Introduction: lnhammer

[lnhammer]

Hi, I'm some guy named Larry, your host for the week. My focus will be on translating poetry, illustrated with some of my own. My basic thesis is that yes, it is indeed possible to translate a poem, but that the process is subject to the same compromises between sound, form, content, structure, image, trope, and so on as in an original poem, only even more so.

My current obsession* is Japanese, which I've been learning for a couple years now -- both modern and classical languages, which are roughly as different as modern English and Chaucer's dialect. For the past year and a half, by way of practice, I've been working my way through the Kokinshu, a poetry collection compiled at the start of the 10th century -- posting drafts in my DW and compiling revisions in my LJ starting here; the latest versions are also available in a free ebook (ePub only, sorry).

The translations I plan to discuss this week are all from this collection; two are also in One Hundred People, One Poem Each, an anthology compiled a couple centuries later, which I've translated in full. Even more than the Kokinshu, this collection is part of the canon of classical literature, being required reading for Japanese high school students. As a result, it's been multiply translated -- which means it's relatively easy to check my work against other versions. (BTW, if anyone can comment on or correct my interpretations, please do -- I'm very much just a journeyman at this.)

But enough about me -- on the next rock, some background on Japanese poetry and language.


* In the past, I've also translated Spanish and Latin.

---L.

Meta: translating Japanese

[lnhammer]

The Kokinwakashu ("Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry"), or Kokinshu for short, was the first imperially commissioned anthology of poetry in Japanese, compiled around 905 CE by a panel of four leading young poets of the day. This was a cultural watershed -- it firmly cemented the reputation of Japanese as a valid language for poetry, as opposed to the Chinese in vogue for the prior century and a half, and it set what was acceptable in terms of diction, subjects, and images for court poetry (and by omission, what was not acceptable) for the next thousand years minus a couple decades.

( Background notes on the collection, verse form, Japanese grammar, and the collapse of ambiguity (if not civilization itself). )

For what it's worth, my philosophy of translation is to render my best understanding of the original's sense while reproducing as much as possible of the poem's quality and structures -- sonic, linguistic, rhetorical, and so on. This involves not only interpretation, but trade-offs. For example, the normal sentence order of Japanese is almost, but not entirely, the complete reverse of English. This means that in a literal prose paraphrase of a poem that's one long clause, the nouns, verbs, and adjectives are in the opposite order in English from the original. If the sequence of images these substantives call up is not important to the poem's effect -- for example, if the mainspring of the poetry is a witty metaphor -- then this reversal does no real damage. But if the images form a careful progression, such as sweeping from a wide scene down to a small detail, it is probably better to maintain that sequence as best as possible, at the expense of breaking up the smooth swoop of a single clause.

Trade-offs. Just like in any poem, or any other work of art.

For this week, I've chosen three Kokinshu poems that highlight different problems of translation. I'm afraid there's far more prose than verse in these posts -- partly because the poems are so small, but mostly it's that it takes a lot to unpack these lovely puzzle-boxes that are Japanese verse. Starting on the next rock, coming tomorrow.

Until then, for discussion: those of you who translate, what is your philosophy/practice? What do you focus on the most?

( A modest footnote )

---L.