Not sure I agree with this one. Are we going to eliminate, say, Ezra Pound's translations of the Chinese? (Okay, okay ... "versions.") Richard Wilbur has made arguably the best translations of Joseph Brodsky, and yet he doesn't speak Russian. And of course in the case of Milosz, his preemininent translator, Robert Hass, doesn't speak Polish.
That said, I'd agree the word "translation" tends to be used too liberally -- e.g., Stephen Mitchell who goes from Rilke to the Bhagavad Gita to the Psalms, without understanding any of them.
Pound's Chinese "translations" are a kind of miracle. Hass worked in collaboration with Milosz himself, who was pretty fluent in English, and I suspect Wilbur had some contact with Brodsky, though I can't say for sure. What I object to is people taking an interlinear, as it were, and arriving at their "versions." I have collaborated with a friend (who is Chinese -- born and raised and educated there) in arriving at what she thinks are fairly good renderings into English of classic Chinese verse. It is not easy.
I disagree about Mitchell. One reason his translations of Rilke are so much better than most others is that they're done by a poet, not an academic. Granted, in some circles to say such a thing amounts to heresy. But poets get at teh sense of things in some ways that literal translations don't. Thus, Sam Hamill's translations of Basho and Issa are very on target, and Ursula K. LeGuin's version of the Tao Te Ching is sublime.
Not sure I agree with this one. Are we going to eliminate, say, Ezra Pound's translations of the Chinese? (Okay, okay ... "versions.") Richard Wilbur has made arguably the best translations of Joseph Brodsky, and yet he doesn't speak Russian. And of course in the case of Milosz, his preemininent translator, Robert Hass, doesn't speak Polish.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'd agree the word "translation" tends to be used too liberally -- e.g., Stephen Mitchell who goes from Rilke to the Bhagavad Gita to the Psalms, without understanding any of them.
Pound's Chinese "translations" are a kind of miracle. Hass worked in collaboration with Milosz himself, who was pretty fluent in English, and I suspect Wilbur had some contact with Brodsky, though I can't say for sure. What I object to is people taking an interlinear, as it were, and arriving at their "versions." I have collaborated with a friend (who is Chinese -- born and raised and educated there) in arriving at what she thinks are fairly good renderings into English of classic Chinese verse. It is not easy.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about Mitchell. One reason his translations of Rilke are so much better than most others is that they're done by a poet, not an academic. Granted, in some circles to say such a thing amounts to heresy. But poets get at teh sense of things in some ways that literal translations don't. Thus, Sam Hamill's translations of Basho and Issa are very on target, and Ursula K. LeGuin's version of the Tao Te Ching is sublime.
ReplyDelete