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(Quick, source the title quote! Okay, that's not entirely fair, because I can't actually remember which book it came from, and of the two possibilities, I'm pretty sure I no longer own either. I want to say The Number of the Beast, but it could have been The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Both of which are due for a reread, actually; I haven't picked up any Heinlein in years.)
The problem with reading lots of literature and poetry in translation is that a tremendous amount does get lost- and when most of your translators are neither poets nor scholars of English literature, not only do you lose a great deal, but there's very little gained. You get translators who think that rhyme in Persian should be equivalent to rhyme in English because hey! It's rhyme! There are few enough languages that use rhyme in poetry that I can understand being excited by the novelty of it. But. Taking some of the most sophisticated poetical works a culture has to offer and turning them into doggerel is like committing linguistic assault and battery.
Which isn't to say that all the translations have been awful- Clinton's translations of the Shahnameh stories we read were totally adequate- in large part, I feel, because he chose to use blank verse as a vehicle for the Persian epic. (I'm of the opinion that you really can't go wrong with blank verse. It's elegantly utilitarian, and it doesn't get in the way of the words. And if it was good enough for Shakespeare, it's damn well good enough for the rest of us.) The prosodic translation of Nezami's Laylah and Majnun was also highly effective- rather than try to pack all of the many layers of the poem into English verse, the translator expanded and expounded upon the story in lyrical prose. Sometimes that's the only choice, really; I'd just like to get a big stick and start beating translators while shouting "METRICAL STRUCTURES DON'T TRANSLATE" over and over again until it sticks.
And I actually enjoyed The Conference of the Birds, up until I started noticing the rhyme. I was immersing myself in the stories without really paying attention to the text itself. The traditional Persian meter became heroic couplets, and Sharbandi used rhymes like "flew" and "Adieu!" which ought to be considered a capital offense. The rhyme contributed nothing, save some awkward phrasing and a childish, nursery-rhyme quality to the poem. What should have been a deeply mystical text on Sufism became painfully ridiculous in places. And yet, in other places it was lovely- but the rhyme was more distracting than anything else.
We've also read some of Fitzgerald's translation of Khayyam- and while I think the language is little dated, and, Fitzgerald was a competent poet who knew how to put layers of meaning into something. He also knew what he was doing with rhyme. With Fitzgerald, I feel comfortable saying something is gained in the translation; a great deal is lost, certainly- content-wise, many of Khayyam's poems were utterly butchered, and there's an essay on Orientalism somewhere deep in my soul just aching to get out- but something is gained, as well. Fitzgerald's translations are decent poems in their own right.
Which brings us to Hafez- and the particular translation we're using right now kept the rhyme and added gender. (Now, when Clinton made the Simorgh female in In the Dragon's Claws, I wholeheartedly approved for reasons that I really ought to add to a revised version of my first paper. So I don't object in general to including gender in English where it would have been ambiguous in Persian.) But when "saqi" (loosely translates to "barkeep" or "cupbearer") becomes "wine maiden" and the absent beloved is consistently a "she," this gets irritating. Medieval Persia was not, actually, a totally heteronormative society. Plenty of poems were written about beloved young men. But put that aside, and it still does a disservice to take poems that are famous for their nuances and universality and turn them into stock love poetry.
Hafez is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in any language, ever; translating his works is not an enviable task. It's also not something I'd trust in the hands of anyone other than an accomplished poet. Not only are all of Hafez's many ambiguities lost, but nothing is gained except the bitter taste in the back of my throat. I try not to be judgmental about the quality of poetry, but I really feel that this stuff is objectively bad. FOR EXAMPLE:
If you want to drink wine from that jeweled cup,
On your lashes string gently pearls from the deep.
Kindness' scent will never awaken the senses
of that one whose cheek does not tavern floor sweep.
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKERS. SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT. ADJECTIVE-NOUN. ADVERB-VERB. YOU WANNA WRITE SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB, STICK TO PERSIAN. ALSO, ARTICLES. THEY'RE GOOD SHIT. Writing accessible and beautiful poetry, they are not. Writing half-assed mystical hand-wavey drivel, they are. Writing like Yoda also they are. *anguish hands* Also, any time a writer starts throwing around terms like "spiritual warrior," I head for the hills. I went through a New Age self help book phase when I was sixteen. I've no desire to revisit it. I definitely feel that Montgomery and Pourafzal chose to translate Hafez the way they did just to make the poems seem archaic and ~mystical~ and ~poetical~. The twisted syntax, the awful rhyme, the lack of articles- it all creates a very specific tone, one that you find in books about controlling your chi and opening your chakras to lose weight, gain friends, and influence people.
*grumblegrumble* Normally I'd be more charitable, but I find myself irrationally furious with this book and its translations. Sometimes it's lonely being the only English major in my class. And by "lonely," I mean "full of inexplicable rage." Thankfully, the professor gives us his literal translations of the texts to look at side by side with the published translations, and we get to pick apart all the inconsistencies.
I am all in favor of translations. I love 'em- English is a fabulous language because of its pack-rat tendencies- you can navigate oceans of meaning when you have several hundred thousand more words than most other languages. Some of my favorite poems are translations (most notable is my current obsession with Inger Christiansen's Alphabet, translated by Susanna Nied- but there are translations of Neruda, Rumi, and Mayakovsky that take my breath away). And I am sympathetic to the limits of translation- and the limits of an audience. But I want better translations- and I realize that to a certain extent I do mean "more academic" when I say "better." But only to a point; I'd be happy with a less academic translation that traded accuracy for poetic quality. Of course, sometimes I just have to accept that I am not the intended audience for a certain translation, and move on.
I still really don't want to finish my reading for class, though. *sulk*
The problem with reading lots of literature and poetry in translation is that a tremendous amount does get lost- and when most of your translators are neither poets nor scholars of English literature, not only do you lose a great deal, but there's very little gained. You get translators who think that rhyme in Persian should be equivalent to rhyme in English because hey! It's rhyme! There are few enough languages that use rhyme in poetry that I can understand being excited by the novelty of it. But. Taking some of the most sophisticated poetical works a culture has to offer and turning them into doggerel is like committing linguistic assault and battery.
Which isn't to say that all the translations have been awful- Clinton's translations of the Shahnameh stories we read were totally adequate- in large part, I feel, because he chose to use blank verse as a vehicle for the Persian epic. (I'm of the opinion that you really can't go wrong with blank verse. It's elegantly utilitarian, and it doesn't get in the way of the words. And if it was good enough for Shakespeare, it's damn well good enough for the rest of us.) The prosodic translation of Nezami's Laylah and Majnun was also highly effective- rather than try to pack all of the many layers of the poem into English verse, the translator expanded and expounded upon the story in lyrical prose. Sometimes that's the only choice, really; I'd just like to get a big stick and start beating translators while shouting "METRICAL STRUCTURES DON'T TRANSLATE" over and over again until it sticks.
And I actually enjoyed The Conference of the Birds, up until I started noticing the rhyme. I was immersing myself in the stories without really paying attention to the text itself. The traditional Persian meter became heroic couplets, and Sharbandi used rhymes like "flew" and "Adieu!" which ought to be considered a capital offense. The rhyme contributed nothing, save some awkward phrasing and a childish, nursery-rhyme quality to the poem. What should have been a deeply mystical text on Sufism became painfully ridiculous in places. And yet, in other places it was lovely- but the rhyme was more distracting than anything else.
We've also read some of Fitzgerald's translation of Khayyam- and while I think the language is little dated, and, Fitzgerald was a competent poet who knew how to put layers of meaning into something. He also knew what he was doing with rhyme. With Fitzgerald, I feel comfortable saying something is gained in the translation; a great deal is lost, certainly- content-wise, many of Khayyam's poems were utterly butchered, and there's an essay on Orientalism somewhere deep in my soul just aching to get out- but something is gained, as well. Fitzgerald's translations are decent poems in their own right.
Which brings us to Hafez- and the particular translation we're using right now kept the rhyme and added gender. (Now, when Clinton made the Simorgh female in In the Dragon's Claws, I wholeheartedly approved for reasons that I really ought to add to a revised version of my first paper. So I don't object in general to including gender in English where it would have been ambiguous in Persian.) But when "saqi" (loosely translates to "barkeep" or "cupbearer") becomes "wine maiden" and the absent beloved is consistently a "she," this gets irritating. Medieval Persia was not, actually, a totally heteronormative society. Plenty of poems were written about beloved young men. But put that aside, and it still does a disservice to take poems that are famous for their nuances and universality and turn them into stock love poetry.
Hafez is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in any language, ever; translating his works is not an enviable task. It's also not something I'd trust in the hands of anyone other than an accomplished poet. Not only are all of Hafez's many ambiguities lost, but nothing is gained except the bitter taste in the back of my throat. I try not to be judgmental about the quality of poetry, but I really feel that this stuff is objectively bad. FOR EXAMPLE:
If you want to drink wine from that jeweled cup,
On your lashes string gently pearls from the deep.
Kindness' scent will never awaken the senses
of that one whose cheek does not tavern floor sweep.
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKERS. SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT. ADJECTIVE-NOUN. ADVERB-VERB. YOU WANNA WRITE SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB, STICK TO PERSIAN. ALSO, ARTICLES. THEY'RE GOOD SHIT. Writing accessible and beautiful poetry, they are not. Writing half-assed mystical hand-wavey drivel, they are. Writing like Yoda also they are. *anguish hands* Also, any time a writer starts throwing around terms like "spiritual warrior," I head for the hills. I went through a New Age self help book phase when I was sixteen. I've no desire to revisit it. I definitely feel that Montgomery and Pourafzal chose to translate Hafez the way they did just to make the poems seem archaic and ~mystical~ and ~poetical~. The twisted syntax, the awful rhyme, the lack of articles- it all creates a very specific tone, one that you find in books about controlling your chi and opening your chakras to lose weight, gain friends, and influence people.
*grumblegrumble* Normally I'd be more charitable, but I find myself irrationally furious with this book and its translations. Sometimes it's lonely being the only English major in my class. And by "lonely," I mean "full of inexplicable rage." Thankfully, the professor gives us his literal translations of the texts to look at side by side with the published translations, and we get to pick apart all the inconsistencies.
I am all in favor of translations. I love 'em- English is a fabulous language because of its pack-rat tendencies- you can navigate oceans of meaning when you have several hundred thousand more words than most other languages. Some of my favorite poems are translations (most notable is my current obsession with Inger Christiansen's Alphabet, translated by Susanna Nied- but there are translations of Neruda, Rumi, and Mayakovsky that take my breath away). And I am sympathetic to the limits of translation- and the limits of an audience. But I want better translations- and I realize that to a certain extent I do mean "more academic" when I say "better." But only to a point; I'd be happy with a less academic translation that traded accuracy for poetic quality. Of course, sometimes I just have to accept that I am not the intended audience for a certain translation, and move on.
I still really don't want to finish my reading for class, though. *sulk*
