Translation of Poetry - Problem & Responsibility

Prof. C J O'Brien *

Translation is an important activity in life. It is as old as the History of literary civilization. However, in the present age of globalization and localization, translation has acquired added significance as communication between various language communities is becoming imperative. Translation cuts short the distance and differences between countries, culture and communities. It is vital to realize the goal of a global village.

Further, with the introduction of comparative literature studies and modern language theories in to the academic, translation and translation studies have become an important discipline. Translation in effect is one of the means to trace the essential human spirit that underlies all literature. But translation as an activity is not so easy or as simple as the word may convey. It is a highly complex activity in many a myth around it. There are some people who strongly feel that translation cannot be done because to reproduce a text in another language is beyond human endeavour not be done because it amounts the desecration of the text, especially of a religious book.

Poetry is said to be notorious for its quality of untranslatability. Robert Frost, the great American Poet, maintained that poetry itself is that which is lost in translation. Poetry, which is the most stylized use of words, resists translation due to various reasons. It instantly evokes a visual image in the mind of the reader.

Even obstruct images such as justice or mercy become people or objects without any difficulty. A translator of poetry faces the twin problem of structural constraints cultural compatibility, allusive, satirical and ironic statements, pun in words, sound effects, rhyme schemes, emotive and symbolic references and stylistic techniques. Verse is the integral part of poetic form. It is the minimum requisite that differentiates prose from poetry. Some poems by their versification are not amenable to translation as for instance:-

"A is for apple which lies in the grass,
B is for beer which forth in the glass,
C is for curry which we love to eat,
D is for dumplings which are a real treat".

Such poems where there is a verbal play on the alphabets of a particular language cannot be rendered into another language. Then, there are poems with a special rhyme scheme which poses an insurmountable hurdle in translation. A traditional rhyme for pre-school children is a case in point:-
"One, two, buckle my shoe
Three, Four, shut the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lock the gate
Nine ten start again"

A translation of these lines is almost imposible for obvious reason in the above quoted instances, the style and sense are so well blended that it is hardly translatable. More importantly a strictly personal or language based poem allows no translation. Translation is required of poetry which transcends barriers of time and clime, heightens our perception of existence and experience as manifest in such lines.
"To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in a hour"

When a poet exhorts the readers in this way, his words reverberates through any mind that captures their sense and significance. Such pieces are translatable and should be translated. This is the reason why myriads of readers without the knowledge of Latin and Greek have enjoyed the works of Homer and Virgil. But even the translation of such poems is not sans its share of constraints and problems for the translator.

Translation of poetry is not easy because the differences between a poem and its translation start right from the storage of conception. The cause of a poetic piece is mostly intuitive and spontaneous and the reason for the translation is initiative and advertant. A poet writes about a particular thing or experiences because a penetrating perception of something or a situation moves the poet so deeply that he gives a verbal expression to his experience. Thus, it is the poet's own emotional, imaginative or intellectual apprehension of facts and experiences which a poet tries to express.

Hence, there is a vital difference between the activities of original composition, which in the case of original poem, intuition was the cause of conception of the composition, in the case of the translation the cause of conception is the original poem. The original work stimulates the translator to such an extent to such an extent that he experiences a deep affinity for the work which in turn prompts to create a version of that experience in his own language. Yet, the most frequent criticism against translation is that it lacks the spontaneity and power of the original work. It is true that no man can think or feel exactly in totality as the other man and this is not what is expected of a translator either. A good translator of poetry has to be a man of imagination who should be able to pursue and interpret a poem and clothe it in the beauty and freshness of creativity once again.

Language is the basis of translation, so a study of translation inevitably includes a study of language. Poetry is a special kind of language. Inherent in any language are certain dualities, they are both physical and mental, semantic and temporal, private and public, and comprises truth as well as falsity. A poet used duality, ambiguity and opaqueness in a language to his advantage. A translator of poetry has to determine not only what is said but what was meant to be said. He has to study the situation in which both what is meant and was meant. Here the context of the text is very-very important.

Translation of poetry becomes atrocious when it is done by precision sense any imagination and context. Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," cannot be semantically translated in to a language where summers are unpleasant or intolerable. Likewise, the concept of god the father cannot be translated into languages where the deity is female. So apart from context, ambiguity, opaqueness, truth and falsity inherently co-exists in a language, these paradoxical elements provide richness to the language, especially of poetry but add to the problems of translation.

A language develops through its intersection with culture on the planes of time and space, language is nurtured by society and its culture. As a result "no two languages are ever sufficiently similar to the considered as representing the same social reality. The words in which different societies line are distinct words, not merely the same world with different labels attached." Hence, this prose major problem for the translator, the problem of finding, what Engence A Nida calls, "the dynamic equivalence." So a translator of poetry can never achieve fullness or create a faithful translation.

A synonymous code or even a combination of code units in order to interpret a single code unit of the source language (SL) cannot be said to be of complete equivalence, since each unit contains within itself a set of non-transferable associations and connotations." Hence, some critics opine that there can be no complete equivalence in translation but only transpositions from one language to another. Because, complete equivalence cannot take place between texts in to different languages all poetic are it technically untransferable. Only creative transportation is possible.

Apart from linguistics untranslatability when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the Target Language (TL) for on SL term, the cultural untranslatability is more complex. It is due to the observe in the TL cultural of relevant situational feature for SL text. The example of home in English is a case in point. The cultural connotations and connections of this word are not easy to capture in similar or equivalent words in Hindi or other Indian language. Hence, phrases like 'home coming', 'at home' or 'bring home to' are simply untranslatable in to other TL systems.

Thus, translation by its very nature is very complex and difficult exercise. It is true that every art whether it is painting, sculpture or literature, is in fact, somewhere only a translation-"a translation of the original that was composed in the immanent-spare-in-the-heart" of its creator. Poetry loses much of its charm when the poet externalizes or translates into words, the inner melody and the uniqueness of his vision. What is fire in poet's imagination turns to ashes in words, though the spark may still be. Thus, at one level even an original work of art is also an art of translation.