en la universidad del oleaje / in the university of the waves
This morning I had a meeting in Baltimore for my term project (the website I've been posting about this week), so I made my parents take me there and, awesome people that they are, they did. ♥ The meeting went well, everyone seems to like my layout so far, and no one mentioned my stupid mistake (so I didn't point it out; it's really more of a webdesigner thing to notice anyway).
After the meeting, my parents and I went to the Baltimore Aquarium, which is very awesome. Lots of cool sea creatures, and also (randomly) an exhibit on Australian wildlife (of water and air, mostly, so birds and reptiles and lizards and fishes, not kangaroos or anything). And dolphins! There were dolphins! ♥ I hadn't been to an aquarium in ages, so it was loads of fun. :) And I got puffin pants at the gift shop! (PJ pants with puffins on.) Hee!
So for today, an oceanic poem:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Necesito del mar porque me enseña:
no sé si aprendo música o conciencia:
no sé si es ola sola o ser profundo
o sólo ronca voz o deslumbrante
suposición de peces y navíos.
El hecho es que hasta cuando estoy dormido
de algún modo magnético circulo
en la universidad del oleaje.
No son sólo las conchas trituradas
como si algún planeta tembloroso
participara paulatina muerte,
no, del fragmento reconstruyo el día,
de una racha de sal la estalactita
y de una cucharada el dios inmenso.
Lo que antes me enseñó lo guardo. Es aire,
incesante viento, agua y arena.
Parece poco para el hombre joven
que aquí llegó a vivir con sus incendios,
y sin embargo el pulso que subía
y bajaba a su abismo,
el frío del azul que crepitaba,
el desmoronamiento de la estrella,
el tierno desplegarse de la ola
despilfarrando nieve con la espuma,
el poder quieto, allí, determinado
como un trono de piedra en lo profundo,
substituyó el recinto en que crecían
tristeza terca, amontonando olvido,
y cambió bruscamente mi existencia:
de mi adhesión al puro movimiento.
~ "El mar" de Pablo Neruda
*
I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
It's not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.
What it taught me before, I keep. It's air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.
It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.
~ "The Sea" by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
From On The Blue Shore of Silence / A la orilla azul del silencio by Pablo Neruda, English translations by Alastair Reid. (This edition also has gorgeous colour paintings by Mary Heebner.) [ Amazon ]
Neruda is another of my favourite poets. But I can read his poems in Spanish. So when I came along to share this poem for Poetry Month, it made me sad because I have to add the translation. And it's mostly a good translation, mostly literal, rather than taking the essence of the poem and rephrasing it into English-language poetry (though I would argue the essence of a poem is tied inextricably with its language). But Reid does make a few changes. One or two translation discrepancies I can live with, since I'm sure different people choose different equivalent phrases and I am certainly not a professional translator. But he also changes some of the punctuation, which irks me no end. Punctuation (at least in Spanish and English) does not need translation. Leave the punctuation the way the poet intended it; it's part of the poem. And I also didn't like Reid's translation of the last line, where he deviated slightly from a literal translation. The literal translation would be: "from my adhesion to pure movement", and I like what that conveys about how much the poet changed, not just becoming part of the movement, but changing from static (adhesive) to fluid (moving).
Too nitpicky of me? As a poet (and a writer in general, really), I don't think so. I would hate for someone to come along and change the meaning of my work by changing words when every word means so much.
And thus we come to my perpetual source of sadness: the fact that I do not, in fact, know every language on Earth nor do I have any hope of ever knowing them all. And so when I read something that was not originally written in English, I mourn the nuances that are lost in translation. I'm only reading an approximation of a story or poem, someone's interpretation of it, not the work itself. If I read, say, Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and think it's a fantastic story, I'm left wondering how much of that is Funke and how much of that is Anthea Bell. And what cultural references and jokes am I missing? The Harry Potter books, for instance (which were translated to my utter vexation from British English to American English, though thankfully less heavily towards the end of the series), in which "lavatory" is replaced with "bathroom" or "cellotape" is replaced with "scotch tape". I may not know what "cellotape" is off the top of my head, but I can figure it out. And if "cellotape" were in the American editions instead of "scotch tape", I would have gotten the joke about "spell-o-tape". The Harry Potter "translations" are, of course, utterly ridiculous (they're in English to begin with, there's no need to translate them; I am a clever person and can figure out those dialectic differences just fine), but they do illustrate my point. Many things are lost in translations and they may seem like small details to some people, but I think those details are just as important as the story itself. Change/edit/remove those details, and you've got a different story. (Well, perhaps not an entirely different story, but definitely a different slant on the story.) I find it incredibly sad that I can't read the actual story of so many books.
Wow, that translation rant got out of hand. Well, now you know something else about me. A detail about myself that hadn't been previously "translated" to my LJ, if you will.
ETA: Oh! I almost forgot. As my parents were driving me back to the house after dinner, we spotted a car with the license plate WOOKIE. ♥ With all the Star Wars lately, I think this may be the final sign that I have to just break down and buy the DVDs, even though they come with the stupid special editions and do not come in a box set.
After the meeting, my parents and I went to the Baltimore Aquarium, which is very awesome. Lots of cool sea creatures, and also (randomly) an exhibit on Australian wildlife (of water and air, mostly, so birds and reptiles and lizards and fishes, not kangaroos or anything). And dolphins! There were dolphins! ♥ I hadn't been to an aquarium in ages, so it was loads of fun. :) And I got puffin pants at the gift shop! (PJ pants with puffins on.) Hee!
So for today, an oceanic poem:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Necesito del mar porque me enseña:
no sé si aprendo música o conciencia:
no sé si es ola sola o ser profundo
o sólo ronca voz o deslumbrante
suposición de peces y navíos.
El hecho es que hasta cuando estoy dormido
de algún modo magnético circulo
en la universidad del oleaje.
No son sólo las conchas trituradas
como si algún planeta tembloroso
participara paulatina muerte,
no, del fragmento reconstruyo el día,
de una racha de sal la estalactita
y de una cucharada el dios inmenso.
Lo que antes me enseñó lo guardo. Es aire,
incesante viento, agua y arena.
Parece poco para el hombre joven
que aquí llegó a vivir con sus incendios,
y sin embargo el pulso que subía
y bajaba a su abismo,
el frío del azul que crepitaba,
el desmoronamiento de la estrella,
el tierno desplegarse de la ola
despilfarrando nieve con la espuma,
el poder quieto, allí, determinado
como un trono de piedra en lo profundo,
substituyó el recinto en que crecían
tristeza terca, amontonando olvido,
y cambió bruscamente mi existencia:
de mi adhesión al puro movimiento.
~ "El mar" de Pablo Neruda
*
I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
It's not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.
What it taught me before, I keep. It's air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.
It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.
~ "The Sea" by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
From On The Blue Shore of Silence / A la orilla azul del silencio by Pablo Neruda, English translations by Alastair Reid. (This edition also has gorgeous colour paintings by Mary Heebner.) [ Amazon ]
Neruda is another of my favourite poets. But I can read his poems in Spanish. So when I came along to share this poem for Poetry Month, it made me sad because I have to add the translation. And it's mostly a good translation, mostly literal, rather than taking the essence of the poem and rephrasing it into English-language poetry (though I would argue the essence of a poem is tied inextricably with its language). But Reid does make a few changes. One or two translation discrepancies I can live with, since I'm sure different people choose different equivalent phrases and I am certainly not a professional translator. But he also changes some of the punctuation, which irks me no end. Punctuation (at least in Spanish and English) does not need translation. Leave the punctuation the way the poet intended it; it's part of the poem. And I also didn't like Reid's translation of the last line, where he deviated slightly from a literal translation. The literal translation would be: "from my adhesion to pure movement", and I like what that conveys about how much the poet changed, not just becoming part of the movement, but changing from static (adhesive) to fluid (moving).
Too nitpicky of me? As a poet (and a writer in general, really), I don't think so. I would hate for someone to come along and change the meaning of my work by changing words when every word means so much.
And thus we come to my perpetual source of sadness: the fact that I do not, in fact, know every language on Earth nor do I have any hope of ever knowing them all. And so when I read something that was not originally written in English, I mourn the nuances that are lost in translation. I'm only reading an approximation of a story or poem, someone's interpretation of it, not the work itself. If I read, say, Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and think it's a fantastic story, I'm left wondering how much of that is Funke and how much of that is Anthea Bell. And what cultural references and jokes am I missing? The Harry Potter books, for instance (which were translated to my utter vexation from British English to American English, though thankfully less heavily towards the end of the series), in which "lavatory" is replaced with "bathroom" or "cellotape" is replaced with "scotch tape". I may not know what "cellotape" is off the top of my head, but I can figure it out. And if "cellotape" were in the American editions instead of "scotch tape", I would have gotten the joke about "spell-o-tape". The Harry Potter "translations" are, of course, utterly ridiculous (they're in English to begin with, there's no need to translate them; I am a clever person and can figure out those dialectic differences just fine), but they do illustrate my point. Many things are lost in translations and they may seem like small details to some people, but I think those details are just as important as the story itself. Change/edit/remove those details, and you've got a different story. (Well, perhaps not an entirely different story, but definitely a different slant on the story.) I find it incredibly sad that I can't read the actual story of so many books.
Wow, that translation rant got out of hand. Well, now you know something else about me. A detail about myself that hadn't been previously "translated" to my LJ, if you will.
ETA: Oh! I almost forgot. As my parents were driving me back to the house after dinner, we spotted a car with the license plate WOOKIE. ♥ With all the Star Wars lately, I think this may be the final sign that I have to just break down and buy the DVDs, even though they come with the stupid special editions and do not come in a box set.