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[zempasuchil]

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

Comments

[zempasuchil]

AW MAN I TYPED A THING AND ACCIDENTALLY DELETED IT

basically, yes we should get together, when you are up for company cos I get that socializing can add to exhaustion sometimes, and do this complaining session, and then like eat comfort food or watch a comfort movie afterwards. just let me know when you want to. you are busier than me these days for sure. *HUGS*

[miss_morland]

Hm, this was interesting... I know he's translated one of my favourite Norwegian poets, but I've never really seen the results -- now I kind of want to, to see if I could be justified in having a complaining session of my own. :-P

[zempasuchil]

I love talking about translation nitty gritty, haha. I hope you end up not having reason to complain! but it is kinda fun, heh.

[engelen]

"martirios" can be torture indeed... it seems he's talking about working in the field, so I think "torture" is appropriate. Martyrdom sounds a bit too much like religion to me, and I think this is not the case

[zempasuchil]

Yay! I'm glad you read this! I was really interested in hearing what you'd have to say, as a native Spanish speaker who also knows English super well.

I think I might've been more inclined towards martyrdom because I've been translating another volume of more religiously-themed poetry, by Yolanda Bedregal. Thanks for the clarification. Knowing how similar certain synonyms are is one of the most difficult things for me, because of course synonyms are never the exact same, right, but it's necessary to think them all through anyway to be very sure about connotation. *makes a note of martirio~torture*

OH TOTALLY gosh I can't believe I didn't see that dormir/sueño difference in that apples line. Do you really think "sleep through"? Cos that sounds like he'd be missing it, which sounds odd to me since he wants to sleep. It might sound too strange to say "I want to sleep the dream of apples"... hmm!

I see also that you've translated enterarme as to learn of - I had a hard time figuring out what enterarse meant, I think I slipped up

[engelen]

Seriously, that guy... RAGE... I certainly doubt he knew what he was doing. Someone else commented that he translated a Nordic poem? I think that if you're going to be a literature translation, you should specialize in ONE language, and make it your upmost priority

[engelen]

a much better version than Bly's that is!