Beards and moustaches

May 21, 2013 These past few weeks at the Poetry International offices I’ve overheard Megen, our central editor, and Annemarie, the translation coordinator, working on festival translations. “Where does the emphasis lie? Is this the right word?”

Recently they were discussing the translations of Chinese poems, and I found myself listening with great interest, because how do you assess a translation if you can’t understand the original?

If the Dutch translation uses the word ‘beard’ and the English translation has ‘moustache’, then what do you do? Was there something like ‘facial hair’ in the Chinese? Accuracy has to be taken into account, but also rhythm, alliteration, tone, etc. A beard and a moustache were both correct in this case, but in some circles (at the barber shop, let’s say) this would definitely be a problem.

Personally I prefer to read a text in its original language, and with translations my preference is also for a language I can understand. I that case I usually like to have dual-language editions, so I can compare the two.

This is why I’m looking forward to the ‘In Other Words’ translation workshop (Wednesday) and the translation symposium (Friday) during the festival. I’m interested in seeing what different people make of the same poems. How often can you translate something, and when does a translation stop being a translation and become something entirely new?

I’m curious whether one of the festival translators will get a collection of all the translations of his or her poems, and what kind of effect that will have. Do the translations change the way you look at the original? Does translation strengthen or weaken the original? I can imagine that it can be overwhelming to see so many varying versions of something you have written with great precision.

I hope to get answers to these kinds of questions during the week of the festival. If so, I’ll be sure to share it with you here on the blog. Maybe even in two languages.