Oh my god, Iām about to go on a ramble, Iām sorry, I canāt help it, the inner translation nerd is coming out. Iām so sorry.Ā The thing isāthereĀ is actually no such thing as an accurate translation.
Ā Itās literally an impossible endeavor. Word for word doesnāt cut it. Sense for sense doesnāt cut it, because then youāre potentially missing cool stuff like context and nuance and rhyme and humor. Even localization doesnāt really cut it, because that means youāre prioritizing the audience over the author, and youāre missing out on the original context, and the possibility of bringing something new and exciting to your host language. Foreignization, which aims to replicate the rhythms of the original language, or to use terminology that will be unfamiliar to the target cultureā(for example: the first few American-published Harry Potter books domesticated the English, and tradedĀ ātrousersā forĀ āpantsā, andĀ āMomā forĀ āMumā. Later on they stopped, and let the American children view such foreignizing words asĀ āsnogā andĀ āporridge.ā)āalso doesnāt cut it, because you risk alienating the target readers, or obscuring meaning.Ā
Another cool example is Dante,Ā and the words written above the gates of hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.Ā
In the original Italian, thatās Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Speranza, like most nouns in latinate languages, has a gender: la. Hope, in Italian, is gendered female. Abandon hope, who is female. Abandon hope, who is a woman. When the original Dante enters hell, searching for Beatrice, he is doomed, subtly, from the start. Thatās beautiful, subtle, the kind of delicate poetic move literature nerds gorge themselves on, and you canāt keep it in English. Literally, how do you preserve it? We donāt have a gendered hope. It doesnāt work, canāt work. So how do you compensate? Can you sneak in a reference to Beatrice in a different line? Or do you chalk her up as a loss and move onto the next problem?
Youāre always going to miss somethingāthe cool part is that, knowing youāre going to fail, you get to decide how to fail. Ortega y Gasset called this The Misery and Splendor of Translation. Basically, translation is impossibleāso why not make it a beautiful failure?Ā
My point is that literary translation is creative writing, full of as many creative decisions as any original poem or short story. It has more limitations, rules, and structures to consider, for sureābut sometimes the best artistic decision is going to be the one that breaks the rules.Ā
My favorite breakdown of this is Le Ton Beau De Marot, a beautiful brick of a translatorās joke, in which the author tries over and over again to create aĀ āperfectā translation of āA une Damoyselle Maladeā, an itsy bitsy poem Clement Marot dashed off to his patronās daughter, who was sick, in 1537.Ā
This is the poem:Ā
Ma mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bon jour;
Le sƩjour
Cāest prison.
GuƩrison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Votre porte
Et quāon sorte
Vitement,
Car ClƩment
Le vous mande.
Va, friande
De ta bouche,
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures;
Si tu dures
Trop malade,
Couleur fade
Tu prendras,
Et perdras
Lāembonpoint.
Dieu te doint
SantƩ bonne,
Ma mignonne.
Seems simple enough, right? But itās got a huge host of challenges: the rhyme, the tone, the archaic language (if youāre translating something old, do you want it to sound old in the target language, too? or are you translating not just across language, but across time?)Ā
Le Ton Beau De Marot is a monster of a book that compiles all of HofstaderāsĀ āfailedā translations of Ma Mignonne, as well as theĀ āfailedā translations of his friends, and his students, and hundreds of strangers who were given the translation challenge (which you can play here, should you like!)Ā
The end result is a hilarious archive of Sweet Damosels, Malingering Ladies, Chickadees, Fairest Friends, and Cutie Pies. Itās the clearest, funniest, best example of what I think is true of all literary translations: that theyāre a thing you make up, not a thing you discover. There is no magic bridge between languages, or magic window, or magic vessel to pour the poem from one language to anotherātranslation is always subjective, itās always individual, itās always inaccurate, itās always a failure.Ā
Itās always, in other words, art.Ā
Which, as a translator, I find incredibly reassuring! Youāre definitely, one hundred percent absolutely, gonna fuck up. Which means you canāt fuck up. You can take risks! You can experiment! You can do cool stuff like bilingual translations, or footnote translations! You write your own code of honor, your own rules that your translations will hold inviolable, and fuck it if that code doesnāt match everyone elseās*. The translations they hold inviolable are also flawed, are failures at the core, from the King James Bible right on down to No Fear Shakespeare. So have fun! Itās all in your hands, miseries and splendors both.Ā
