(no subject)
I'd like to complain for a minute about how Robert Bly's translations are just really dumb.
I'm looking particularly at his Lorca translations on www.poets.org, because I was looking for Lorca poems for motherlessguns. I saw his and went :\? and then saw the originals and to his went >:/. Just, no. He does some interesting stuff, not all his choices are terrible, but he misses a few things that are just like, omg, look at a dictionary before you spin off into imaginationland. Just, ground yourself.
For instance, this poem:
Gacela y la muerte oscura // Bly's Gacela and the dark death // my translation
los martirios que da la hierba -> the torture sessions the grass arranges for
lit: "the martyrdoms that gives the grass" - "the martyrdoms the grass gives" with common English syntax
martirios can also be torment, ordeal, torture.
Bly's "arranges for" is grammatically awkward and not even in there. I can take "arranges" instead of gives, for torture sessions, but not arranges for. AND, why torture sessions at all? Because martirio is martirio, martyrdom, and not tortura or even figurative tormenta. Seriously, Bly.
un rato -> half a second
un rato is a while, a bit, a moment, a brief span of time. Not as specific as Bly makes it. Which, okay, something as specific as half a second is cool and adds to the poem in a contemporary and surrealist way. But it's not what Lorca wrote.
la sombra inmensa -> the elephantine shadow
Again, overspecific. Inmensa = huge, big, immense. Elephantine? to say "I am the elephantine" anything just sounds like you're saying you're an elephant, and lorca is not evoking elephants.
THIS STANZA DRIVES ME NUTS
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
OKAY LOOK.
Cúbreme por la aurora con un velo -> When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
NO.
Cover me for/through/during/throughout the dawn with a veil.
It is quite straightforward except for the por, which is always hard to translate into English.
I can take the "when it's dawn". But "just"? no. "throw"? :/ we're talking about covering. "some sort of cloth"? Veil!
moja con agua dura mis zapatos -> pour a little hard water over my shoes
I don't see "pour" anywhere - the verb is "wet" or "moisten". Neither do I see "a little".
I actually don't really know how to deal with "pinza". It is claws, but it's also a pincer or dart. Which scorpions are more about, their stinger, more than their claws. IDEK
llanto -> a mournful song
llanto is weeping or crying
aquel niño oscuro -> that shadowy child
"shadowy"? oscuro is more plainly "dark"
que quería cortarse el corazón -> who longed to cut his heart open
Okay, I DO like this one a lot. "cortarse el corazon" is kind of a neologism of Lorca's - they aren't new words but cortarse is cut yourself - like cortarse el pelo, cut your hair, or cortarse las venas, cut your veins - and to make it "cut open" instead of just "cut" is really cool, I think. Dunno if it's faithful; I don't quite get the use of cortarse, like if you could use it to say you cut something out of your or off of you.
Also, quería -> longed for is beautiful. Not just "was wanting" but longing. mmm. I was tempted to steal this while working on my translation. I dunno if I can justify "longed for" but I can justify "cut open".
AND NOW back to my scheduled translating.
I'm looking particularly at his Lorca translations on www.poets.org, because I was looking for Lorca poems for motherlessguns. I saw his and went :\? and then saw the originals and to his went >:/. Just, no. He does some interesting stuff, not all his choices are terrible, but he misses a few things that are just like, omg, look at a dictionary before you spin off into imaginationland. Just, ground yourself.
For instance, this poem:
Gacela y la muerte oscura // Bly's Gacela and the dark death // my translation
los martirios que da la hierba -> the torture sessions the grass arranges for
lit: "the martyrdoms that gives the grass" - "the martyrdoms the grass gives" with common English syntax
martirios can also be torment, ordeal, torture.
Bly's "arranges for" is grammatically awkward and not even in there. I can take "arranges" instead of gives, for torture sessions, but not arranges for. AND, why torture sessions at all? Because martirio is martirio, martyrdom, and not tortura or even figurative tormenta. Seriously, Bly.
un rato -> half a second
un rato is a while, a bit, a moment, a brief span of time. Not as specific as Bly makes it. Which, okay, something as specific as half a second is cool and adds to the poem in a contemporary and surrealist way. But it's not what Lorca wrote.
la sombra inmensa -> the elephantine shadow
Again, overspecific. Inmensa = huge, big, immense. Elephantine? to say "I am the elephantine" anything just sounds like you're saying you're an elephant, and lorca is not evoking elephants.
THIS STANZA DRIVES ME NUTS
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
OKAY LOOK.
Cúbreme por la aurora con un velo -> When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
NO.
Cover me for/through/during/throughout the dawn with a veil.
It is quite straightforward except for the por, which is always hard to translate into English.
I can take the "when it's dawn". But "just"? no. "throw"? :/ we're talking about covering. "some sort of cloth"? Veil!
moja con agua dura mis zapatos -> pour a little hard water over my shoes
I don't see "pour" anywhere - the verb is "wet" or "moisten". Neither do I see "a little".
I actually don't really know how to deal with "pinza". It is claws, but it's also a pincer or dart. Which scorpions are more about, their stinger, more than their claws. IDEK
llanto -> a mournful song
llanto is weeping or crying
aquel niño oscuro -> that shadowy child
"shadowy"? oscuro is more plainly "dark"
que quería cortarse el corazón -> who longed to cut his heart open
Okay, I DO like this one a lot. "cortarse el corazon" is kind of a neologism of Lorca's - they aren't new words but cortarse is cut yourself - like cortarse el pelo, cut your hair, or cortarse las venas, cut your veins - and to make it "cut open" instead of just "cut" is really cool, I think. Dunno if it's faithful; I don't quite get the use of cortarse, like if you could use it to say you cut something out of your or off of you.
Also, quería -> longed for is beautiful. Not just "was wanting" but longing. mmm. I was tempted to steal this while working on my translation. I dunno if I can justify "longed for" but I can justify "cut open".
AND NOW back to my scheduled translating.