Stingy Kids

Translation as Scholarship

The literary translation community is buzzing with the most recent guidelines from the Modern Language Association.  Entitled "Evaluating Translation as Scholarship: Guidelines for Peer Review," this document calls for giving translations serious consideration in hiring and/or tenure review.  In general, scholars who engage in literary translation tend to leave their translations out of their cv.  There are various reasons for this but the most prevalent is that translations are often considered to be "creative" work that does not involve (or constitute) serious and rigorous scholarship.  Having done quite a bit of translation, I can tell you that this is bullshit, but I can acknowledge that translation-as-scholarship can be a murky designation.  I applaud the MLA for trying to systematize the evaluation of translations but I'm also cautious any attempt to define what exactly qualifies as translation-as-scholarship.  In the following paragraph, I'll focus briefly on the document's assertion that "translation is interpretation."  

Few literary translators would argue that it helps to have an understanding of how one reads a text in order to translate it.  Not only do I need to know what the words in the text mean, but I also need to know what the text means to me.   But if translation is interpretation, does it need a critical apparatus to legitimize its status as scholarship?  The guidelines MLA provides don't require it but "critical apparatus" is invoked in the first of the four "guidelines for reviewers," which raises concerns for me that it could lead to the unreasonable expectation that scholar-translators attach additional critical material to their work.  My postdoctoral research involves completing a major translation and providing a "critical apparatus," but I've also spent a long time working on translations that have not been part of a dissertation and/or research project.  I'd like to be able to include for review all of my translations the same way that I expect to include conference talks and articles that don't necessarily fall into my major research areas.  That being said, all of this is a move in the right direction, I think.

Finally, I really don't understand why the guidelines mention fiction and non-fiction specifically but leave out poetry.  This gives a different twist to the overused (and totally decontextualized) maxim "poetry is what's lost in translation."

The MLA guidelines draw from previous discussions on this issue, including the American Literary Translators Association's "Translation and Academic Promotion for Tenure."   I prefer it to the MLA  guidelines because it makes an actual case for the importance and relevance of translation in the humanities and avoids the MLA's very slippery language of evaluation.  Here's a long passage from the ALTA document:

Those who translate works of imaginative literature are making no less of a contribution to humanistic knowledge than those who are doing technical or historical analyses of literary texts or investigating theoretical and critical issues around the texts. The process of literary translation and the process of literary criticism are inseparable. To wrestle with the challenge of finding the best English equivalent, phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence, is the most intense way to come to terms with the complexities of meaning and esthetic form of any literary text. The translator cannot stop at mere understanding of a literary work; he must move toward a complete reconstruction of the original source-language text in the new language, which requires a comprehensive critical understanding of the work as well.

Translation is the product of informed scholarly research, critical interpretation, and creative reconstruction. Frequently, the nature and amount of scholarship required to produce a literary translation is overlooked or underestimated. Like the scholar engaged in establishing the authoritative text of a work, the translator must examine the multiple contexts within which the author and text exist. The translator must engage in research that places the text in its cultural, historical, and esthetic context and also in the framework of an author’s oeuvre.

As a scholarly activity, translation integrates the multiple aspects of cultural, historical, anthropological, and esthetic developments, and the methodologies of the art and craft of translation can be profitably viewed as a revitalizing force in the field of literary criticism and scholarship.

The translator’s task is broad and complex. It is scholarly and creative. It bridges disciplines and cultures and makes an essential contribution to literature and language on an international scale. In profound and unique ways, translators expand the horizons of the humanistic endeavor.

ALTA doesn't ask that reviewers weigh in on matters of language, diction and style because literary translators know that these matters often rely on opinion and not objective evaluation.  But reviewers can assess whether or not a scholar's translation activity constitutes a significant and integral part of their scholarship as a whole.  Has the scholar-translator presented this work at conferences, written articles on the subject, contributed relevant book reviews, etc.?  

My thinking on this matter continues to evolve and change so I'll be returning to this topic.

Related Links:

Susan Bernofsky's take on the MLA guidelines.

"On Reviewing Translations" by Susan Bernofsky, Jonathan Cohen and Edith Grossman

The PEN American Center's guidelines for reviewing translated books

 

Unconscious, Invisible

It seems to me to be a process of looking for something in there, rather than having something and revising it. I don't consider that I really have anything yet--except inchoate mess. As I work on it, I'm always trying to hear the sound of the words, and trying to take out everything that doesn't feel alive. That's my goal: to take out everything that doesn't feel alive. And also to get to a place that has some depth to it. Certainly I'm always working with things that I don't understand--with the unconscious, the invisible. And trying to find a way to translate it.

via poets.org

Jean Valentine just won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Break the Glass. 

Breadcrumbs

My open tabs often tell a tale, and today's tabs read like a Gertrude Stein story. 

Starting from right to left:

Why Apple Shares are Dirt Cheap:  Admittedly, I skimmed this article and meant to go back to it, but then I had the idea for this post.  Since it's the right-most tab, it must close.  

'Tough Nuts to Crack' Challenges in Czech-English Literary Translation: This panel will feature, among others, one of Milan Kundera's translators.  I am delighted to see that it will be streaming live.  But thanks to this post, I can close the tab and know that I have the link handy when May 2 rolls around.

I receive 20x200's e-newsletter and its probably one of two newsletters that I regularly read.  Today's letter features a print by Michelle Muldrow, whose exhibit Cathedrals of Desire is showing at Jen Bekman Gallery starting 4/29.  Muldrow on this series: "My paintings of big box stores are intended to elicit fear and awe at the vast American consumer landscape." 

Oops.  I think that I accidentally closed all of my tabs regarding the Hebrew translation of The Hobbit.  But I did leave open the Wikipedia page on translations of The Hobbit, which includes this wonderful morsel: "Four Israeli combat pilots, held as prisoners of war in Egypt between 1970 and 1973, whiled away their time of captivity by translating The Hobbit to  Hebrew from a book sent to one of them by family members, via the Red Cross.  The pilots' translation was published in Tel-Aviv following their return, and many Israeli critics still consider it the better of two Hebrew translations."  Don't worry, dear reader, you'll be hearing more about this.

"I see things the way an artist does. I work out my poems in terms of a form that suits them, and this form is part of the content." Wonderful article on Anne Simpson, a poet from Nova Scotia.  

This is a very long article, but Jon Krakauer's "Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way" is currently available as a free download (in exchange for your address!).  

The next two tabs are my favorites: "Chopin, a Missing Autopsy Report, and Molecular Pathology" and "Cystic Fibrosis-- a probable cause of Frédéric Chopin's suffering and death."  The second link takes you to a .pdf, an academic, scientific argument in favor of doing DNA testing on Chopin's heart (at present, preserved in a jar of cognac).  The authors claim that proving that Chopin had cystic fibrosis would give hope to other sufferers of the disease, but is this reason enough to risk damaging his remains? Dr. Jean Cruveilhier, a pathologist with an expertise in respiratory diseases like tuberculosis, was completely baffled by Chopin's illness.  If DNA testing can confirm what exactly afflicted Chopin for most of his life, we may stand to learn more about the history of these diseases and how they were managed in the centuries preceding their diagnosis.  

The Auden link from the previous post is still open.

The current issue of Drunken Boat is devoted to translation.  I made particular note of the pages featuring poems by Else Lasker-Schüler translated by Johannes Beilharz ("When we look at each other/ Our eyes blossom") and Jacob Glatstein translated by Brian Diamond ("I'll be damned if I know/what fuses your bones").

And last but not least: William Cutter's 1995 review of Robert Alter's Hebrew and Modernity, "The Lonely Languages are the Interesting Ones."  

Auden on teaching poetry

One of my favorite quotes from Michael Newman's 1974 interview with W. H. Auden, published in The Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER

Have you ever taught writing?

AUDEN

No, I never have. If I had to “teach poetry,” which, thank God, I don’t, I would concentrate on prosody, rhetoric, philology, and learning poems by heart. I may be quite wrong, but I don’t see what can be learned except purely technical things—what a sonnet is, something about prosody. If you did have a poetic academy, the subjects should be quite different—natural history, history, theology, all kinds of other things. When I’ve been at colleges, I’ve always insisted on giving ordinary academic courses—on the eighteenth century, or Romanticism. True, it’s wonderful what the colleges have done as patrons of the artists. But the artists should agree not to have anything to do with contemporary literature. If they take academic positions, they should do academic work, and the further they get away from the kind of thing that directly affects what they’re writing, the better. They should teach the eighteenth century or something that won’t interfere with their work and yet earn them a living. To teach creative writing—I think that’s dangerous. The only possibility I can conceive of is an apprentice system like those they had in the Renaissance—where a poet who was very busy got students to finish his poems for him. Then you’d really be teaching, and you’d be responsible, of course, since the results would go out under the poet’s name.

 

Penelope

PENELOPE

In the pathway of the sun,

  In the footsteps of the breeze,

Where the world and sky are one,

  He shall ride the silver seas,

    He shall cut the glittering wave.

I shall sit at home, and rock;

Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;

Brew my tea, and snip my thread;

Bleach the linen for my bed.

    They will call him brave.

by Dorothy Parker

This is the first poem that I ever memorized.  I must have been sixteen at the time.  I remember reading a lot of Dorothy Parker that year.  My friend Michael introduced me to her work, and  I credit him (and L., who doesn't let me write about her!) for much of my early understanding of poetry.  He also taught me to appreciate the nuances in different interpretations of Chopin's Nocturnes. Life before sixteen was a bit of a fog, but M. was one of the people who drew me out of it. 

Beautiful beyond imagining

The title of this post comes from John Updike's 2008 article "Visions of Mars," which appeared in National Geographic.  It ends with this paragraph:

The dead planet is not so dead after all: Avalanches and dust storms are caught on camera, and at the poles a seasonal sublimation of dry ice produces erosion and movement. Dunes shift; dust devils trace dark scribbles on the delicate surface. Whether or not evidence of microbial or lichenous life emerges amid this far-off flux, Mars has become an ever nearer neighbor, a province of human knowledge. Dim and fanciful visions of the twinkling fire planet have led to panoramic close-ups beautiful beyond imagining.

I like the phrase "beautiful beyond imagining."  In the article, Updike describes how the late 19th century astronomer Percival Lowell elaborated a history of Mars as a planet inhabited by beings on the brink of extinction.  Later, Orson Welles infamously capitalized on colonial and industrial-era anxieties with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds,"  which imagined our Earth as a paradise for the dying Martian race.  We know now that whatever life Mars may have nurtured no longer animates its surface.  The desiccated Martian landscape most likely serves as a preview of what our own world will look like long after we've left it.  Nevertheless, Updike describes Mars as "mostly dead," a world of persistent movement and change.  Although there is no life as we know it on Mars, this "flux," as he calls it, is a quality of life. 

I don't mean for this to be a sad post, especially on David's birthday.  Lately, I've been reading Ecclesiastes, so ruminations on transience are inevitable.  Our son is almost nine months old, and though each day with him moves too quickly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Updike wrote a wonderful poem about the Rovers that I long have regarded as "our poem."  Now "our" includes Lev, whose curious gaze and intrepid roving has transfigured our daily life, "beautiful beyond imagining":

“This planet needs our shovels’ bite 
   And treadmarks in the dust 
To tell if life and hematite 
   Pervade its arid crust.” 

“There’s life, by all the stars above, 
   On Mars—it’s you and I!” 
Blithe Spirit cried. “Let’s rove, my love, 
   And meet before we die!”

from "Duet on Mars" by John Updike

Inscription

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light.  Human words have no main switch.  But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

--Anne Carson, Nox (2010)

David came up with the inscription for my iPad using this passage as inspiration.  He wanted it to be poetic and to convey something about translation; it also articulates how our two worlds come together: 

luminous big shivering

discandied unrepentant web

It's perfect.   

Soothe, Delight, Forever

The April issue of O, the Oprah Magazine has an entire section (36 pages!) dedicated to poetry. David Orr may see this as a "sign of the coming apocalypse" (or "O-pocalypse"?), but I think it's fantastic.  I've followed Oprah on and off over the years, and going into this issue there were a few poets I expected to find (Maya Angelou, of course!), but there was much in here that surprised me.

For instance, I've never been a fan of W.S. Merwin's work, but I really enjoyed Susan Casey's interview with the octogenarian poet.  Merwin and his wife Paula make their current home in Maui on a stretch of land where they have single-handedly and devotedly saved a species of palm tree from extinction.  Though he has no illusions of saving the earth, he continues to plant a tree a day.  He recalls how, at the age of three, he protested when telephone repairmen began to cut down his favorite oak tree.  I knew he was an environmentalist, but this one memory really hooked me in.  And then there is this wonderful quote on how poetry moves us to action:

"People say they don't read poetry because they don't understand it...But you don't start by understanding it; you begin by physically responding to it: You're hearing something. You're moved. It's not because you just understood a calculus problem—something's got to you, you're not quite sure why and how."

There's a four-page spread of blurbs from various celebrities (actors and visual artists) on their favorite poets and poems.  This section is less persuasive but there were some interesting morsels, like Demi Moore's commentary on Tennyson's "Flower in the Crannied Wall" and Rita Wilson's take on Cavafy's "Ithaka" (which frankly blew me away--I love Cavafy.)  Dan Rather credits his grandmother for his love of poetry, particularly Bible verse, and quotes from Psalm 23.  "I don't know that many people see this as poetry, but I think it really is."  You and me and Robert Alter, Dan!

The section also includes "The O Poetry Primer," a list of twenty books "no reader's library should be without." I admit that I was pleased that most of the authors, if not the specific books listed, are already on my shelf (Deborah Digges was unfamiliar, so I have something to add to my reading list.). The selections aren't meant to be radical; they are staples of any decent poetry collection.  It leans heavily toward the Anglo-American tradition (with the exception of Rumi and Szymborska), but someone new to poetry can't go wrong with these books, and that's the point.

Orr found offense with the fashion spread that concludes the section, but I loved it.  You could even say that I was pea-green with envy to see these young female poets celebrating their youth and work.  I've seen Sumeir Hammad on stage and she is just stunning.  I love the composition of her page, the long line of her arm guiding her words into the air.  On other pages, the poetic text feels tacked on, but Hammad's poetic megaphone alludes to her work as a slam poet. If you've ever seen Anna Moschovakis (poet, translator and editor at Ugly Duckling Presse) in person, you'd know that it's a no-brainer that she be included here.  Her spread features an incredible Haute Hippie suede jacket and a table covered in poetry.  I should add here, by way of disclaimer, that I am an UDP subscriber (you should be too!).  After years of seeing actresses and female pop singers on the cover of every damn magazine in the world, it's such a pleasure to see these beautiful female poets.  I was only sad that Oprah didn't dress up a few hot, young male poets, like Terrance Hayes or Kazim Ali.  If Oprah ever wants to dress up petite academic translators, I volunteer!

I enjoyed this issue so much that I want to spread the love.  In the spirit of Oprah, I'm giving away one copy of O to a Stingy Kids reader (to be chosen randomly). In order to qualify for this giveaway you must...:

1.  Identify the Gone with the Wind (film version) reference in this post.

2. Live in the United States (I'm not mailing this overseas, sorry.).

3. And I'd love it if you would share your favorite poem and/or poet (include a link or excerpt if you can).

 

Margaret Atwood is CRZ!

According to Quill & Quire, Margaret Atwood, who maintains a very active Twitter account, has released an iPhone app that converts the most colloquial textese into Atwoodese.  No joke (well, I think it is but will play along for the sake of National Poetry Month):

Margaret Atwood – author, entrepreneur, Twitter enthusiast, and Tech 2.0 guru – announced today the release of the Appwood, an app that allows iPhones to convert humdrum text messages, tweets, e-mails, and Facebook updates into something that sounds as though they have come from the keyboard of the literary master herself.  (via Q&Q, my emphasis)

How does it work?  I couldn't tell you because I'm not going to spend $9.99 to find out (it's also not in the App Store--April Fools!), but here's an example from the article linked to above:

Without Appwood: “WTF? Boming Lybya? That’s CRZ” 
With Appwood: “War is what happens when language fails”

That's mighty funny!

But you know what is true?  Oprah dedicated part of the April issue of O to poetry.  I'll discuss that later this week.

Poetry shows up in unlikely places.  RLY.  In other words, it's everywhere. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you later

The earliest post that you'll find on this blog dates to late March 2003, and fittingly, it is a poem titled "The International Congress of Fear."  During a major redesign in early 2007, I backed up the blog and left only the posts that I still liked.  So what's missing is 2002, the year that I started the site.  That was also the year that I fell in love with David.  These events are mutually inclusive!

I want to close the door on Stingy Kids but it's hard to let it go.  It has been a chronicle of my years struggling with and finally finishing my dissertation; building and shaping the most life-changing relationship in my life; and having a child, which has been transformative (this is often said and it is true: nothing is the same after you have a kid).  

But these stories weren't on the site.  I've never been what is called a "personal blogger," and I've enjoyed so much sharing--with readers known and unknown--stories of baseball, poetry, perfume, translation, and so much else that can't be categorized.  It's hard, though, to continue this blog.  Life keeps moving forward but it feels very different now.  There's something very spare and disparate about the content on Stingy Kids, a holding back.  That does need to change.

And it will somehow.  Maybe here or maybe elsewhere.  I'll let you know.