than the original. Again, I cite FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. Another example, would be John CairnCross' translation of Jean Racine's plays. The originals are written in rhyming alexandrine couplets. These are great in the original French. However, when the plays are translated into English couplets they sound terrible. Cairncross realized that blank verse held a similar place in English as alexandrine couplets did in French, was used in much the same manner, and did not sound false to an English ear. George Dillon came to much the same conclusion in his translations. The form is changed, but into a parallel and approximate form, with a number of the same connotations, and the sense is retained from the original.

I'd also like to mention Ezra Pounds translation of The River Merchant's Wife http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/...-po-pound.html . It's the best translation of this poem into English of the number I've seen, even though it departs from the literal meaning of the words, and Pound never even mastered the language it came from.

[mortalterror]

Re-reading my post above, it occurred to me that what I was saying about the author needing to know more than the reader was similar to Ernest Hemingway's iceberg principle. Sometimes what you leave out is more important than what you leave in, and it makes itself felt in spite of all limitations. I believe the literary term for this is metonymy, where one piece can stand for the whole. A good writer will know what parts need to be translated literally and what parts of a poem are less important, or even superfluous.

[mortalterror]

Sorry to post again so soon, but I had another idea. What if we are looking at the concept of translation all wrong? What if veracity were not our chief concern? What if familiarity with a poem, and reading it in the original language could be a handicap to appreciating it? Bear with me here. I recently read The Analects of Confucius and in the introduction the translator remarked that to western eyes this would all be new. We would be coming to the work without any preconceived notions about what it means, what the correct interpretation should be, or what role the philosophy has played in history. He said to think of a book as a coat rack, which people could hang different interpretations upon. Over two thousand years, this particular rack had gathered a lot of coats, and different layers of interpretation. But to a westerner, it would be fresh and new.

Think of Shakespeare. Think of all the baggage which comes from reading him in English. There are five hundred years of tradition surrounding his most minor works. When people think of Shakespeare, a lot of them think of specific performances, and cadences, acting styles, fluffy Elizabethan era shirts, the Globe theater. Many people come to this author with pre-conceived notions that determine whether they will like him or dislike him. We all probably know somebody who thinks his work is "elitist", or questions why Shakespeare "can't just talk like normal people?" This can be an obstacle to appreciation of the work. But you transplant these plays to say Iran or China, and you won't get these kinds of problems. You'll get different problems, but not these ones.

After that, we must consider the possibility that any work of art can be improved by additions, subtractions, and substitutions. For the moment, let's forget about additions. Let's talk about subtractions. There are those who argue that The Mona Lisa is more beautiful now that she has lost her eyebrows than she ever was before. It adds to the enigmatic semi-abstract expression she is known for. There are those who claim the Venus de Milo is more beautiful without arms than she would be if she had them. We must consider the beauty of fractured and fragmented art. I forget the term for this concept, many apologies, but I first ran across it in a discussion of Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo. You can find the poem here
and a better discussion of the concept than I can give you here.

Rilke's point was that time had done damage to the statue of Apollo. It had removed a head. It had removed arms. It had removed legs. But those subtractions had only improved the sculpture. The addition of a head, arms, and legs would have drawn attention away from the beautiful torso. And what if those several parts were inferior? They would have detracted from the grandeur of the torso as well. Anyone who has ever edited their words should know that the task is never done. I look upon this page and I am not entirely satisfied with everything I wrote. Perhaps, if I changed a word here or there, it would all lock into place? If only I moved this sentence here, or changed that phrase there. I invite you now to consider the possibility that no work of art is ever finished, and that a good translator can be as great a benefit to the poet as a good editor ever was.

[stlukesguild]

It would be intriguing if T.S. Eliot truly did consider translation impossible... especially considering his own efforts in translating an entire volume by St. John Perse from the French. I only partially agree with your notion of coming to a work without a background knowledge or "baggage". I certainly recognize that we can appreciate a work of art without fulling understanding what is being expressed... what the intention of the artist is... but is that the best way? I will use my own field of visual art for illustration. Recently a group of women from the isolated town of Gees Bend, Alabama have had their quilt works traveling the country and exhibited in major museums. A great many of the art-loving viewers are fascinated with these works in spite of having little knowledge of the art of the quilt or of the intentions of these works. Instead, they base their judgments upon their own prior knowledge in art, and compare the geometric structure of these quilts with the geometric abstraction of Modernist art that can be found in the works of Paul Klee, Mondrian, Frank Stella, Sean Scully, etc... In other words... without having some background knowledge of the traditions and intentions of a given artist or work of art they have drawn upon their own background knowledge and imposed their own traditions/interpretations upon it. If I know nothing of the narratives of Christianity I might be able to look at a Crucifixion and appreciate it in formal terms, admire the realism, sense that it is certainly a tragic subject... but will I get all the nuances? Prior knowledge is the reason a book continues to change and grow each time we read it... because we have continued to change and grow. Each time we return to a favorite old volume we bring something new... something changed. We will never come to Confucius "new and fresh". We may not have the preconceived notions that a thousand years of tradition have given the Chinese reader... but we certainly aren't a blank slate, either.

[blazeofglory]

Poetry is not translatable at all.

[Brasil]

In this very forum, at other threads I posted some translations.

By Carlos Drummond de Andrade:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ghlight=brasil

By myself authory, but based uppon a Joseph de Sousa's poem:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=34732

By Renato Russo (leader of the pop group Legião Urbana):
http://www.online-literature.com/for...d=1#post567147

What would be the world literature without translations?
In fact, I prefer when I have both versions (original and translated) side by side to compare. A bilingual book is very useful.
No one needs to study ancient greek to undersand the Odissey. And what about Virgilio's poems? And what about the Holy Bible, the salms, etc? Can everyone read in old hebraic?
So, it's possible to translate, and many times necessary.

But there is some words that is impossible to translate, for example:
"saudade" a very portuguese word, it means "to miss something or somebody". When someone says "I feel saudade of Maria" it means the persons who speaks maybe would like to stay in the company of Maria. He miss Maria and feels that hurts.

Curiosity (example of translation)
See what a wonderful construction of paradox in this little piece of a Renato Russo's song:

Only you have
The cure for my addiction
to insist feel "saudade" of
all the things that I have not seen yet.

Original version to compare:
E é só você que tem
A cura pro meu vício
de insistir nessa saudade
Que eu sinto
De tudo que eu ainda não vi.


Sometimes "saudade" can be translated as "nostalgia". So, how can a person miss something that hasn't seen yet? How can a person feel saudade of something that don't know or didn't see yet? That is the beautiful paradox in this song.

[DapperDrake]

To answer the OP question, no, a poem cannot be translated.

Sure you can translate the words - but a poem is more than the sum of its parts.

Sure a skilled translator can re-craft the poem in translation to give something of the same effect - but then that's not the same poem, it's a whole new (but similar) poem.

[mortalterror]

I read translations all of the time, and they are beautiful. That's just a matter of practicality. This insistence on perfection doesn't seem admirable to me. It seems fussy. Lamenting that we cannot get at a 100% optimal experience from each word we read every time we pick up a book doesn't appear constructive. It sounds like a lot of people have unrealistic expectations from their literature and are doomed to an inevitable failure if they approach reading from this angle. I don't think that this "pure state" even exists within a poems original language. It's just some sort of lofty ideal for people to get dreamy eyed about and pine away for.

[stlukesguild]

Again, I will suggest that a translation is not unlike a variation or a transcription in music. The fact that it involves another artist's interpretation is largely the reason that translations become dated while the original... if it is truly a great work... does not. The 18th century imagined Homer in a manner that was quite different to how his work was imagined in the 20th century... and again different from how it is imagined now. Leopold Stokowski's transcription/interpretations of Bach now strike us as quite dated with their overly Romantic mannerisms (although I quite like them still... although not as my first choices). The 1980s saw a push toward authentic period interpretations that now are being seen by many as having gone too far in another direction. No translations will ever be perfect... but this does not mean that translation is an impossibility or worthless. The goal is to translate the "music" of the original without changing the meaning... but a one for one equivalent is impossible in language no less than a violin cannot mirror the notes of a piano or an organ one for one. The translator can only do his or her best to recreate the music with the instrument/language of his/her choice.

[sofia82]

Yes, it is possible but it will lose some literary figures and needs a great mastery in both languages. And it depends on the langauge, if they are of similar origin and there are lots of similarities maybe the translation will become like the original one. But languages of different origins make great problems. It is a process of recreating. i myslef does not like reading poems in translation.

[sofia82]

Sure a skilled translator can re-craft the poem in translation to give something of the same effect - but then that's not the same poem, it's a whole new (but similar) poem.

Exactly, I think the person who translates a peom before being a translator must be a poet in his own language.

[Luc1977]

Yes, it can, but there is something lost. I ve translated a poem by an argentinian poet.
Here It is.

Avanti

by Pedro B. Palacios “Almafuerte”

Do not give up not even defeated,
do not feel slave not even slave;
tremulous of terror, think yourself brave,
and charge ferocious, already bad wounded;
have the tenacity of the rusted spike,
which already old and vile becomes spike again.

Translate by Luciano S. Doti