"they poured out their memories / they poured out their hopes / of what's left of eternity"

[larryhammer]

Ah, the tradeoffs in the balance beam of translation. Finding equivalents in the target language of the sense, tone, and formal patterns of the original is challenging enough when it's Latin or Spanish -- with Japanese, unlike those languages, because the ordinary word order is reversed from that of English, a direct translation reverses the order of images and imagery, which often enough are in a deliberate progression. Sometimes it's a fiendishly difficult poser. Fun, of course -- any problem worth solving is. But still a poser.

An example, to work with something concrete: poem 12 from the Kokinshu, an early 10th century anthology. This is from book I, the first book of spring, and in the progression of the seasons things have barely gotten under way: in the poems before it, we've heard the bush warbler sing, but snow has continued falling and the plum trees have not yet bloomed, though not for want of wishing. First the romanized original:

tanikaze ni
tokuru kôri no
himagoto ni
uchi-izuru nami ya
haru no hatsuhana

Taking it word by word, to show the ordering:

valley + wind | <-(agent)
melt-> | ice | <-of
crevice + each | <-(location)
with-small-motions + exit-> | wave | ?
spring | <-of | first + flower

A lot of compounds -- agglutinative language and all that. Grammatically, this is head noun ("waves") modified by a relative clause ("that spurt out of each crevice of the ice") stacked with a second relative clause ("that melts in the valley wind"), followed by a particle expressing doubt, here conveyed by the question mark, followed by another noun + modifier ("first flowers of spring"). In outline, "is A = B?" with the "is" left unstated. In straightforward English, this might come out as:

    The waves that spurt out
from each of the crevices
    in the ice melting
beneath the valley breezes --
might they be spring's first flowers?

This smoothly replicates that long first clause, but makes a hash of the progression of substantives -- wind-melt-ice-crack-spurt-wave, moving from high to low, from general to local, from cause to effect. One way to fix that is to take things line-by-line, something like:

    In the valley wind
the ice has started melting,
    and from every crack
little waves are spurting out --
might they be spring's first flowers?

Leaving aside the unwarranted "started" added to fit the form ("little" can be defensibly extrapolated from the verbal prefix uchi), this replicates the imagery down and along, but at the expense of turning a long noun phrase into two choppy independent clauses.

So which is better? Which is more "faithful"? What does "faithful" mean when it comes to translations? Much ink and phosphor has been expended on these questions, with no firm answer. I have my own biases of course, but I'm curious -- what do you think?

[Poll #1620205]

---L.

ETA: A way to avoid that "started" is to key something of the apparent setting: "the river ice is melting".

Comments

[alpha-strike.livejournal.com]

While a sufficiently clever translator may be able to manage the progression wind-melt-ice-crack-spurt-wave and the desired imagery and the mixture of doubt, hope, and inevitability that is the first whisper of spring, I don't know that it can always be done with any semblance of meter. Not speaking Japanese, I can't speak to which translation is more technically correct, nor do I know which better captures the original intent. If you're asking which I like better, I prefer the second. Mind you, I know doodley-squat about poetry and could be steering you into Hallmark card land, so temper my thoughts with caution.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

The temptation to tick the last box is so high...

But I tick "other: it's ALL image".

Because. Does "grammar" per se even matter in poetry? The relevant difference between long flowing sentences and short chopy ones isn't grammar,it's "flowing" vs "choppy" -- which is an aspect of the reader's evoked imagery (though cued by the form more than the content of the words). It's part of the sound of the poem.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I can't read or speak the language, but:

for : with small motions + exit, would "trickle" be better than "spurt out" as a verb?

I'd also say: flow of image over grammatical structure because the sense of structural language is so very different.

It's like swearing. In English, we swear. The Japanese decline verbs. The *effect* of either is similar, but a strict translation can't produce it.

(Also, the native Japanese speaker who lived with me for a year (to learn English) had some difficulty with our use of genetives).

[larryhammer]

For the spurt, the prefix uchi comes from utsu, "to hit" -- according the commentary I'm leaning on, as a verbal prefix this indicated chotto shita dousa, which I read as "triffling/small action". "Trickle" doesn't seem to fit this, especially given the waves.

---L.

[larryhammer]

As usual, you manage distill my flailing into a short compact paragraph. I wasn't entirely happy with my use of "grammar" in this, but couldn't come up with a better way of putting it. "structure of images versus flow of phrasing" comes closer to describing the balance act.

---L.

[larryhammer]

I suspect you know more about poetry than you think.

As for original intent, all one can do is give something the best reading one can. I mean, I *think* this is supposed to be set near a river with the ice about to break, but that's really just a guess. And so on, with interpreting everything else about it.

---L.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

You are, of course, right. For some reason, just on an English level, that word sticks in my eyes.

[larryhammer]

It's not the best word possible, I suspect, but I have not yet found a better one. There are indeed possible unfortunate connotations.

---L.