Polylingualism as reality and translation as mimesis, Meir Sternberg

Se por um lado, a tradução dentro de uma obra literária desestabiliza a ortodoxia e cria confusão sobre generos literários, por outro lado constitui um conjunto de ficções de plurilinguismo (a que podemos chamar heterolinguismo, e a que Bakhtin chamou heteroglossia) ou representações artificiais da palavras dita pelos outros. Este fenómeno está desenvolvido na teoria avançada pelo autor Meir Sternberg (professor de Poética e Literatura Comparada na Universidade de Tel Aviv) num artigo com o título “Polylingualism as Reality and Translation as Mimesis.

Sternberg começa por localizar três possíveis estratégias textuais para evitar o problema de reproduzir discursos tendo em conta as variedades linguísticas:

− Restrição referencial/ referential restriction: consiste em limitar o objeto da própria representação a realidades monolingues (num estatuto, numa comunidade, etc.), excluindo a priori qualquer formas de alteridade linguística.

− Correspondência de modos de expressão linguística / vehicular matching: através desta estratégia, ao multilinguismo da realidade representada corresponde um texto multilíngue. É, segundo Sternberg o caso da obra My fair lady de George Bernard Shaw (1913) em que na realidade multilínguistica de Londres, onde se falava o inglês e outras variantes como o cockney, o autor decide manter as alteridades multilingues visíveis na oralidade. É contestável, porém, o grau em que esta representação do socioleto oral resulta porventura de uma reprodução selectiva (ver abaixo)

Ver Link do vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg

− Convenção da homogeneização/ homogenizing convention: substitui o dado extra textual de um mundo multilingue por uma representação monolingue. Um exemplo disto encontra-se na obra Alice in Wonderland de Lewis Carroll, em que Alice não se estranha a ouvir o Coelho Branco falar em inglês: Coelho Branco: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”    

(http://www.adobe.com/be_en/active-use/pdf/Alice_in_Wonderland.pdf)

A representação da heteroglossia divide-se, por seu lado, em quatro modalidades que se caracterizam entre um mínimo e um máximo de realismo linguistico:

− Reprodução seletiva/selective reproduction: uma especie de “citação intercalada no texto”, na qual o narrador/sujeito poético aparece como um filtro que seleciona os elementos de alteridade linguistica, reproduzindo-os à letra. Um exemplo disto encontra-se na última estrofe do poema de Golgona Anghel, «O mundo é estranho, Sandy!»:

Estou com esta doença agora, but it's ok.
I close my eyes and drift away;
I softly say a silent pray.
Não ligues nem comentes,
just press play;
«O mundo é estranho, Sandy! O nosso é parecido.»    

(Golgona Anghel, Vim porque me pagavam, Mariposa Azual, Lisboa, 2011)

− Transposição verbal/verbal transposition: as convenções linguísticas chocam-se entre elas gerando efeitos idiossincráticos (fonéticos, ortográficos ou sintático-gramaticais) que reproduzem na língua ficcional a “estranheza” da língua imitada. Nos exemplos seguintes, Hemingway na sua obra For whom the bell tolls (1940) traduz frases espanholas, literal ou semiliteralmente, criando construções inteligíveis que lembram a dicção de um falante de espanhol com um domínio imperfeito do inglês, o que evoca uma fala forasteira:

Expressão espanhola: “¿Como te llamas?”
Tradução: “How are you called?”

Expressão espanhola: “Me cago en la leche”
Tradução: “I obscenity in the the milk”

Expressão espanhola: “¿Qué tal?”
Tradução: “Did you divert yourself last night?” 

(http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Hemingwey-for-whom-the-bell-24grammata.compdf.pdf)

− Reflexão conceptual/conceptual reflection: não se nota tanto a superficie heterolinguística, mas reproduzem-se o sistema de valores e a semântica subjacentes a língua imitada. Há uma reflexão subjacente à natureza de universos de discurso em diferentes línguas / culturas. É possível ver isto na primeira estrofe do poema de Golgona Anghel, «O mundo é estranho, Sandy!»:

O nosso é parecido com a palavra agora.
Das mãos nasce-nos uma espécie de nostalgia trémula
que na versão alemã traduziram por dipsomania.

(A nostalgia de que se fala está ligada a cultura portuguesa, e o texto reflete na maneira em que foi traduzido o seu sentido na língua alemã)

− Atribuição esplícita/explicit attribution: manifesta-se através particularidades lexicais do tipo “disse em francês” ou “respondeu em perfeito inglês”.

Estas diferentes modalidades são organizadas num único continuum, entre um máximo de diversidade linguistica até um máximo de homogeneidade linguística, como é possível ver no esquema seguinte.

vehicular promiscuity
vehicular matching
selective reproduction
verbal transposition
conceptual reflection
explicit attribution
homogenizing convention

No sistema de representação do heterolingual e o heterodialectal há diferentes formas que limitam a representação da realidade na ficção, ou seja: limitação representacional, em que o plurilinguismo não é considerado uma dimensão distinta da realidade; limitações comunicativas, quando duas línguas rejeitam as próprias diferenças; restrição auto-imposta, impor uma linguagem adaptada como no caso da literatura infantil.



Afinal a heteroglossia, representada na introdução da tradução dentro duma obra literária, faz que nós incluamos esta categoria no mais amplo conjunto das técnicas de discurso (speech representation). O que acontece à tradução da representação da tradução, sobretudo quando a fonte de heteroglossia no texto original corresponde à língua da tradução?

Rebecca Handley e Barbara Di Rocco

Homework for November 26

Do either of the following:

1. Research on the Spanish Modernismo of the Generacion de 1927 and speculate on similarities/differences with what you know of Anglo-Saxon Modernism (NOTE. you may want to check the notes in the end of your anthology

2. Research on similarities between Hughes' and Lorca's poetics and ideologic convictions that may have lead to the translations of Hughes (and perhaps justiy some traslation choices as well)

Here, a couple of poems by Hughes,

"Death of Do Dirty: A Rounder's Song" (in Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927)

O, you can't find a buddy
Any old time
'Ll help you out
When you ain't got a dime.

He was a friend o' mine.

They called him Do Dirty
Cause he was black
An' had cut his gal
An' shot a man in de back.

Ma friend o' mine.

But when I was hungry,
Had nothin' to eat,
He bought me corn bread
An' a stew o' meat.

Good friend o' mine.

An' when de cops got me
An' put me in jail
If Dirty had de money
He'd go ma bail.

O, friend o' mine.

That night he got kilt
I was standin' in de street.
Somebody comes by
An' says yo' boy is gettin' beat.

Ma friend o' mine.

But when I got there
An' seen de ambulance
A guy was sayin'
He ain't got a chance.

Best friend o' mine.

An' de ones that kilt him, —
Damn their souls, —
I'm gonna fill 'em up full o'
Bullet holes.

Ma friend o' mine.

"Nude Young Dancer" (in Weary Blues, 1925) 

What jungle tree have you slept under,
Midnight dancer of the jazzy hour?
What great forest has hung its perfume
Like a sweet veil about your bower?

What jungle tree have you slept under,
Night-dark girl of the swaying hips?
What star-white moon has been your mother?
To what clean boy have you offered your lips?

Poème d'Automne (in Weary Blues, 1925)
The autumn leaves
are too heavy with color.
The slender trees
on the vulcan road
are dressed in scarlet and gold
like young courtesans
waiting for their lovers.
But soon
the winter winds
will strip their bodies bare
And then
the sharp, sleet-stung
caress of the cold
will be their only
Love.

and Lorca's photograph (1898-1936)

"Note on Commercial Theatre" Langston Hughes (around 1940)

You've taken my blues and gone--
You sing 'em on Broadway
And you sing 'em in Hollywood Bowl,
And you mixed 'em up with symphonies
And you fixed 'em
So they don't sound like me.
Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.

You also took my spirituals and gone.
You put me in MacBeth and Carmen Jones
And all kinds of Swing Mikados
And in everything but what's about me--
But someday somebody'll
Stand up and talk about me,
And write about me--
Black and beautiful--
And sing about me,
And put on plays about me!
I reckon it'll be
Me myself!

Yes, it'll be me.

More on this poem and Hughes' recoding of it here.

(1902-1967)

First things first: It was quite difficult for us to recreate the unique and hard to decypher style of T.S. Eliot. It was hard to restrain ourselves from writing an imaginary poem based on his style and techniques.

His writing often incorporated elements of nihilism, hoplessness, despair and delusion, aswell as fragmention, intertextuality, alusions, heavy use of symbolism and imagery and several layers of underlying meanings throughout his verses. One of the most distinguishing characteristic of Eliot’s work (apart from a few that are mentioned below, note also the way he moves from a very high, formal verse into a more conversational and easy style) was the use of a diction with a high level of erudition, which he didn’t lower in order to reach a wider audience.

His words weren’t, by any means, random, he would choose them carefully, especially when he wanted to create a particular effect on his work or on the reader. As with most poets, Eliot made liberal use of metaphors in his work to serve as particularly poignant images. Every verse, every word has a meaning, nothing was written by whim.

As a true modernist poet, Eliot saw the world as it really was, no romance, just plain truth, no matter how cruel it may be. He didn’t let himself get carried away by nostalgia or romanticism when looking into the past, even though he looked into it in search of inspiration, mainly the Indian culture, which he studied back in Harvard, including Sansktrit, the primary sacred language of Hinduism.

Eliot used his deep knowledge of literature and English language to masterfully create poetry with a distinct figurative language that has a profound effect on the reader while, at the same time, maintaining a smooth flow despite its high level of vocabulary.

In his major work, “The Wasteland”, Eliot described a world of alienation, sorrow, emptiness, in which people are no more than zombies, numb beings stuck in a spiral of daily routines, a world in decay where everyone is corrupted in some way or another. This was the basic structure of our poem. We tried to recreate a scenery in which Eliot is present, as a ghostly figure, among the victims of the 9/11 attacks, using everything we learned about Eliot based on his works.

We hope you enjoy our imaginary poem and its analysis.

"Nothingness"

We roam around the remains,

Looking past the veil of existence itself.

Not him, though - space bound in reverie alongside her:

Mother, Mother, haven’t I sat here long enough?

Disdain coats our aching semblants.

Bring me back into your waters!              For I long.

                                                                               For nothing but the feel of rain

On my limp body.

Grant your khadga to caress me, bleeding off my nescience.

I couldn’t care less for these benighted sheep,

Such vacuous stares along the alleyways of Liberty Street

Marching with swaying heads as hollow suitcases.

                                          “Please, don’t!”

                                                Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.

                                                                                                                                                            

Swooshing through the air craving flight…            Poomb!

Every day feels the same in the wake of striped eyes.

Are we that troubled, is this our Trojan Horse? Will the shift brought upon the world

Yield such tremendous change?

What does it mean, this interlude?

For sure it is a downfall that towers over us all… 

For sure…

This Great Fire of Smyrna,

It is but a rain drop, sweating our brows in the grey.

Frivolity shall glue the stories to their palates!

Broken shells, salty coated, tainted crimson senses

Within foul bones, trite gears of an industrial dummy herd

This garden is not mine to nourish,

Rise me up! Rise me up!

(Scowling)

Allow me to feed, for you are no more

Little one, you are no more

All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain.

Explanation / analysis:

We roam around the remains / Looking past the veil of existence itself:

                - The souls of the victims of the September 11 attacks roam through the remains, facing their own death and suffering, watching their own lifeless bodies among the debris.

Not him, though - space bound in reverie alongside her:

              - Eliot is there too, among the souls of the departed, communicating with Kali, the Hindu goddess of Life, Death and Resurrection.

Mother, Mother, haven’t I sat here long enough?:

                - Kali is represented here as a motherly figure (as in Hindu mythology) to Eliot and the victims. Eliot doesn’t empathize with the latter, separating himself from their all too human feelings of loss and grief, hoping instead to be sheltered by her and rise above the human condition.

Disdain coats our aching semblants:

                - The victims look at Eliot with disdain and disapproval for his self-centeredness and disregard for their pain, as well as for his egotism in seeing himself as Kali’s only “son”, as the only one worthy of being taken and risen up by her.

Bring me back into your waters!:

                - Water as symbolic element of rebirth and renewal. Kali’s “waters” are thus representative of a mother’s womb.

For I long / For nothing but the feel of rain / On my limp body:

                - Eliot wishes Kali to wash away his human weaknesses, in a transition from decadence to enlightenment akin to resurrection. Again, water as a representation of rebirth.

Grant your khadga to caress me, bleeding off my nescience:

               - In Hindu mythology, the khadga is the sword used by Kali, not only to kill her victims, but also to give life. Here it serves as a symbol of death and rebirth, while “bleeding” represents healing through the purging of Eliot’s human ignorance and weakness.

I couldn’t care less for these benighted sheep:

                -Eliot feels no empathy or compassion for the victims of the attacks, for he sees them as human “sheep”, as ignorant animals driven by instinct and weak human feelings.

Such vacuous stares along the alleyways of Liberty Street / Marching with swaying heads as hollow suitcases:

                - The uneventful and repetitive nature of ordinary people’s lives is highlighted. They walk through Liberty Street (a street in New York City which borders the World Trade Center site, whose name also provides a somewhat ironic contrast to the prison-like lives of those who “march” through it) on their way to work, with “vacuous stares” (suggesting they are dead inside) and “swaying heads as hollow suitcases” (again represented as being dead inside, with empty souls compared to hollow suitcases, highlighting their nature as mere constituents of the machine of a corrupt and decadent society).

“Please, don’t!":

               - As the attacks happened, some people inside the WTC buildings jumped off to their deaths. Here a onlooker to the tragedy shouts to someone who is about to jump, begging him/her not to do it.

 Ay, but to die, and go we know not where / To lie in cold obstruction and to rot:

                - The person who is about to jump explains his/her motives for doing so with this monologue. It is taken from Claudius’ speech in William Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure and takes into consideration the inherent uncertainty of death. In this case, the person in question chooses to challenge this uncertainty and decide the means of his/her death.

Swooshing through the air craving flight…            Poomb!:

                - The person falls down and eventually hits the ground and dies. “Craving flight” may also represent an escape from fate, a yearning for freedom, which is, in a way, finally achieved with death.

Every day feels the same in the wake of striped eyes:

                - People are compared to death row inmates, living sterile and monotonous lives, which are little (or nothing) more than a prelude to death, alluding to the nihilistic worldview present in much of Eliot’s poetry.

Are we that troubled, is this our Trojan Horse? Will the shift brought upon the world

Yield such tremendous change?:

               - Eliot asks himself whether the 9/11 attacks will truly change the world, or if it will only put a new spin on human stupidity, violence, cruelty and hypocrisy, which are inherent to the human nature. And as tragic as they may be, the attacks will soon become nothing but a faint memory and people will become desensitized to it.

What does it mean, this interlude?:

               - This verse can be interpreted as having a double meaning: on one hand, Eliot rhetorically questions the meaning of the 9/11 attacks, seeing them as an (ultimately meaningless) interlude to the human experience; on the other hand, and in a broader sense, the interlude can be interpreted as referring to life in general (life as a meaningless interlude, between birth and death).

For sure it is a downfall that towers over us all…  / For sure…:

               - In what is somewhat an instance of dark humor, Eliot sarcastically doubts the real, long-term impacts of the attacks.

This Great Fire of Smyrna:

                - This historical event occurred in September 1922 as part of the Greco-Turkish War. Consisting of a massive fire that destroyed much of the Turkish city, reportedly set by Turkish forces and resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians, it effectively ended the war. In the poem, Eliot establishes a comparison between these tragedies, both a product of human violence and decadence, where fire plays an important role.

It is but a rain drop, sweating our brows in the grey.  / Frivolity shall glue the stories to their palates!:

                - The memory of the attacks will be lost among the trivial thoughts of people’s daily lives. People will become desensitized and carry on with their lives, as they always have.

Broken shells, salty coated, tainted crimson senses / Within foul bones, trite gears of an industrial dummy herd:

              - People step on each other like shells on a beach, living with cynicism and selfishness, and acting like beasts, violent, irrational and blood-thirsty.  They are foul and sinful to the core, acting as nothing but pieces of a blind and mechanical society.

This garden is not mine to nourish, / Rise me up! Rise me up!:

                - Eliot refuses to perish with the others, wishing instead to be elevated by Kali from his flawed and mortal human condition. Death is once again portrayed as nourishing/regenerative.

Allow me to feed, for you are no more / Little one, you are no more:

                - In Hindu mythology Kali is described as cannibalistic, consuming the blood of her victims. In the poem, she decides to ignore Eliot’s pleas for rebirth and enlightenment, perhaps deeming him unworthy of immortality, and kills him. This can also serve as a metaphor for a loss of hope for the future and for humanity, losing its last vestiges of reason and delving deep into the chaotic forces of beastly instinct, irrationality and emotion.

All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain:

              - A line taken from the film Blade Runner, it signifies in this poem the fading of the memory of 9/11, as well as the ultimate meaninglessness of human lives and emotions.

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!