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ruminations
Feb. 20th, 2006 12:01 pmAccording to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
timiathan, the poem I translated is getting reprinted this summer. It's humbling that people are actually quoting my translation, and that's what shows up in Google if you put my name in (well, that and the out-of-date TUSDM contact information, which wasn't right even when I did work there). It's odd to be an example of the translator's invisibility; people quote the translation as if it's the poet's original words. It isn't. It can't be; in order for that to be true, the same person would have had to produce both the original and the English versions. What people are quoting is my version of what I think the poet meant. So the question is, did I get it right, and would anybody who didn't know the original know if I didn't? (This is how the Bible got that way; people who didn't, and in most cases couldn't, know the original took the translations literally, and a couple thousand years or so later, we've got...)
I rather suspect I'm making mountains out of molehills here. I was happy with most of that translation when I sent it off in the first place, and what I wasn't happy with was only because I don't think it's possible for "crucify" and other such things to be a reflexive verb. (In a literal sense of the word, you can't crucify yourself. You'll eventually get to a point where it just isn't physically possible.)
This is also what I get for thinking about this at midnight last night, when I probably should have been conducting a thorough inspection of the insides of my eyelids.
I should get back to the paper again. It's going fairly well, but it keeps trying to be practical instead of theoretical, and I submitted the abstract on the grounds that it was theoretical. I think I'll write it as practical, and then go back and cut most of the practice and put in more theory. That'll get it out of my system, anyway.
timiathan, the poem I translated is getting reprinted this summer. It's humbling that people are actually quoting my translation, and that's what shows up in Google if you put my name in (well, that and the out-of-date TUSDM contact information, which wasn't right even when I did work there). It's odd to be an example of the translator's invisibility; people quote the translation as if it's the poet's original words. It isn't. It can't be; in order for that to be true, the same person would have had to produce both the original and the English versions. What people are quoting is my version of what I think the poet meant. So the question is, did I get it right, and would anybody who didn't know the original know if I didn't? (This is how the Bible got that way; people who didn't, and in most cases couldn't, know the original took the translations literally, and a couple thousand years or so later, we've got...)I rather suspect I'm making mountains out of molehills here. I was happy with most of that translation when I sent it off in the first place, and what I wasn't happy with was only because I don't think it's possible for "crucify" and other such things to be a reflexive verb. (In a literal sense of the word, you can't crucify yourself. You'll eventually get to a point where it just isn't physically possible.)
This is also what I get for thinking about this at midnight last night, when I probably should have been conducting a thorough inspection of the insides of my eyelids.
I should get back to the paper again. It's going fairly well, but it keeps trying to be practical instead of theoretical, and I submitted the abstract on the grounds that it was theoretical. I think I'll write it as practical, and then go back and cut most of the practice and put in more theory. That'll get it out of my system, anyway.
