h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First of all, I dunno nuffink about poetry so this could be the stupidest question ever. Is a poem (such as the 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' etc) still good in french? Or do the french have to read it in English to properly appreciate it?

Ah Rogan Josh ! So profound.

Why am I getting your messages again ?

Chips

If they have a good translation, they'llcertainly be able to enjoy it in French, but translations are often very difficult to do, the nuances, puns and such can get lost if the foreign language doesn't have similar puns.During my time on hootoo, I've often come across things that just are un-translatable, especially the jokes, so either you understand them in English, or you rather not tell them at all.

An English poem is not as good when translated into another language. But with a good translator, you can get something close to the original effect. Similarly, poems in other languages are not so good when translated into English.

Have a look at A679557 where I've tried to translate a German poem into English. I can assure you that my version in English isn't half as good as the original in German.

We have a similar problem the other way around of course.
Like the old anglo saxon and norse sagas (those which we have). Same for egyptian poetry, which i believe is said to be very good. But you have to know coptic (or whatever it is) to fully understand it.

I think one of the reasons fr this is that language is not just a word=object construction. There are all sorts of nuances and subtleties that just don;t work when you translate. Indeed, there have been several threads on here recently for translation help where a direct translation is gibberish and needs to be translatd in intent rather than actuality.

It certainly depends entirely upon the translation. In which case the translator, if he's done a good job, should get most of the credit for making something equally as pleasing in another language.

Poems must be the hardest thing for anyone to write in a foreign language.

Having said that, I've tried translating songs. You not only have to convey the meaning, but you have to look for words which sound similar so that the song isn't spoiled by hard consonants falling in the wrong place, and, of course, it has to rhyme, fit the music, make sense, have the conciseness of poetry, make use of equivalent metaphors, re-create the atmosphere for listeners of that language and get the message across. That's more than just changing the words from one language to another.

Where cultural bridges have to be crossed, the translation is doubly difficult. I can't possibly think of a way to make Wordsworth's daffodils come over as romantic in German - the word for daffodil is just not as flowing or soft in its sound.

You can call them "Osterglöckchen" - the yellow ones that Wordsworth saw, which is an awkward and very prosaic word (Easter bells) or you can use the generic "Narzissen" which, bearing in mind the hardness of the "tz" for "z" sound in German, immediately intrudes on the beauty of the scene. Apart from which it's too close to the word for "narcissist" which has negative connotations - even though it might be fitting for Wordsworth. But a German person reading "Narzissen" or "Osterglöckchen" would not be able to visualise the breathtaking view of the flowers which Wordsworth had.

Ironically, it may even be that it works with English readers because the poem is so well known that the picture conjured up by the poem has been imprinted on people's memories and when they read the poem, the memory is re-activated.

It would be interesting to know how the "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" poem actually sounds to someone who lives in a country where English is spoken, but daffodils are rare.

It's a really cheerful poem, too, which may be difficult to convey if you're going to translate it into French, as the French word for daffs is "jonquils" which has the very dark "o" sound which could drag the mood down.

So many things to think about. If you put enough thought into it, you can make a poem as good in any other language, but the finished result is not the work of the original poet!

Hats off to you Gnonob, you are a clever soul.

Chips I opted to take 'anti-profundity measures' by adding 'dunno nuffink' in my question.

Good word play

In reply to how foreigners would see a phrase like that, I would say knowing the English weather I find the phrase "Lonely as a cloud" rather weird.

There are times where the poet themselves translates it. As in the case of the Danish guy Piet Hein's "Gruk"s. He translated them himself into several languages. Shouldn't loose too much that way.

There's a fascinating section of Douglas Hofstatder's book "Metamagical Themas" on the difficulty of translating poetry. He comes at it, at least in part, from the direction of language as an expression of the quality of consciousness, and how a native French or Japanese speaker has, by virtue of their different brain wiring, actually a fundamentally different experience of consciousness than a native English speaker, EVEN IF that French or Japanese person speaks good English. The extreme of this is Hopi, which expresses no tenses - everything in Hopi is happening NOW. Weird. ( alert: Klingon doesn't have tenses either, but it does have "aspects", in that different endings express whether an action is ongoing, completed or definitely, finally completed.)

I highly recommend "Metamagical Themas".

I also recommend googling on "Jaseroque"...

H.

Ach, it was Godel, Escher, Bach.

Get that too...

http://varatek.com/scott/jaberwocky_french.html

H.

I forgot to mention how different impressions of the world would also make it difficult to translate. For example all that stuff about "My heart belongs to her" might seem rather weird to a person who grew up in a culture where the heart is not traditionally the seat of emotions and the soul. Or the way for example a snake in some countries is a sign of deceit, and in others of wisdom.

Yes - particularly with associations you can get into trouble. Where in English green is jealousy or envy, in German it is the colour of hope. Whereas in English you "get the blues" or are "blue" - i.e. unhappy, blue is the colour of happiness in the German culture. There is no concept of "yellow" being a symbol of cowardice in German.

These discrepancies repeat themselves in other languages - but that applies to all translation - not only poetry.

There are plenty of German pop groups who take a well-known pop song which is originally sung in English and put German words to it, which sound similar but which have a completely different meaning - often with (intentionally) hilarious results. German dialects lend themselves particularly well to this.

Hi TC,

Getting back to Wordsworh and his dreary old daffodils for a moment - that poem does seem strange to at least one Australian. (Me, that is.) I seem to recall that Wordstrangler was by way of being awed by nature etc etc as manifested in lashings of daffodils... Around here, where great sweeps of daffodils exist, it's a sign of intensive gardening and a defeat of nature. Environmental vandalism, in fact. He may be a good poet, but a fair amount of his work is slippery and elusive when read in this hemisphere.

(He's stil more readable than dismal Tennyson, though.)

Ivan.

Hi Ivan - that's just the sort of answer I was looking for. I thought it would mean something different - particularly when the readers of the poems are so far away (and yet English is their mother tongue)

So what would be an example of an Australian idyll and is there poetry on the subject?

I don't think we really do idylls, down here. I certainly can't think of an example right now. About a hundred years ago there was a surge of nationalism in poetry; the best-known example (and the one that was forced upon us at school) would be this:

http://www.grandpapencil.com/stories/colonial/sunburn.htm

Even then, it's Australia seen through the eyes of a displaced Anglo-Celt. *shrug*

Also the amount of words differ from each language. English has a lot more words than the Danish language does. Which means in English it is easier to give an exact description of something, as there are words for the nuances of everything.

The thing with translations of any written works that one must remember is that one is not merely translating but also creating a *new* piece of writing. Sure, you can get the basic ideas across, but as everyone has said, a lot will be lost in translation - but a lot will also be added. Every translated poem will first be analyzed by the translator - and their particular reading of the poem will come across in their translation (this is why Coleman Barks is often criticized for putting so much of himself into the Rumi poems he is famous for translating). This, of course, holds true for anything that is translated (books, poems, movies, political speeches, etc), and one should always hold a translation suspect to inaccuracies and mistranslations and multiple translations - not all languages have words which have the exact same connotations.

Though (most of) the main points have already been made, as a professional - though self-taught - translator I'd like to add a few remarks/trivia.

- Yes, poetry is probably the most difficult to translate of all texts, not only because of what has already been mentioned (cultural bias, word play etc), but also because of the basic elements of most poetry: rhythm and rhyme. Even closely related languages often differ substantially in elemental things like word order. For example, in English the participle always follow the verb: "I've been to the movies". In Dutch, the participle usually sits at the very end of the sentence: "Ik ben naar de film geweest" ("I have to the movies been"). You can imagine the consequences for rhythm and rhyme.

- If something is deemed untranslatable, you (the translator) are supposed to compensate: Leave out the untranslatable joke, and put something funny somewhere else in the poem (though usually as close as possible to the place of the original joke). No doubt this is what Amy meant with 'creating a *new* piece of writing'. Criticizing that is only fair, IMO, if you can show that the translator has indeed taken too much 'poetic licence' in this respect.

- The French have an interesting saying: "Traduire, c'est trahir" ("To translate is to betray"). As you see, in translation it immediately loses its rhyme. However, the Italian version loses much less in translation ("Traduttore, traditore" - "Translator, traitor"), although English is closer to French than to Italian.

- Even the greatest minds sometimes stumble when translating. One of the most famous examples (I don't know if it's really true, but it's a good story) concerns famous philosopher Erasmus. Supposedly, he translated 'pythos' ('storage jar') from the ancient Greek as 'box' (which is 'pyxis'). As a result, we now speak of 'Pandora's box'. What a loss! It could have been/should have been something as lovely as 'Pandora's amphora'!