Homework for November 19

1. Read Meir Sternberg's article "Polylingualism as Reality and Translation as Mimesis" (it is tough to begin with, but as William Carlos Williams said, "There is no confusion; only difficulties") . p. 167-185 of the anthology.

2. Find, in the poems read in class (you may cheat and think of others), examples for the following processes of representing translation in literary texts:
- selective reproduction
- verbal transposition
- conceptual reflection
- explicit attribution

3. Suggest translations into Portuguese (or other languages) for the examples you found.

Recensão

Em Spring and All o poeta

William Carlos

filho de uma mãe

de Porto Rico

solicita a imaginação

para a poesia

diz que a prosa é

sobre emoções

daí a primavera

no título

e tudo depende

disso

da fonte da

partida

da lagarta de

fugida

A Presentation on Rubaiyat

After several attempts, I finally managed to convert my presentation from .ppt to .jpeg file format. I'm adding my presentation slides in this post along with my explanation beneath each of these images. But first, allow me to give a brief introduction about my presentation. In the beginning, this work mainly was to inspect Fitzgerald's well-known translations of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as well as some of the Fernando Pessoa's attempted translations of Fitzgerald's the aforementioned. Nevertheless, the project elaborated itself and gave me much excitement to not only present the Rubaiyat but also include other Persian translators and some lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in order to draw some comparison among the works of these writers. Also, I combined my work with some traditional Persian paintings, calligraphy artworks, architectural designs (backgrounds shown in transparent) to demonstrate the artistic skills of the Iranian culture. 

 This slide was about the life, work and contributions of the popular eleventh-century the Persian poet who wrote the Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald's five edition of the Rubaiyat and the main two tropes in Khayyam's Rubaiyat.

 Here, I selected two approaches to translation, namely literal and free translation. The first quatrain shows Fitzgerald's faithfulness to the source. While the second two quatrains shows the difference between a Persian translator with Fitzgerald's version. 

The theme in the content of these two quatrains is about the cycle of the human body undertakes when it's dead, i.e the decomposition process from body to dust, and the same dust is used in manufacturing other materials, for example pots that are made from the clay.

 After reading an article, I discovered some Iranian scholars were not satisfied with the way Fitzgerald treated the Rubaiyat:

 “It is interesting because [Fitzgerald’s work] seems to have lost almost every connection with its Persian source in the process of its appropriation, and one wonders how English readers could appreciate it as non-English, oriental poetry, and what would happen if they had been better informed of what Khayyam presented in his quatrains.” Farahzad (2004) link to the article

Consequently, they proposed to translate their works by themselves. This made me search for the most accurate Iranian versions of the Rubaiyat. One among these translators was the well-known Iranian poet Karim Emami who together in a collaboration with an Iranian photographer managed to publish a book called The Wine of Nishapur. The first two quatrains in this slide shows the same Rubayi or quatrain of Khayyam attempted by Emami and Fitzgerald, respectively. The followings are Pessoa's Portuguese version of Fitzgerald and my translation on Pessoa.

The metaphor in these two quatrains chiefly is that flowers that bloom from the earth are carrying the substance of the dead.

If you read what Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet you will be surprised to see how his lines relate to Khayyam's. I had two aims from introducing Shakespeare into my work. First, was that for my colleagues to see the potentiality of considering the lines as translations of Khayyam's former quatrains. Second, rather an external purpose, to show how two great minds who lived in two different worlds and two different times could cross on the same ideas.

What comes after Shakespeare was actually my idea. How I read this theory from my own perspective. To justify my idea in a brief explanation; I see that we (including creatures and plants) are all comprised of the three main elements, Soil, Water and Air. And we have the ability to assist in this process of procreation. However, without these elements it is impossible to live and proliferate.

I concluded my presentation by bringing a small selection from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that are my favorite. 

In the end I recommend you to:

Read, Drink some Wine from your Pot and Enjoy!

Deforming Tendencies in Literary Translation (Antoine Berman)

William Carlos Williams - imaginary translation and translations from the Spanish Cancioneros

- read W C W's "imaginary translation" in p. 163 of the anthology and think of his purpose in producing such a genre as "imaginary translation"

- William Carlos Williams' translations from the Spanish Cancioneros. Focus especially on Williams' versions of the songs "El Alba nos mira" (p. 161) and "Alamos del prado" (p. 162), from 1913 (p.155-156 and 154-155, respectively) and 1936 (p.158-9 and160, respectively). Choose one and comment on what their differences indicate about translation procedures and the avoidance (or enhancement) of deforming tendencies.

Translating Gary Snyder...

Nature is not a place to visit, it’s home.
- Gary Snyder

For last week’s presentation (October, 22nd) we’ve had the opportunity to know Gary Snyder: his work, his way of life, his line of thinking and we’ve considered it a great experience.
While studying Snyder and reading his poetry, one must keep in mind that, besides from being a member of the “beat generation”, he practiced (and still does) environmental advocacy with a strong ecological consciousness. Snyder is a Zen Buddhist who sees poetry as an exercise of meditation between men and the surrounding nature, he writes about his experience blending physical reality and observations of nature. He tells no tales, what he says is what he experienced.

Our translation process was highly influenced by that simplicity.

It’s terribly hard to be able to translate a poem without giving wings to your poetic self and actually, you only realize it when you’re “on the job”.
In order to follow the originals and to be as truthful as possible, we chose to accomplish a word-by-word translation. However it wasn´t quite successful as we would’ve hoped.
In order to translate Wang Wei’s poem “Deer Park”, we studied the original, then it’s word-by-word translation and after comparing the several available translations, we decided to work from Snyder’s version. His seemed to be the most “clean” and “raw”, it had no flourishes and it went straight to the point.

Unfortunately, although we tried, we couldn’t place ourselves as far as it was required in this matter, as you can see:

Deer Park

Empty mountains
no one to be seen.
Yet—hear—
human sounds and echoes.
Returning sunlight
enters the dark woods;
Again shining
on the green moss, above.

                               - Gary Snyder, 1978

And then ours:

Montanhas

Montanhas sós
Ninguém à vista,
Ainda assim –
oiço sons de gente e ecos
Vejo a luz do Sol
que rasga a escuridão dos bosques
Brilha de cima
sobre o verde musgo.

                               - Sónia Lima e José Carvalho, 2015


To translate Meng Haoran, we used the same scrutinizing method and once again, Gary Snyder’s translation was by far the simpliest and the one who resembled both the original and Meng Haoran’s purpose. Once more, we chose to follow Snyder’s line of thinking:

Mooring on Chien-te River
The boat rocks at anchor by the misty island
Sunset, my loneliness comes again.
In these vast wilds the sky arches down to the trees.
In the clear river water, the moon draws near.

                                  - Tr. by Gary Snyder

And then ours:

Deslizando pelo Rio Jiande
O barco desce pelo rio,
Ao encontro de uma ilha,
Perdida na neblina. O pôr-do-sol entristece-me.
Olho o céu acima que se estende pelas copas das árvores,
Vasto, à distância de um toque.
O rio desliza em silêncio,
A lua chega perto de nós.

                                  - Tr. By Sónia Lima e José Carvalho

So, we come to the conclusion that the poet writes mostly for two reasons: he writes for himself and writes for the public expecting to extend his experiences to others. Snyder practices poetry writing by nature and creates a new kind of poetry that is direct, non-romantic, concrete and ecological.

He also rarely uses metaphors and symbols because they create a detachment from the thing itself.
In Snyder's poetry, the experience is much more important than the adjectives you're able to use while describing it. You should be able to focus mainly on the feeling it brings.

Translation Strategies and Procedures