3 Essentials to Unravel the Mystery Behind Poetry Translations
Reflections From A Poetry Translation Workshop:
Jala x Singapore Book Council Partnership
On a rainy afternoon at the end of September, I arrived at Jala’s office to participate in a poetry translation workshop, “Translating poetry: Translation or re-creation?”.
We were a bunch of language enthusiasts and emerging translators looking to apply tips and strategies in the course of our work.
The facilitator, Dr Nazry Bahrawi — who is himself a translator of two literary works from Bahasa Indonesia to English — started off with an icebreaker, where we queried each other on the languages we speak. This lighthearted fun led into the actual and much-anticipated workshop.
Beginning with a short presentation on translation, Dr Nazry took us through the various permutations that enable words to illuminate or veil meaning in translation.
Translation is not merely a linguistic venture, he asserted. It is also an ideological one; a hermeneutical act, both interpretive and (re-)creative.
He also highlighted 3 essential strategies to translate poems:
Strategy #1: Keep its original form.
That is, retain the mystery. Do not include footnotes, and have a glossary only where needed. Retain words and concepts that are universally understood and easily guessable. Make readers work for the meaning.
Strategy #2: Consider ways to translate idioms.
When it comes to idioms, they can be translated in particular ways where we can:
· use similar meaning and form.
· use similar meaning and dissimilar form.
· borrow the source language idiom.
· paraphrase.
· omit a play on idiom.
· omit the entire idiom.
Strategy #3: Choose your form.
Consider how you your translation will take shape, i.e.:
· mimetic form: where you copy the original form as it is.
· organic form: where you do what feels most authentic.
Ultimately, the major pointers I took away were that we should translate into the language we feel most comfortable in, and that we must acknowledge loss, but work on the gains we want as translators.
“We must acknowledge loss, but work on the gains we want as translators.”
We ended the workshop with the final hour devoted to digging our hands right into poetry translation.
With a variety of languages between us — the Singaporean national languages of Malay, Tamil and Mandarin, as well as Bahasa Indonesia, Punjabi, French, Spanish, and the list goes on — we decided to translate a few lines each into English, our common language and the fourth local national language.
Excerpts were available in Malay, Tamil and Mandarin, and the rest of us selected texts online and got down to work. The facilitator and Jala team provided great support throughout, and we were encouraged with treats of curry puffs, cookies and tea — a welcome addition, seeing the lashings of rain outdoors.
Inspired, I translated some lovely lines about the falling rain shared with me by Chilean poet Jonathan Urqueta.
With that, I reproduce the translated poem here with permission:
Lluvia en el sur
by Jonathan Urqueta
Con la lluvia que cae
se me viene a la cabeza
recuerdoes de la belleza
de ver el campo de verde.
Truenos, destellos,
cientos de pajaros felices.
El viento norte triste
las hojas agita, moja y mece.
Rain in the South
by Jonathan Urqueta
translated by Pallavi Narayan
With the falling rain
they come to my mind
memories of beauty
of seeing the green field.
Thunder, sparkles,
hundreds of happy birds.
The sad north wind
The leaves shake, wet, and rock.
Written by Pallavi Narayan
Pallavi Narayan holds a PhD in literature, and has worked in academia and book publishing in Singapore and India for many years. She has been learning Spanish since 2005 and met Jonathan Urqueta after a translation conference in Chile in 2019.
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