masochism

[dchenes]

Last week, we were translating a poem by Baudelaire. The original rhymes, but none of our drafts did. Because of the midterm exam, we didn't have to do a final version, but just to see if I could do it, I sat down and made mine rhyme anyway. The general answer is Yes, I can do it, but I'm not happy with all of it. I've got one stanza that I think is spot on, and two that are passable, and two that I really don't like.

In the process of doing this, I found out that it's very difficult to come up with, for instance, a word in two syllables that both means "body" and rhymes with "light". Too many conditions have to be true all at once, or you have to change the meaning a bit.

Last night, I discovered exactly what happens when I have a sore throat and get a popcorn hull stuck in it. OW. That counts as masochism because I should have known better than to try eating popcorn with a sore throat in the first place. Be that as it may, my throat and the rest of my cold are definitely getting better. Thank goodness. I can't imagine being stuck in a minivan for thirteen hours one way with somebody with a bad cold would be very much fun for anyone else.

We're leaving for the conference at 7 AM on Thursday morning, and hoping to get to Amherst somewhere around dinnertime Thursday night. We leave again around noon on Sunday and get back here in time for classes on Monday. Thank goodness I don't have to do anything on Monday morning.

I should make a list of errands to get done this afternoon. It's a reasonably nice day out, and fresh air and exercise are supposed to be good for you, and I want to have at least a couple of days next week when I don't have to do anything. It is, after all, supposed to be a vacation week. I hope I can get everything done before Monday.

Comments

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Somebody I can't recall who, wrote a book on translation, particularly in regards to poetry (I think? maybe not). Either way, having read Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz in English, I wish my Spanish were good enough to read it in the original. I find the decisions translators must make to be fascinating and challenging ones.

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

I suspect it was Octavio Paz; I had to read him on translating poetry two weeks ago (in English).

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

How was it?

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

Interesting. What we read had to do with translation as a method of unifying two separate cultures, and sort of what to do with cultural and poetic elements that can't really be translated. It was more practical than theoretical, but I'm getting tired of theory, so that was good.

[melopoeia.livejournal.com]

they say poetry is that which is lost in translation.
Judging particularly from one version of the Aeneid I read, I do not completely hold with that statement.

I always prefer parallel translated books though, because they preserve the music of the original and give you a true sense of the translator's aural sense.

I wonder (sacrilege I know) if, when you have so many conditions to meet to make something rhyme, as in your case with 'body' and 'light', someone could write a computer program, a sort of omnibustic translator's dictionary, where you typed in the conditions (including vowel sounds and important hard to explain things like that) and it delivered whatever it could.

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

All the translation theorists I've read so far say that poetry is impossible to translate.

I suppose it would be possible to write that program, but if there's no such thing as a two-syllable English word that means "body" and rhymes with "light", it's not going to help very much. I get frustrated with my thesaurus because sometimes it seems to have every word in it except the one I want. Not that I always know what the one I want is, but I generally know what it isn't.