Week 6 readings

The three readings seemed to offer very different visions of the translator’s role in terms of faithfulness or fidelity, but I found it interesting how similar their thought processes were in regards to specific translation problems. 

Nabokov’s essay was funnier than I expected, with an indignant and forceful tone from the very beginning. I’ve never read any of his work, so this surprised me. I also haven’t thought about the types of rhyme in other languages for some reason. I appreciated the specific examples of how Nabokov went about his version of fidelity, which seemed to be preserving form above meaning above readability.

I also appreciated Robert Bly’s “Eight Stages.” I’ve been overwhelmed trying to start my translation project. The translations in this class have been so short with so many completed references that I haven’t done much in terms of revision. Bly’s framework made sense and seemed to balance Nabokov’s strict sense of fidelity with Levine’s freer sense of interpretation.

Emerson

On how to cook a translation?

 Robert Bly's essay "The Eight Stages of Translation" provides a comprehensive overview of the translation process, particularly focusing on the challenges and complexities involved in translating poetry. Bly outlines eight stages, which range from creating a literal version of the poem to capturing its tone and sound in the target language. While his essay offers valuable insights, it also has some limitations.

One strength of Bly's approach is his emphasis on understanding the poem's meaning and cultural context. He argues that translators need to explore the nuances of the poem and consider the poet's intentions. Bly’s analysis of Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus" illustrates the necessity of taking cultural assumptions and historical context into account. However, his focus on cultural context may lead to overinterpretation; for example, his interpretation of "frohliche Erde" and its connection to Freya appears somewhat speculative.

Bly's emphasis on spoken language and "sentence sound" is another significant contribution. He believes that translators should aim to capture the rhythms and tones of spoken language to keep the translation vibrant. But, the distinction between spoken and written language can be ambiguous, and an over-reliance on spoken language may result in a loss of the poem's formal qualities.

Bly's focus on the translator's personal connection to the poem is also insightful. He suggests that translators should only work on poems that resonate with their own feelings and experiences. While this approach can lead to more authentic translations, it raises questions about objectivity and the translator's role. Should translators prioritize their own feelings over the original intent of the poem?

Overall, Bly’s eight-stage process provides a useful framework for translation, but it might be overly rigid and linear. While he acknowledges that the stages often overlap, the structure of the essay may give the impression that translation is a more systematic process than it actually is. 


~Ibrahim

An Earnest Attempt at a Complex Application of Literary Criticism (Tennant)

I'm currently taking a literary criticism course and went down a mental rabbit hole after Suzanne Jill Levine alluded to Lacan in her section on "Marginality." Already, my mind was straying because of the Viktor Shklovsky epigraph ("New forms in art are created by the canonization of the peripheral form"), which I hadn't come across before and which resonated deeply with me, reminding me of Damion Searls' reference to Shklovsky on Friday and his concept of defamiliarization ("Art exists to make the stone stony"). It occurred to me that the tension between recognition and the lack thereof is central to the claims put forth by all three writers (Shklovsky, Lacan, and Levine). Levine describes translation as a kind of metaphorical process, wherein one "seeks the similar in the dissimilar." She also characterizes it as "a correspondence, a resemblance despite difference." 

Because I attended a lecture on Lacan before reading the assigned readings, I started making connections to his "mirror stage" theory. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, when infants first see themselves in a mirror, they perceive themselves as a coherent, unified whole when, in reality, they are seeing a distorted, idealized image (imago) of their outer selves, which leads to a fundamental sense of alienation between their self-identity and external perceptions throughout life. I think a lot of translation critics get caught up in this idealization or romanticization of the original text and thus close themselves off to the kind of "deferral, diffuseness, plurality, [and] openness" that Levine both practices and celebrates. These critics are often disinterested in subversion and do not engage with the fact that language is hollow, that it already possesses an inherent "infidelity to itself." All relationships between signs are arbitrary (Saussure); meaning is constituted through difference alone (Derrida). Remembering and embracing these theoretical frameworks can actually empower translators to "surrender to the pleasure of suggestion instead of seeking sense" (Levine). Now, I'm sure Nabokov would have a lot to say on that subject, and everything is better in moderation, etc., but I find that one of the most important bonds between an original text and its translations is often overlooked or overshadowed by other criteria, which is the sense of affinity that they share, i.e., the mutual recognition they produce. 

However, I recognize that my complex analogy is treating both texts as parallel forces with equal weight, which I do take issue with, as the original should always be endowed with more meaning. I only wish to applaud the ways in which Levine uses linguistic theory in her essay to "liberate" the constraints to which translators often feel beholden. 

                                                                                                                    Sawyer

Levine, Nabokov, and Bly

I found these three readings quite interesting in terms of where they lay on the spectrum of what fidelity is in translation.

For Levine, translation is less about replicating a text word-for-word and more about reimagining it. Her ideas introduce a very interesting perspective into what "fidelity" means in translation. In her view, translation is a collaboration between the writer and the translator, breathing new life into the work. This idea resonated deeply with me, especially after a recent talk where the speaker argued that a translation is always faithful- if not to the text itself, then to the way the translator read it. Levine’s approach is liberating, reminding us that translation is not about chasing perfection but about embracing creativity and interpretation.

Reading Nabokov gave me a little bit of whiplash coming from Levine. Nabokov has little patience for free translation, dismissing anything that isn’t a strict, word-for-word transfer as a betrayal. "The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase." His approach is surgical, demanding that every word be dissected and preserved with meticulous care. While I admire his commitment to accuracy, his rigidity feels limiting. I prefer to stick to the text as closely as possible, but personally, when working with Japanese, I find that there is nuance and subtlety lost if one doesn't allow themselves to be a little creative and liberal. 

Offering some middle ground, we have Robert Bly. Translation is described as a staged journey. First, you have a rough, literal draft, then you refine it further and further, paying close attention to the “ear” of the poem—how it sounds and feels, not just what it means. His approach feels like a bridge between the extremes, reminding us that translation is a living, evolving process.

That all being said, I think I prefer Levine's approach the most as it doesn't shy away from the fact that the translator is a living, breathing being and there will always be bias and partiality in one's translation.

 

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Learning my "Bly"ndspots

For fun (?), I lined up all of Bly’s translations from different stages and scrutinized their differences. The exercise taught me a surprising amount about my poetic sensibilities (and the lack thereof). I realized my inclination toward meaning-making (perhaps over all else) when I could see myself spending a ton of time in stage two. Along these lines, I actually liked the version produced in Stage 3, which reads most prose-like, starting with “Spring has returned once more.” Then, when I read the “American English” version in Stage 4, I saw that, if I reached that stage in my translation where it veered on spoken language, I would likely call it a “success,” drop the mic, and go for a leisurely walk. But this, at least according to Bly, would be a big mistake. First, “It’s spring!” while wonderfully colloquial and joyful, deviates from the source because it doesn’t speak to the cyclicality (although I wouldn’t have known this if I were just reading this as a layperson and would likely consider this natural sounding version to be a great translation, which is also worth thinking about). Second, then I would not have caught the tone and the mood, which is the most important! Bly made me feel both troubled and comforted when he said that only those who actually write poetry might be able to capture the tone or get to this next stage…

Having said that, while I did think the final version read well, I did come away liking different bits from the different versions. For instance, I didn’t really like the first line of the final version “Spring is here, has come!” because it doesn’t, in my view anyway, well capture the return or the cyclicality. And I liked “long entangled stalks” from Stage 6 more than “long, involved stalks” in the final version because the latter reads a bit awkward to me even if it might be a bit more rhythmic.

Bly says that the stages are not necessarily linear nor exactly in this way so I understand that this is not meant to be some how-to guide on translating poetry but nonetheless, I appreciated the effort to make concrete a process that can appear quite elusive.

-Lois

Tyranny and Subversion: Approaches to Translation

The more we read, the more I feel that translation is a bit of a wild practice. Some people see it as art, others as a science, and some even call it a little bit of a betrayal. After reading these papers from Suzanne Jill Levine, Vladimir Nabokov, and Robert Bly on the subject, I found myself bouncing between admiration, frustration, and a whole new appreciation for just how messy and fascinating translation really is.

Levine’s Translation as (Sub)Version makes it sound like an adventure. She doesn’t just translate Cabrera Infante’s Tres tristes tigres—she remixes it. The idea that translation is more about reimagining rather than just copying word for word totally stuck with me, and is something we've discussed in class in the past, looking at the distinction between "translation" and "adaptation". Levine’s love for puns, alliteration, and cultural shifts has continued to alter my perspective on what “faithful” translation really means. I was thinking back to the talk from Friday too, where the speaker claimed that there is really no translation that isn't faithful as long as it is faithful to the way the translator read the piece. Instead of obsessing over a perfect one-to-one match, Levine treats translation as a collaboration between writer and translator—something way more fluid and dynamic than I expected.

Then there’s Nabokov, who is basically on the opposite end of the spectrum. His Problems of Translation: Onegin in English reads almost like a manifesto. He seems to hate free translation. Anything that isn’t a strict, word-for-word transfer is, in his view, a total betrayal. I get where he’s coming from—precision matters—but his approach feels a little intense. It’s almost like he thinks translation should be surgery, carefully dissecting every word, rather than a creative process that breathes new life into a text. While I'm not sure it's fair to call this approach outright wrong, I'm not sure that it would work in every case. 

Lastly, there’s Robert Bly’s The Eight Stages of Translation, which feels like a middle ground between the two. Bly treats translation like a journey, one that unfolds in stages. He starts with a rough draft and then keeps refining it step by step. What really stood out to me was his emphasis on the “ear” in translation—the way a poem sounds and feels, not just the literal meaning of the words. This is something that I've certainly struggled with incorporating in my translations, but I can see clearly the importance of from his writing. 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that translation is full of contradictions. While this isn't new, and we've addressed many of these ideas before in class, it was really interesting to see them laid out so clearly here. I think Levine and Nabokov both took quite severe opinions on translations, on opposite ends of the spectrum. My own feelings lie somewhere in the middle, but will probably continue to change with more experience. Bly reminds us that translation is a living, evolving process, and I think each translator's approach can evolve too. To me it seems that the beauty of translation isn’t about locking down the “right” version of a text, but about embracing all the different ways it can come to life.

                                                                                                                            Kamryn

Blog Post 5 by Drew

Nabokov made me laugh maybe 15 times. Here are two examples: “For if in Russian and French, the feminine rhyme is a glamorous lady friend, her English counterpart is either an old maid or a drunken hussy from Limerick” (116) and “There are four English complete versions unfortunately available to college students… All four are in meter and rhyme; all are the result of earnest effort and of an incredible amount of mental labor; all contain here and there little gems of ingenuity; and all are grotesque travesties of their model, rendered in dreadful verse, teeming with mistranslations” (120). Come on, that’s hilarious! This reading’s tone wasn’t super dissimilar from that of many darkly humorous moments in Lolita.

It was also quite interesting to read about the international, multilingual underpinnings of Pushkin’s work, and how he was influenced by French masters as well as French (and to a lesser extent English) poetic traditions. That further complicates the already near-Sisyphean task of translating Mr. Russian Literature himself. 

Here is another striking passage: “The person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language, has only one duty to perform, and this is to reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text. The term ‘literal translation’ is tautological since anything but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody” (119). Though the language is harsh, I think I sort of agree? Insofar as it could be helpful to have terms that distinguish between different ways of transmogrifying a text. But I guess the implied lesserness of the “adaptation” and “parody” channels is where I feel less convinced. I do love the idea of extensive, thorough, vast footnotes to clue readers into sonic things that may not come across in more literal translations.

I enjoyed Levine’s discussion of Kristeva’s notion of “woman’s inevitable marginality as an advantage” in step with artist-hood (89). And also the mother tongue discourse!

Bly’s steps process seems really promising; I want to try iterating like that for future translations of my own.

 

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Thoughts on Bly and Nabokov

After reading Robert Bly’s The Eight Stages of Translation and trying to project his stages onto what I am beginning to understand about my own (fledgling) translation process, my prevailing thought surrounded his steps 5 and 6, application of tone and sound respectively. I realized that in all of my own translations attempts so far, I’ve been a) sort of combining steps 3 and 4 (perhaps because trots have been considerately provided to us, so the literal translation work of step 3 is done) and immediately trying to render the text into American English, or an English cadence which I think that the content would read well in for my hypothetical American audience. Furthermore, I am immediately meaning as hard as possible into sound/tone as I’m simultaneously working with the content. Obviously, there’s a natural degree of sound/tone that comes through just by rewriting the piece in English; not just my voice as a writer but certain innate translation choices that jump out to me immediately. I thought it very interesting that Bly wrote that to succeed in stage 5 “it is important that the translator should have written poetry himself [...] he or she needs the experience of writing from mood in order to judge accurately what the mood of a stranger's poem is” (78). Do I agree with this take? I’m not sure. It’s very reassuring to read as someone entering a translation space with a background in poetry. With the little to no authority I wield, I’d amend his statement to clarify that the translator needs at least the experience of reading poetry in order to translate it. Poetry is sort of like a regional accent that is not too hard to pick up but it’s clear when someone’s faking it. 

Also, on an unrelated note, I thought Nabokov’s statement that “the term ‘literal translation’ is tautological since anything but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody” (119) was interesting because we have tossed the comparison/ contrast of words like translation and adaptation around in class. I don’t necessarily disagree with him, but his grouping adaptation with parody feels strange to me. Adaptation feels closer to translation than parody.

Samantha 

The Eight Stages of Coming Up With an Eight Stage Process with Eight Stages

 In his article “The Eight Stages of Translation,” Robert Bly has all sorts of useful and interesting points about different considerations in the process of a poetry (or any) translation. He mentions the sound, the balance of literary and spoken language, formal considerations, and the meanings of the lines themselves, among other things. The major issue with his article is that he presents a more or less ordered progression from one version to another across a prescriptive series of steps; it is as if Bly, having already considered the tone of the poem in stage 5, can now make whatever changes in service of the sound in stage 6. However, something might well sound better that does not adhere to the previously determined tone, and the tone of the translation is by no means resolved until it crystallizes in the final version. He mentions that sometimes a line or series of lines might pass through multiple stage, even all stages, very quickly, but that does not solve the issue. I think that Bly’s list of considerations is helpful, but he does not do credit to the dynamism in the interplay of these considerations, which involves compromise, gains and losses, and relative prioritization. His final version of the Rilke sonnet starts with the line “Spring is here, has come! The earth” which fails to sound like spoken English, one of his professed objectives; it also doesn’t sound particularly like literary English; it also fails to capture the cyclical renewal of spring: is here, has come does not imply with its repetition again. What has really happened, I think, is that he has noodled around with the sound and gotten stuck on the fact that the first phrase is so much heftier in plain German than in plain English with its two-syllable spring and its compound, past-tense verb, wiedergekommen for come again. He has prioritized his own sound invention which approximates that added weight at the expensive of the tone and of the sense. Moreover, according to his formula the sound should always take precedence over the sense and the tone because it comes later in his list. Obviously, this is not the always the best approach, and not even Bly’s approach in the translation that he settles on with it’s almost anti-musical “strenuous, earns it . . . the prize comes to her” for the gorgeous “langen Lernens bekommt sie den Preis”.

-Elijah 

Rules of Translation

It seems that every translator has hard and fast rules for translation: every translator must be faithful to the exact words, every translator must make the original read smoothly in any language, get a friend to read the translation, consider your work original, consider it a reflection of the original, etc. 

It's starting to seem like there is no true method of translation. If Vladimir Nabokov and Suzanne Jill Levine were both successful with their translations, with differing philosophies, it might just be that one's approach must feel worthy of justifying in ten or one hundred pages to make them effective translations.

Nabokov's "A schoolboy’s boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its commercial interpretation or poetization...The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase" (113) is just as passionate as Levine's "Because of what is lost and can be gained in crossing the language barrier, because of the inevitable rereading that occurs in transposing a text from one context to another, a translation must subvert the original" (92). 

While Robert Bly's "Eight Steps" are helpful for a novice translator like myself, it is even more helpful to know that not one approach must be taken to achieve an effective translation. 

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On Sentence Sound, Faithful Subversion, and...Giving Up?

I really enjoyed reading these different takes on translation; put in conversation with one another (and with Damion Searls' talk on Friday), they feed and contradict one another in a number of interesting ways. Nabokov, for example, bristles at the idea of translating for legibility or poetization. “The clumsiest literal translation,” he writes, “is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.” He warns against translations that gloss over important cultural context—or that give rise to egregious mistranslations—and argues for a literalism that is about exactitude of meaning. (It seems, to me, that most translators tend to agree here, that what is most important when translating is preserving “meaning,” but what “meaning” means seems to be what’s so highly contested from translator to translator.) 

Robert Bly’s “eight stages” (which, in putting it in “stages,” makes me think more of the Kubler-Ross model of moving through grief rather than through a poem) offers a helpful step-by-step process of extracting a poem in (American) English from its source poem. I found Bly’s commitment to ‘sentence sound,’ and reproducing contemporary spoken American English, no matter the time the original was from, interesting. I like that he brings the ear into the process, encouraging the translator to ask him/herself, “have [I] ever heard this phrase spoken?” This seems to contrast directly with some of what Nabokov says—as transforming a piece into contemporary, spoken American English is a kind of shifting for legibility and poetization. I wonder if this focus on sentence sound is more common in poetry translation, which is more of a spoken form than the novel? 

Something that surprised me in Bly’s essay was his advice on giving up. “I felt Vallejo’s feelings toward his own images enter the violet, or grief, range of the spectrum, where I could not follow him,” he writes. “At the age I was, the violet range was not accessible to me, and these feelings can’t be faked.” He then urges translators to abandon poems that are comprised of feelings that they cannot immediately access. This implies that not every poem is translatable to every translator. I find this really interesting; how can we judge if a work is ours to translate, or something we ought to abandon? Is it a feeling Bly can intuit, or understands based on his lived experiences? And how does this apply to barriers across time, space, and culture that feel too vast to cross without feeling like a “fake”? 

I found Suzanne Jill Levine’s “Translation As (Sub)Version” fascinating, and one of the first essays we’ve read that really situates texts in translation as living, breathing, dynamic works that don’t exist in a vacuum, but are always interacting with individuals, cultures, and politics. That translating subversively, and sometimes unfaithfully, can in fact be faithful to the “spirit” of a text that was intended to question and disrupt (even if originally meant to disrupt something else). In understanding translation as an inherently disruptive process, she creates space in translation for play, creativity, and cultural interpretation and adaptation. 

 

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Steps of Translation

 Suzanne Jill Levine's essay "On Translating Infante's Inferno" talks about wordplay in translation. She argues it brings life to the original, and chooses to translate works that allow more wordplay, calling herself a "faithfully unfaithful translator." This reminded me of the various translations we've workshopped in class, and how the more creative ones have stayed with me.

I noticed that Robert Bly's stages of translation included some steps that are common in writing. For example, in step 2, he consults with his friends to make sure his translation makes sense and to work out some quirks that he may not have noticed. Bly also groups translation into eight stages, whereas in real life the process might progress in the same steps. For example, some translators might want to consider sound and tone while they are writing their first draft.

- Hanan

Skipped a step......

 The Eight Stages of Translation by Robert Bly was a helpful framework to approach translation. It was interesting to overlay my current process as a beginning translator and recognize what I have been intuitively doing, as well as all the steps I have been missing out on! Funnily enough, I feel like I often stop at what Bly described as stage three: taking it from the literal translation to something that functions in the English language. I usually skip the translation into "American" and try to understand if the tones are similar, but this is not something I think I succeed greatly at. One of my bents is to think about the sound of the poem as well, so I will sometimes skip to this step before some of the other stages. 

I like Bly's notion of having a sort of process. Taking each factor into consideration, one at a time, rather than over-bearing the mind and creative instinct by trying to stay true to all the parts all at once. I also find his process refreshing in that he will translate into "American," but step back if he feels it doesn't honor the writing of the original author-- something I would be interested in trying out in my own work. His process feels very true to the original author while also presenting it to a new audience, which is something I value in translation. 

Nabokov says, "The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase." In many ways, I agree, but there is also, provided there is some transparency, great value in getting the perspectives of many different translators. It is through this comparison and contrast that I feel we can get the closest to the original text without knowing the source language. Often, I skew towards preferring the clumsy, literal translation, but the more I learn about translation, the more I see value in both types of translations.

                                                                                                                    Lauren

Where and how does the translator become visible?

 A line from Deborah Smith’s essay in response to The Vegetarian translation controversy has been in my mind since reading the piece: “[Translation is] …perhaps the only art that can be not just bad, but wrong, and will never not be flawed.” Demoralizing as this may be to an aspiring translator like myself, it actually helps me conceptualize the vast range of translation theory I have come into contact with throughout the past year. I saw the readings from this week on a sort of spectrum, with Nabokov on one extremely extreme side, Suzanne Levine on the other, and Bly sort of moseying through the middle space. I have come to realize and expect this about translation theory: agreements among translation practitioners are rare; definitive answers to questions of the practice are even rarer. So what am I to do with all of this?

I particularly appreciated this week’s readings because I did not strongly agree with any of their advocated approaches. While this was confusing to me at first, I now understand that by being able to articulate what I don’t think translation is, I am better equipped to embark on my own translations with some sort of confidence that while I may produce a flawed translation, it at least won’t be “bad, or wrong” (as Smith puts it). I had previously read Nabokov’s essay on translating Onegin, but I forgot how much enjoyment I got out of his sheer conviction in his own translation philosophy, his shameless advocacy for “footnotes reaching up as tall as skyscrapers,” and his off-color humor that delights as much as it offends. 

As I read Bly’s piece, I found myself dissuaded by his argument, if only because it lacked that same vigor and certainty that Nabokov exudes. I did appreciate Bly’s descriptions of his translation process, as well as some of his creative metaphors, like following “every eccentric branch [of the poem] out to its farthest twig” (70). Overall, though, I felt like his argument was marked by contradictions, as he sets out by stating a fairly humble goal (“I will not deal with the theory of translation…”) yet, throughout his step-by-step descriptions, he inserts a good deal of subjective assertions on how language sounds, popping up in instances like “As Frost correctly says…” (76), also offering opinions presented as universal truths: “the younger we are, the easier it is to make mistakes in tone.” (79). I was actually reminded by some of Damion Searls’ essays on translation, which I find convincing, yet also come to question whether I am convinced simply because of the compelling rhetoric or because I actually agree with what is being said. 

Because of this, I also enjoyed Suzanne Levine’s piece, as she does not try to downplay her inherent subjectivity as a translator, and rather embraces it, offering a unique and perhaps controversial approach in which she discusses how translators of modern works produce “another book,” one that allows space for the translator’s expression, too. She discards the classical confines of ‘faithfulness and ‘fidelity,’ stating instead that translation “reveals a language’s infidelity to itself.” (89). I’d love to see her in dialogue with Nabokov. 

- Luisa

Spirit, Tone, and Mood of Translations and Different Approaches

In Suzanne Jill Levine’s Translation as (Sub)version: Translating Infante’s Inferno, she emphasizes the importance of wordplay and how it influences the quality of translation, even though it can be seen as an unfaithful approach to the translation process. She expresses this importance by pointing out, ‘’ Wordplay is inscribed in the language of the translation and yet brings to life the language of the original.’’ She further explains, ‘’Translation, another form of parody, is for a writer like Cabrera Infante ‘’a more advanced stage’’ of the writing of the book, as Jorge Luis Borges once said. Thus, I have had the freedom to exaggerate the parodical elements (such as alliteration) when translating writers like Infante and Puig, particularly because they have been actively involved in the ‘subversion’ of their originals.’’ Handling translation as a parody highlights the fact that translation is not an original, is not an imitation, it is the different form of the same original, text or language. For example, the parody of a sing is the same song with different interpretation such as voice, emphasis on words, etc. And, having the freedom to exaggerate the parodical elements involved in the subversion of the original is an equal translation for Levine since it creates the same effect in the translation. Here, from what I render, if the author has the power to subvert the original, so does the translator have that kind of power to subvert the translation. 

 

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Problems of Translation: Onegin in English, translating mainly focusing on the spirit rather than the textual sense should be the first step of the translator. This step actually renders what the author intends to convey to the target readers. Nabokov states that, ‘’The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.’’. Here, paraphrasing is not translating. Literal translation is not about the beauty of the original /source text but the spirit and the meaning of the text. The different translations of Eugene Onéguine, translated by Lieut.-Col. Spalding; Eugene Onegin, translated by Babette Deutsch in The Works of Alexander Pushkin, selected and edited by Abraham Yarmolinski; Evgeny Onegin, translated by Oliver Elton; Eugene Onegin, translated by Dorothea Prall Radin and George Z. Patrick. Seeing the differences in word choices and spirits of each translation was inquiring: what did they do different? Each and every translator focused on a different aspect of the source text and came up with completely different translations, even though they are accurate in their own ways. 

 

In Robert Fly’s The Eight Stages of Translation, he explains the eight crucial stages of translation; 1) setting down a literal version, just to get to the inner core of the source text, 2) Following every eccentric branch out to its farthest twig, after seeing the differences between the source and target texts regarding the meaning, 3) returning to the literal version and find the parts that lack of meaning, redoing the literal trying to make sense in the target language (here, it is English), 4) after translating the source text into the English language, adapting it into a specific language/vernacular/nation (here it is the American English), in this stage the spoken language is the main focus, 5) translating according to the tone and therefore, the mood of the source text, 6) paying attention to the sound, 7) asking someone born into the language to go over our version, this stage made great sense, since getting feedback on the translation from a native and evaluating the translation from a distinguished aspect/perspective is really helpful for me as a not-much experienced translator, 8) and the last stage is to come up with the final draft by reading the translation once again, making minor, final adjustments not substantive changes. Overall, his outline for the translation process is not an outline that can be used for every translation process since he focuses on the sound and tone for the most part, but for poetry, this could get beginner translators without confusing them. 

 

 ECE CELIKKOL

 

 

 

Stages and Skipping

Reading "The Eight Stages of Translation" by Robert Bly reminded me of one of the first texts I read about translation, "Translation from French into English by the ABC Method" (1927). One thing these texts had in common was the presentation of steps or stages of translation followed by the assertion that eventually some steps will be skipped or fuse together as you become a more intuitive translator. They both share the idea that the first step will be a literal version. But why? Bly assumes this is needed to get the "thrust" of the poem. But isn't that provided by simply reading the source text? I am concerned by the idea that writing a trot is a useful or essential step for beginning translators; it has the air of a schoolroom exercise. Why not reverse the process? Have the beginner skip right to their nuanced translation and the expert work through the nitty-gritty of each step, now that they have the wisdom to truly benefit from such a process. Of course, Nabokov would have us stop translating at step one and head off into our reams of footnotes.

Bly's use of the term "mood" was also useful. Other terms, like "sense" or "spirit" or even "vibe" have a certain vagueness to them that hamper their usefulness. Mood, on the other hand, is more concrete and more visible in the text. This innovation allows for a reading-informed direction to the translation, much like what Damion Searls described in his lecture as "the book telling you what it needs". 

                                                                                                                    Grace

A Tale of Three Roberts: Sound, Subversion, and Acts of Passage

 

A Tale of Three Roberts: Sound, Subversion, and Acts of Passage

by Meghan Miraglia

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was most intrigued by Suzanne Jill Levine’s “Translation as (Sub) Version: On Translating Infante’s Inferno.” Levine refers to herself as Infante’s “faithfully unfaithful translator” (85). Throughout the article, she focuses on four key concepts that arose during her work with Infante: word play, marginality, speaking versus talking versus chatting, and “traduttora traditora” (92).

The concepts presented by Levine were not unfamiliar to me, as I had seen them before in other works of feminist theory – the difference being, of course, their context. Up until this point, I had not yet encountered feminist theory being applied/linked to translation; I'd love to read more, as I think it would help frame the introduction to my final project. I really, really love Levine’s points about woman’s absence and silence versus men’s speech; her interrogation of the mother-tongue as a screen for patriarchy is bananas-good. I agree with that “it is at the level of language that the translator can be most creative, inventive, even subversive” (88); this feels in contrast to Nabokov’s stance, which is that the translator’s single job is to produce “with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text” (Nabokov 119). Where Nabokov wishes for pure and complete fidelity, Levine sees opportunity to challenge, expand, and re-fashion the original via translation. She makes the point that “a translation must subvert the original” (Levine 92) because of the language barrier, which results both immense losses and gains. Where Nabokov sees translation as a means to an end, Levine sees translation as “a route, a voyage…through which a writer/translator may seek to reconcile fragments…of texts, of language, of oneself…[T]ranslation is an act of passage” (Levine 94).

Bly, I think, also sees translation as an “act of passage” (Levine 94). I was struck by his stages of translation: in particular, his emphasis on meaning-making, close reading, and analyzing as part of translation. As Bly writes, “[j]ust knowing a poem is not enough” (73) to translate it – the translator must relate to the emotions and the concepts presented within the poem, and “[i]f they are not, [the translator] should stop” (73). A la Levine’s passage metaphor, it is here that the translator decides “whether to turn back or go on” (73). Learning a poem by heart is one way to capture its “body rhythm” (Bly 82-3).

Levine’s emphasis on alliteration parallels Bly’s sentiments regarding “the energy of spoken language” (75). Alliteration, according to Levine, “expresses, frees the impulsive, rhythmic nature of language as music” (87); because poetry aims to be music, we must not lose focus on the sounds of our translations. I can relate these ideas to Robert Pinsky’s poetry ethos – in so many words, he argues for the importance of reading poems aloud and finding their music through intuition. Naturally, we are able to identify accents in a poem; in much the same way, we are able to identify “the desperate living tone or fragrance that tells [us] a person now alive could have said the phrase” (Bly 75) that we are attempting to translate. It’s no surprise that Robert Bly invoked Robert Frost in his article; Robert Pinsky is a Frost fan, too. All three Roberts place special emphasis on the ear.

Reflections on Pavis and Tiang

 

Regarding the debate between text and performance, I appreciated Patrice Pavis’ suggestion to not treat it as an “atemporal problem” (122). He offers that we “historicize and localize” the issue for clarity and offers as examples how during the 1960s 1) when authoritarianism was questioned, it led “to privilege spectacular performances, to marginalize dramatic literature,” and 2) during the same period in Germany, great classics were put through “the mincing machine” in a reaction against “blind obedience.” It made me reflect on the cultural and political forces at play and how what I believe to be my own creative and personal choices are in fact very much shaped by those larger, external forces, and also are a part (however miniscule) of what gives weight to those forces. As I’m reminded of this through Pavis, I reflected on Jeremy Tiang’s talk about the conservatism of the theater industry. Although the problem is particularly acute in the theater industry due to greater financial stakes, I find it to be pervasive in the sense that we are still oriented heavily toward Western Classics in the U.S. (esp. the education system). But I guess, going back to Pavis, all of this is reflective to some degree to the cultural mood and therefore, I daresay, our convictions. And perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to change…    

- Lois

(sorry, this is late...)

Theatre & Translation

I found the Pavis reading particularly interesting. I've always focused on studying translation as text -> text, so the idea of theatre from text -> performance being an act of translation in and of itself gave me new perspective and challenged my idea of what "translation" really is. As we've spoken about before, and as is discussed in the text, translation is not simply an unfeeling act of transferring meaning from one language to another, and this concept is exemplified in discussions of theatre. 

I enjoyed Pavis' ideas on mise-en-scene quite a bit. The idea that it's not simply the execution of a text, but a process of discovery, and that directors & performers together often reinterpret or even create a new text through staging and improvisation was one that I wholeheartedly agree with, and until now did not realize how hand-in-hand it went with my own thoughts of translation generally.

I also appreciated Pavis suggesting a move beyond the binary oppositions (text vs. performance, fidelity vs. betrayal), and that contemporary theatre practices challenge these binaries. Instead of zeroing in on the eternal clash between the two, we can focus on the relationship between text and performance that serves to create something new and powerful.

-Evan

Translation, Adaptation

    These materials spoke, to me, to the question we have been tossing around this semester about the line between translation and adaptation. Poetry, in particular widely translated poetry, feels adaptable to me because the lyric/ images used within a poem to get an idea cross are not always universal ones, while translating prose (especially someone like Proust for this week) requires a more faithful, “accurate” line to line translation from one language to another. Theater, as a script on the page, exists in some other, mysterious place. Pavis clarifies a distinction that is helping me organize my thoughts on the idea of translating a play: the ideas that “text-dominated” theater and “performance-focused” theater are two categorical theatrical goals that can be used to determine the type of translation/ adaptation to engage in. I almost feel like fiction is akin to text-dominated theater and poetry is akin to performance-focused theater, which sounds backwards in that poetry is so rooted in sound while prose is so rooted in narrative, but a performance-focus implies a prioritizing of technical elements to create feeling, while text-domination implies a reliance on the narrative structure to create feeling. Ideally the “perfect” translation of anything would somehow perfectly encapsulate the essence of the source material (but what is the essence? The plot? The “meaning,” which is a living and breathing aspect?) in another language or genre while simultaneously making a ghost of the translator and being a feat of writing for the translator. This is obviously impossible, and reminds me of a comment made by one of our Friday lecturers (I think it was Nicholas Glastonbury, but could be wrong) about how the practice of translation is not binary, or static, but a living/ changing organism.

Samantha Long

Faithfulness and Drama: A Theater of Shifting Meaning

Translation is never simply a mechanical act of transferring meaning from one language to another. In theater, this complexity deepens—should a director or translator remain faithful to the original text, or does the act of staging necessitate a reinterpretation? Patrice Pavis’ essay, On Faithfulness in Theater Translation, explores this ongoing debate, questioning whether fidelity to a text is even possible, let alone desirable.

Pavis challenges the assumption that there exists a singular, "correct" interpretation of a play. They argue that directors and translators often operate between two extremes: striving for a so-called “restitutive” approach, which attempts to preserve the original text as closely as possible, or a “projective” approach, where the text serves as a foundation for contemporary reinterpretation. Yet, as they point out, even the most careful attempts at faithful translation are filtered through cultural, historical, and personal lenses—meaning that complete fidelity remains an illusion. This kind of conflict exists in basically any form of translation, but in theater, this tension is heightened because translation is not just linguistic—it is performative, involving actors, staging, and audience perception. A play does not exist solely in words but in the embodied experience of performance.

Jeremy Tiang’s presentation adds further challenges to this issue, noting that in translating and retranslating the same canonical works in theatre, we severely limit access to newer plays, as well as ending up allowing the same celebrity playwrights to make the translation properly artistic. This reminded me a lot of some of the discussions we’ve had in the Friday seminars so far about the challenge of publishing translated works, with Nicholas Glastonbury for example. They’ve commented on how difficult it can be to find a publisher and an audience for translated works, and I can only imagine the challenge is twofold with translated plays because it doesn’t need just an audience to read it, but an audience to pay to watch it, and actors who need to be paid to perform it. Having read and performed some translated plays in high school, especially old Greek tragedies, I hadn’t thought about this issue before, but this talk was very interesting.

 

                                                                                                                    Kamryn 

Fidelity, Novelty, and Celebrity in Theatre-in-Translation

Jeremy Tiang’s discussion of theatre in translation brought to light a number of interesting issues regarding process and power in translation. I appreciate that he began his talk discussing how the very selection of plays worth translating (or re-translating) is not random or invisible or neutral, but rather, an intentional part of the translation process at large. By devoting resources and time to translating the same “classics,” the act of translation can serve to reinscribe old hierarchies of power, underscoring rather than expanding an existing canon. (Why, Tiang asks, are we allocating so many resources to retranslating old works of the past? What about more contemporary works, from different geographies and languages?)  

He goes on to examine the process of translating a play, which often involves using the “bad” literal translation provided by the “invisible” translator to be passed off to a celebrity playwright who adapts this literal translation “artistically.” Of course, Tiang points out, this is already a flawed way of understanding process, as there is no such thing as an invisible translator; even providing a “literal” interpretation is more an art than a science, and always a subjective one! The celebrity playwright is often foregrounded, while the work of the translator is hidden and undervalued. Tiang references a quote from Geraldine Bodine, that translating—and especially re-translating “classics”—depends on the “novelty value” of the celebrity playwright; that “the advertisers need to give their prospective audience a reason to buy a ticket for a play they have seen before.” This, too, reinscribes existing hierarchies of power: those who are already recognized are centered in order to bring in a paying audience. (Who, exactly, is that paying audience? Is that imagined demographic also a part of the problem?) 

This process, some critics argue, is also clunky, like "performing brain surgery wearing thick gloves.” I’m curious if this is universally true, that this extra step in the process inherently creates an additional degree of distance between the source text and the end translation? It will be interesting to see what it feels like to translate directly later in the semester and compare it to working from a trot. 

This “invisible” translator → celebrity playwright translation process seems to be dominant in theatre, perhaps because the space for adaptation and novelty are built into the form and industry more so than with, say, novels. (Who among us has picked up a new translation of The Brothers Karamazov just to see if we’re moved by the newest translation?) Though, as a side note: I was reminded of Mónica de la Torre’s lecture about the UNESCO anthology of Mexican poetry, where Samuel Beckett was meant to serve as a kind of celebrity translator, chosen less for his knowledge of Spanish and interest in Mexican literature, both of which were minimal, but rather, for the brilliance he could bring to the poems-in-translation themselves. By including celebrity translators/adapters, are you always at risk of undermining the lesser-known artists involved, like the (literal) translators? And when is involving a celebrity translator an act of honoring the original versus devaluing or minimizing it? 

Patrice Pavis' "On Faithfulness" brings to light the additional intermediaries doing serious interpretative work between the text and reader/spectator/consumer. The very act of moving from text to performance is a kind of translation, and one that involves a remarkable number of translators, most obviously the director, but also the actors, as well as, I would imagine, the set designers and costume designers. This reanimates a lot of the questions Tiang raises: If translation and interpretation are always part of putting on a play, whose translational work is privileged in theatre, and why? It’s also interesting to consider where fidelity is held sacred, like in the text/performance relationship, and where it’s shunned (literal translations vs. the novelty of a new celebrity playwright.) 

- Abbey Perreault

On Faithfulness

I found Pavis’s paper “On Faithfulness” to be very interesting. I have seen far fewer plays performed than I have read, so I haven’t considered the play to be anything less than a fully formed work, while Pavis and the scholars she quotes seem to take that for granted. On page 120, she asks “can a classic be read in an immanent way, and without projecting all that we know today thanks to philosophy, psychology, sociology and so on?” This made me think of the literature courses I've taken, where we are constantly superimposing modern lenses of psychology and theory to classic works. Is this really an effective way to engage with them, if we are considering angles the authors couldn’t possibly have been writing from? With theory I’m not always sure: it seems we are more often shoehorning works to fit theories that are more or less unrelated, but I think psychology can have a place in helping us understand a text. I thought the parallel between translating a text to the stage and from one language to the other offered a new view of fidelity as something that may be good to strive for but is impossible to achieve.

Emerson Archer

What Makes a Play?

 Jeremy Tiang's presentation shed light on several trends in theatre translation that also align with broader trends in theatre. His observations on how the "canonical" works are translated again and again, while newer plays are rarely if ever translated, speaks to how (especially in American theatre) most major productions are of well known plays or by well known playwrights (we need not mention the alarming trend of the movie-to-play translation). In that sense, translation between languages is hardly different frm what Pavis describes as the translative process and relationship between text and performance. One thing that surprised me in Jeremy Tiang's presentation was the reveal of a shocking stealth translation--I have heard many things about The Lehman Trilogy but not a peep about it being translation! On the other hand, I don't completely agree with the idea that Les Miserables is a stealth translation; the adaptive qualities of working from a book and the multiauthored nature of musical theatre (librettist/composer/book writer) already imply a layered process. The prevalence of Chekhov translations done by a playwright working from a literal translation also surprised me, but given the difference in intial investment needed for a play as opposed to a novel I can see the incentive.

                                                                                                            Grace

Theater and Translation: A Performance

 Jeremy Tiang talks about how the role of translation is different in fiction and plays. He describes translation as a "productive writing called forth by the original text." This goes back to our in-class discussions of creative inputs of translators. Tiang says that, in his translations, he decides not to focus on getting details right but rather responding creatively. I've been thinking about the relation between accuracy and creative liberty in our weekly translation assignments, and found his talk very insightful to how to balance the two. Here are some points I took away from his talk:

• In theatre, translators are deemed famous enough, or theatrical enough, to translate a performance. Male, celebrity playwrights are favored to write a performace translation, and are given more credit for their work.
• The Lehman Trilogy as a translated play doesn't appear to be translated from the poster; the female translator's name was not even mentioned in reviews of the play.

• There is a notion that translators have to be invisible: "If you've done your job right, people won't even know you've been there, like a ninja. But if that's the case, then how will we ever make a claim for our profession?" Tiang argues that we can't be invisible and brings up similarities between a translator and a performer.

- Hanan Akbari

Blog Post 4

Hi all! Here are some ideas from Jeremy Tiang’s presentation that struck me, and some loose thoughts that bubbled up:

• Translation often serves to solidify the existing canon rather than foster cross-cultural understanding and spotlight newer voices. We think of it as a canon-buster, but sadly it is not inherently so. Something to be intentional about!

• In the theatre world, bilingual translators usually provide literal translations and are backgrounded, then famous monolingual playwrights get the top billing. Hearing this, I was reminded of the trots we are provided in class. After all, which of us students, as we receive our applause, has cited Professors Zielinska-Elliott and Maurer in our translations? When will they get their flowers?! The analogy made me laugh.

• I agree with David Hare that the new Chekhov translations—which switch things up just for variety’s sake—are pretty lacking. And unfortunately that includes David Hare’s rendition. I say this with knowledge that stylistic flourishes for variety’s sake have been my bread and butter thus far in our class. But I'm not getting paid!

• Simon Stephens’s version of The Seagull changed even the characters’ names. And what dialogue we saw was hardly recognizable. I know this query has been posed before, but where is the line between translation and adaptation? For instance, the 2022 adaptation Fire Island is basically Pride and Prejudice plot-wise (just with everyone being gay men in 2020s New York), but it doesn’t use Austen’s original title. So why does Stephens get to broadcast a new translation of Chekhov’s seminal masterpiece? I am not nearly as worked up about this as it may sound.

• I am shocked that The Lehman Brothers isn’t originally in English; everybody and their mother was talking about that play, and yet nobody spoke about it as a translation. Poor Stefano Massini. And yes, poor Italy.

• This was a great line: “[I think of the] 2018 production of Tea House, which looks like no tea house that’s ever been seen. But of course, why should it?” Wow. I like Jeremy Tiang so much. I hope someday he can be featured in the Times with his dogs.

• I have no experience watching a play that has subtitles projected for the audience. How common is such a practice? I wonder if, for spectators, it’s hard to focus on everything that’s happening.

• That led me to thinking about the film medium. You never ever ever hear about the translators who write subtitles. But their work is so crucial! And, I’m sure, super difficult. Who are these unheralded backbones of society? Many of my all-time favorites movies are international, and I've never even given this a thought. Sad. And, since we are (or, I am) on the topic of cinema + translation, I recommend Quo Vadis, Aida? It's a tough watch but all about language and meaning.

Furthermore, I liked how Pavis discusses “stage and the scene” as existing “at the point of origin of textual production,” in reference to Balme’s idea of stage-writing, wherein different contributors with sundry roles co-create a piece (118). Tiang speaks of this too. It sounds wise and fruitful. And, perhaps most importantly, fun. Something similar (but not the same) is that I always change my poems after I read them aloud and hear parts that are sticky or ugly or tongue-twisting. I’ve even made mid-sentence alterations during a reading.

I appreciated Pavis’s writing; I’m always impressed when academic papers offer moving or beautiful or wonderful moments. Here’s one: “Luckily, we never really know in what scenario we find ourselves. Deep down, we do not want to know. We can only observe this historically established shift…” (125).

Also, kudos to you, Professors, for rejecting the notion of theatre as an island, to use Vinaver’s term. Integrating the form into our conversation feels productive, and I’m glad it’s happened.

And thanks for the trots!

All best,

Drew Rollins