EthicalDative

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Poetry, May 2023 publishes the Arabic text of Mona Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.

I can’t vary in any interesting way Sara Elkamel’s excellent, close translation of stanza 3. It’s reproduced here. I do offer an experiment with wording different from hers for stanza 4.

3
A white palm tree appears above my father’s head.
I do not know how to color it.

4
Rain saves my father from painting the door of the house.
And my organs, which I donate as food for the cats,
do not change me into a bird.

Stanza 3 puts me in mind of a children’s coloring book. That’s too literal, of course; is there a cultural reference? Do the preceding 2 stanzas contextualize this one somehow? In any case it’s easy enough to find approximate English for what the Arabic text states on its surface.

The same is true, in fact, for stanza 4. What’s striking to me is the perverse-seeming syntax of its second sentence. Elkamel’s translation is flat and somewhat reductive: “Donating my organs to the cats / doesn’t make me a bird.” It leaves out the Arabic adverbial ṭa^ām(an), “as food.” The omission may seem trivial, but my rule of thumb is: Jettison nothing from the source except for good cause.

More importantly, in the source text the grammatical subject of “change” is “organs,” not the act of donation. Stated differently, agency for changing the speaker (or not) lies with the organs sacrificed as food. This is clear from syntax. The verb for “change” is in the 3rd-person feminine plural, following the rule that broken plurals have feminine markers. The act of donating is nested in a relative clause subordinate to “my organs.” Elkamel’s translation subverts this structuring. I don’t mean to carp at her interpretation. It may seem to be what the verse means to say: The fact of my donating my organs as food for cats doesn’t mean that I’ve become a bird. But it’s not what the verse says!

Should the translator be at pains to make the translation read less strangely than the source?

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

This post is continued from here.

Poetry, May 2023 publishes the Arabic text of Mona Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.

2
A cloud comes into view.
God smiles, it’s my belief, for the hapless little ones.
In the heavens moons a crescent.
I think what grieves it is the falling of a star.

In desert lands clouds carry the relief of rain, not gloom as in English tradition. In the poem they’re God’s smile.

A quirk of Kareem’s Arabic text is the insistent speaker-presence. Lines 2 and 4 start “I believe” and “I think.” A declaring first person interprets celestial events.

The Arabic says, “The moon is changed into a crescent.” I upend the line, adding hackneyed “heavens” for its syllables, and leaning heavily on “moon” as a verb meaning to be in melancholy reverie. Duong Tuong said, “An ideal translation should be a work in which the translator is the co-author.” This interesting doctrine sets dangerous traps for the cheeky student.

Prepositions don’t travel well. Arabic li-, usually meaning “for,” connects “smiles” to “little ones.” Resisting “on” or “upon” adds complexity to the trope of compassionate divinity. Similarly, resisting slippage into “falling star” skirts triviality, mirrors the Arabic syntax, and lends a hint of strangeness.

It seems to me, after all, that a signal trait of lyric is to speak unexpectedly. Translation presents opportunities to do so via a judicious literalness. The trick is knowing when to heed and when to ignore Duong Tuong’s advice that “clinging to the words is not loyalty but… slavery.”

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

I’m pleased to encounter Mona Kareem in Poetry, May 2023 after first reading of her in Arablit & Arablit Quarterly. The Poetry issue prints the Arabic text of Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.

Bilingual texts invite the Arabic student to explore and experiment with his own translations in the stabilizing presence of the version that’s in print. The poem has 7 short, numbered stanzas. I deal here only with the first one. Here’s my version:

1
I trace a sweeping open space;
There I do a dance with death.

When I’m done I catch my breath,
then take a dip in my loud tears.

The intrigue and challenge of translation (as I conceive it) is to stay within the confines of the source’s connotative ranges while hitting upon natural English renderings that have a modicum of snap.

I give myself middling marks on my version here. It may be too idiomatic. It may have singsong rhythms. “Take a dip” may be tonally jarring for its lack of gravity.

A translation is akin to a controlled explosion: something is fractured no matter what, but energy is released as well.

Note: There’s a gross misprint in the Arabic text. The second letter of ‘urāqiṣu, “I dance,” is pointed twice with ḍamma. Mona Kareem has nothing to do with it, of course; the snafu belongs to the magazine.

(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved