Translation
Assignment |
| Translation is arguably the purest form of interpretation. The task seems straightforward: a translator attempts to give readers who have no understanding of a language the experience of reading something written in that language. But language is not merely a code; one word does not simply take the place of another, and even if it could, meaning is more than just a matter of vocabulary. Poetry represents a particular challenge to the translator because (as you have learned) poetry — to an even greater extent than prose — depends on other qualities of language, qualities besides the denotative (meaning the dictionary definition of a word.) Here is your opportunity to try your hand at translation. You need to consider which qualities of a poetic work are most important to preserve, and how a translator can best preserve the experience of reading the original work. |
| Here is a short poem in French:
Note that in French, le and la (the words meaning the) turn into l’ in front of a word beginning with a vowel or an h, and into les in front of a plural, je becomes j’ and de becomes d’. Moreover, different forms of a word (especially a verb) can be remarkably different from the root word, just as in English I went is the past tense of I go; however, changes in French are much more common. To help you, here is a list of the root words for some of the forms in the poem (in each case the second word is the root). irai — aller | picoté — picoter | laisserai — laisser | sentirai — sentir | parlerai — parler | penserai — penser | montera — monter The verbs that end in ai are generally future tense. Note too that nouns in French have both gender and number, and that when an adjective (which in most cases comes after the noun, unlike in English) modifies a feminine or plural noun, the adjective changes, usually by adding an e or an s. For example, livre is the word for book and is masculine. The expensive book in French would be le livre cher. The expensive books would be les livres chers. However, the expensive bicycle would be la bicyclette chère and the expensive bicycles would be les bicyclettes chères. |
Your task is to offer your own original translation of this poem. You may, of course, use a French-to-English dictionary, whether online or in print, but you should not merely offer a transliteration (a word-by-word replacement of French words with English). Indeed, if you try feeding these lines into one of those online translation programs like Google Translate or Babelfish, you will see the result is far from anything that can be called a poem. You should also write a short, informal reflection in which you explain the criteria that guided your translation, the challenges you faced, and the choices you made. Point out any words, phrases, or lines that particularly please you, and any that you wish you could improve. Note that it is possible to find published translations of this poem. I am familiar with several versions, some of which I may show you in class. Because your attempt must be your own, I strongly recommend you not attempt to find these published translations. Even if you were to do so only to seek out models for what you should be doing, you would likely find it difficult to escape another translator’s influence. Trust me — you would find other translations more of an obstacle than an aid at this point. |
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