EthicalDative

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2022/10/08/assaying-a-translation-strange-dawn/ )

An interesting feature of a translation is how “faithful” it is to the source text. Faithfulness (a slippery term) tends to be a matter of degree, to fluctuate as the translation goes forward. The translator, sailing his small boat, tacks as necessary to maintain a heading. Gauging how he inhabits the wind needs a vocabulary. Here’s one I’ve devised for comment on translated text:

Congruent: matches the source text fairly closely, with minimal liberties taken for readability.
Expansive: adds interpretive structure or content not discernible in the source text but plausibly deriving from it.
Inventive: carries the “expansive” element to a level not obviously supported by the source text.

Note the adverbs “fairly,” plausibly” and “obviously” used above; they signal choppy waters respecting rigor and consistency of application.

There’s a fourth and final label to be used sparingly because it suggests that the translation betrays the poem in some way — a bold allegation. The label is Transgressive.

This excerpt from ‘Song’ (1) applies the labels line-by-line for illustrative purposes. In practice, there’s little need to mark congruency — it’s the departures from it that illuminate. (The published version is in italics.)

Sang the spring —
[ḡannā-r-rabī^a —]
He sang springtime — [Congruent]

the flowers that grow
[‘al-azhāra-l-latī tanmū]
the flowers that open themselves [Expansive. Root n-m-w of tanmū is only “grow,” but the suggestion of “opening,” as in blooming is congenial to the context. I find the reflexive verb “open themselves” oddly specific. On the other hand, “grow” is flat and general. The poet was capable of writing the equivalent of “opening themselves” in Arabic, and did not. To what extent the translator is entitled to groom his rendering to make it spicier or more attractive to the ear of the target reader is a delicate issue. I cautiously favor submissiveness to the tone and tenor of the source so far as the translator can apprehend and reflect these.]

after a long night.
[min ba^di laylin ṭawīlin]
after a long night. [Congruent]

Sang the streets,
[ḡannā-š-šawāri^a]
He sang the streets [Congruent]

did not sing the walls.
[lam yuḡanni-l-judrāna]
but he wouldn’t sing the hindering walls. [Inventive verging on Transgressive. The Arabic is starkly declarative and unconditioned preterite. The coordinating “but” is absent; in the translation it introduces a contrast.“Wouldn’t” lends a suggestion of rebellious intent, of refusal, a willful withholding of song by the singer. “Hindering” isn’t an exclusive trait of walls; they can also protect. It’s possible the epithet volunteered here becomes meaningful later in the poem. If so, is it fair for the translation to get ahead of things? If it doesn’t find subsequent validation, “hindering” seems all the more unsolicited.]

A pause for meditation: Hemingway thought he admired Dostoyevsky’s writing, but knew no Russian. It was translator Constance Garnett’s carved down version of the Russian’s prose into a trimmer English shape that constituted what the American was exposed to. He liked those short, declarative sentences that Dostoyevsky didn’t write. (2)

To be continued.

————-

Notes

(1) Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, Ghareeb Iskander, Bilingual Edition, Translated from the Arabic by John Glenday and Ghareeb Iskander, Syracuse University Press, 2015.
(2) David Remnick, “The Translation Wars,” The New Yorker, 10-30-05): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars

(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

I shove off in the El Toro dinghy of my dreams to navigate Gilgamesh’s Snake (1), sailing on a sea of Arabic towards a far shore, which is the poem’s end.

Ghareeb Iskander’s poem has 5 parts:

I. Song
II. The Lost Beginning
III. Something Began to Talk
IV. How Will I Ever Write About It?
V. Conclusion.

Fool in a dinghy on open water: what could go wrong? Plenty, but I have a map for reference: the English translation made by John Glenday and Iskander. That translation commands respect, not least because of the poet’s collaboration in it. Dissecting it in a spirit of inquiry pays tribute to it. Treating it as unquestionable, however, is to forego a voyage of discovery. Out of the question.

I’m keen to observe how the published translation does or doesn’t corroborate my own reading of the Arabic original. I’ll accord the Hans Wehr dictionary (2) the status of lexical benchmark for the purposes of my adventure. Doing so is a confessedly arbitrary expedient whose justification is easiest to show with an example. (The citations consist of my translation and transliteration followed by the published translation in italics.)

‘Song,” the short poem that inaugurates the sequence, begins as follows:

I. Song
[‘uḡnīyaẗun]
Song

He sang every thing:
[ḡannā kulla šay’in:]
He sang the sum of things:

sang the sleeping pavements
[ḡannā-l-‘arṣifaẗa-n-nā’imaẗa]
the drowsing pavement,

and the strange dawn.
[wa-l-fajra-l-ḡarība.]
the unfamiliar dawn.

Here is Wehr’s listing of meanings for ḡarīb, the descriptor of “dawn”:

strange, foreign, alien, extraneous (^alā or ^an to s.o.); strange, odd, queer, quaint, unusual, extraordinary, curious, remarkable, peculiar; amazing, astonishing, baffling, startling, wondrous, marvelous, grotesque; difficult to understand, abstruse, obscure (language); remote, outlandish, rare, uncommon (word)…

In the listing, commas separate words considered synonymous; semicolons signal a new semantic range. Note that “strange” occurs twice. “Unfamiliar,” used in the published translation, doesn’t occur at all, but seems a plausible alternative to “strange.”

For a translator synonyms are not interchangeable. This may be especially true of poetry, where connotation is magnified through concentration. Consider how different options from the Wehr listing color each “dawn” uniquely:

the alien dawn; the quaint dawn; the peculiar dawn; the grotesque dawn…

To be continued.

—————

Notes

(1) Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, Ghareeb Iskander, Bilingual Edition, Translated from the Arabic by John Glenday and Ghareeb Iskander, Syracuse University Press, 2015.

(2) Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J Milton Cowan, Cornell University Press, 1966. [From the copyright page: “This dictionary is an enlarged and improved version of ‘Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart’ by Hans Wehr and includes the contents of the ‘Supplement zum Arabischen Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart’ by the same author.” From Cowan’s preface dated 1960: “… [This edition] is more accurate and much more comprehensive than the original version, which was produced under extremely unfavorable conditions in Germany during the late war years and the early postwar period.”]

(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved