Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman
English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org
Spanish Interpretation by JMN
[Translator’s note: In what’s coming, I’ve preferred preterite tense over imperfect tense where the speaker gives vent to a rapture of connection transcending space-time, indeed his own mortality, with citizenry to come; he looks back at his own actions and emotions in an imagined future, evoking the parallelism with theirs. Though his actions and states of mind are repetitive — “many and many a time,” “I was refresh’d,” etc. — and therefore have imperfective aspect normally in Spanish, I conceive of the speaker as projectively lumping his life (with all its repetition) into a terminated and concluded dimension — elegiac hindsight from anticipated afterlife, so to speak — and therefore better conveyed by the preterite. I have open ears if a Spanish reader disagrees with my tense choice.]
Roughly one-third of part 3 follows. Remember, there are 9 parts.
(3 begun)
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
Para nada sirve, ni tiempo ni lugar — ni para nada la distancia,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Estoy con vosotros, hombres y mujeres de una generación, o de aquí a tantas generaciones,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Igual lo que sentís al contemplar el río y el cielo, eso lo sentí yo,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Igual que entre vosotros cualquiera es miembro de una muchedumbre viva, yo fui miembro de una muchedumbre,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Igual que os refrescáis con la alegría del rio y su flujo brillante, yo me refresqué,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Igual que quedáis parados y apoyados en la barra, y no obstante os precipitáis con la veloz corriente, yo me paré y me precipité,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
Igual que contempláis los innumerables mástiles de barcos y las pipas de cañón grueso de los buques de vapor, yo contemplé.
(c) 2021 JMN. All rights reserved
‘Ethics of Translation’ (?)
As a presumptive translator I’m nagged by a sense of straying where I don’t belong. Where is my writ to translate into a non-native language, for example? I didn’t suck Spanish from mother’s teat. How can I possibly match what a native could do? Likely I can’t, but catch me not trying if I choose.
A poorly written and superficial article by the BBC stirs the putrid pot of who is entitled, or not, to translate whom and what.
Poet Amanda Gorman, who is Black, recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration. (I saw it live.) Her performance was a resounding success and widely acclaimed.
Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who is White, was commissioned by a Dutch publisher, with Gorman’s sign-off, to translate Gorman’s poem into Dutch.
Janice Deul, Dutch journalist and diversity campaigner who is Black, raised objection over the choice of a White woman to translate the poem. The decision, she said, “perpetuated the marginalisation of black voices in the Netherlands.”
Among the many examples of black Dutch poets are Zaire Krieger, whose work encapsulates the challenges of being a woman of colour in a white country, Rachel Rumai who recently featured in an Afro Lit anthology and spoken word artist Babs Gons, whose Polyglot was chosen as the poem for 2021 Dutch Book Week.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld withdrew from the project to make way for someone closer to Gorman’s ethnicity and culture.
(Anna Holligan, “Why a white poet did not translate Amanda Gorman,” bbc.com, 3-10-21)
Much opportunity for venturesome translators lies beneath this controversy. Craft, in my view, should lead. Who crosses lines sought to be drawn, and how, will be of keen interest.
(c) 2021 JMN