Translating With

Some of my translations appear this month at Kritya, an online journal of poetry and translation, which is published in India (NB: Because of the way the page is formatted, some of the line breaks in the translations are incorrect.). About a month ago, Eran Tzelgov, one of the founding editors of Daka (literally, "minute"), a relatively new Israeli literary journal, approached me with the opportunity to translate some poems from the first two issues. The result is some of the poems on the Kritya site. Other poems will make their appearance at the 2008 Austin International Poetry Festival and, hopefully, in other journals. Translation is always a collaboration to a degree. There are people I approach, for feedback and comments, at the beginning of a project and others at the end, depending on the requirements of the particular project. But ultimately, it's my name that appears after "translated by." This was the first time, however, that I shared credit. The line between "what is mine" and "what is yours" is often blurred in co-translation (or collaborative translation) but it becomes very clear at which point you've crossed from "feedback and suggestions" to actively building the translation together. I've long admired the work of co-translators Chana Kronfeld and Chana Bloch, who have collaborated on Yehuda Amichai's last book Patuach sagur patuach (Open Closed Open) and a collection of poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch (forthcoming), but always wondered how exactly co-translation happens. I have some sense of it now but I'm interested in reading more on the topic and pursuing collaborative projects in the future.

Comments

[Daka?]

Great job!

Daka also means "thin" ,which is part of their [i.e. the editors] agenda: something not overwhelming, as another israeli poet, Roy "chiky" arad, commented on their effort:
"a thin pamphleft, fat with great stuff".

I can only smile.

Is there a chance to get it around New York these days?

[adriana]

Thank you for the great comment! I love the Roy Arad comment. I believe that you can get copies through the editors, some of whom are in NYC. I'll let you know.

[Ella]

I hate's Roy's poetry, if one can call his nonesense radicalism poetry.... but i loved the way he described Daka.

Nice magazine. fits in one's pocket.