#poetry translation

[tavina-writes]

This is entirely copied from my reblog of this post, but I just thought I'd put this in a post of my own for safekeeping on this hellsite or I'd literally never find the translation of Xingnv's Lament I did for this reblog ever again but. Anyway!

Whenever I think about the fact that like, people claim historical people grieved less about child and infant mortality I want to start biting because here's the translation of the Cao Zhi's poem on losing a daughter (yes the Cao Zhi of the infamous bean poem/Seven Step Quatrain fame) written sometime in the 200s AD: 行女哀辞

序：行女生于季秋，而终于首夏。三年之中，二子频丧。 伊上帝之降命，何修短之难哉；或华发以终年，或怀妊而逢灾。 感前哀之未阕，复新殃之重来！方朝华而晚敷，比晨露而先晞。 感逝者之不追，情忽忽而失度。天盖高而无阶，怀此恨其谁诉！

Xingnv's Lament

Preface: My youngest daughter, Xingnv, was born in late autumn and died in early summer of the following year. In just three years, two beloved daughters died one after another. The heavens grant precious life to people, yet why is the length of that life so hard to guess Some people are fortunate to live to old age, others die young in the womb I have yet to finish grieving for Jinhu*, yet I have to see Xingnv** buried in dust This poor child falls like the hibiscus, life drying like the morning dew I thought of that young life that could never return, and lose my normal composure Resenting that the heavens have no stairs for me to climb, to pour out the sorrows of my heart

*Jinhu is the first child that he mentioned

**Xingnv is the daughter he dedicated this poem to

Like! DESPITE what people will tell you people often grieved their children, yes, even daughters which, historical fiction SO often say that fathers hated having Girl Children or whatever. We only know Cao Jinhu and Cao Xingnv's names because their father wrote them down. And grieved their absence.

"Resenting that the heavens have no stairs for me to climb" is SO bleak and so utterly fucking devastating.

[inkcurlsandknives]

Am I learning baybayin calligraphy to test a book theory for 1 historically accurate throwaway detail in SAINTS OF STORM AND SORROW? 🫣 Maybe?

And maybe I just spent 3 hours collecting banana leaves from a condemned apartment building, finding Tagalog Tanaga poems that fit thematically with my novel, SAINTS OF STORM AND SORROW translating the tagalog into baybayin symbols then testing writing implements and copying out 4 different sheets to be stored in different environments to test the long term legibility of said poems 🤣 that's also possible!

But in my defense nowhere on the internet was willing to tell me more than the Wikipedia single paragraph of yes South East Asia and the Philippines used banana leaves as a writing surface pre-colonization. So really this was for science. I will likely be writing up a full blog post detailing my recent adventure into historical recreation and banana leaves, once I've finished using all my extra banana leaves to make suman 😋

Happy Filipino American History month 🇵🇭

[johbeil]

A poem that never wished to be written

If you asked it – which is absurd – it wouldn’t say anything or bat its eyelashes in wonder Because eyelashes were attributed to it – long, gently curved, like those from a beauty salon – Nicole Weiß (© 2024) Translated from the German original (which can be found here) by Johannes Beilharz.

[beinahr]

Anna Akhmatova (tr. by Lau Beinahr)

[summerscaries]

Ja visst gör det ont // Yes, of course it hurts (poetic translation)

Ja visst gör det ont - Karin Boye (link to Karin Boye herself reading, c. 1935)

[kom-poetry-channel]

This makes two patter songs I know of in Norwegian; the other one begins "Når en pepperkakebaker baker pepperkakekaker…", which perhaps I will translate into English at some point. Probably this reflects the state of my knowledge more than Norwegian poetry. At any rate I had a lot of fun with this, in particular with 'paradox', 'Pingvin', and 'Froskene'. This is very much a text that rewards reading aloud, both in English and Norwegian; the "toskene/Froskene" rhyme is not all that inspired qua poetry but the line "synge kvekkekoret fra Aristofanes' Froskene", recited at speed and with the driving energy of being close to the end of a verse and the ability to take a quick breath, is Much Fun.

Some notes on the references:

"Hafrsfjord og Stiklestad" versus "Marathon and Waterloo" - the "Fifteen Decisive Battles" was quite influential in Victorian England, but meaningless to Norwegians both then and now, and I think the "order categorical" wouldn't particularly land with a modern English audience. I changed it to have two famous Norwegian battles of roughly equal importance to modern military thinking.

"enkle og kvadratiske" - same as the original but the illustration is the solution to a cubic, commenting on the general's implicit assertion that he knows "both kinds" of equations.

"Heimskringler og Trymskvider" replacing "King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's" - Norse mythology rather than British, obviously; but also I found it amusing to put these singular works in the plural, making the general claim to know more than one of each.

"paradokser lett bestrider" - another use of 'Trymskvider' in that it rhymes, but note the illustration. Of course, in the twenty-first century every armchair general is necessarily very familiar with Paradox Entertainment!

Raphael, Dow, Ziffanij - same as the original; the joke is that, as shown by the paintings, distinguishing these artists is not actually all that difficult.

Pinafore - Gilbert and Sullivan's previous work; intertextuality!

"babylonske språkreform" - mostly for the rhyme with 'uniform', but also it amused me to think that a Norwegian major-general would obviously pick an extremely specific archaic dialect of cuneiform and stick to it come reform or new alphabets. He also probably writes Høgnorsk.

"Caratacus' uniform" - as in the original, the joke is that the 'uniform' consists of a loincloth and nothing else; memorising its details is no feat.

"på missilet og på fugl Pingvin" - as soon as I realised that 'Pingvin', as in the missile, rhymes with 'ravelin', which is both obsolete and untranslatable, I knew I'd have to work the bird in somehow.

"artilleri/liturgi" - this one is my least favourite, as the nun is actually supposed to be more knowledgeable than the general about tactics, his presumed area of expertise, not hers. But at least I managed to get a nun in there at all.

"bentfram eventyrerisk" versus "plucky and adventurey" - the word 'plucky' is just Not Translateable. "The beginning of the century" has a very different meaning now than it did in 1879, two centuries' worth of difference, but happily 'napoleonisk' rhymes with 'eventyrerisk' with only a small change in emphasis, so it all works out.

Jeg er selve prototypen på moderne generalmajor kan alt om planter, dyreliv og steinarter som fins på jord. Jeg kjenner kongerekken, og kan nevne alle deres slag fra Stiklestad til Hafrsfjord: Slik er det militære fag. Jeg har også mye kunnskap hva angår det matematiske, forstår godt alle ligninger, både enkle og kvadratiske. I diskusjon om binomikk der gjør jeg alltid god figur, med mange glade fakta om hypotenusens kvadratur! På integral- og differensialregning der er jeg god jeg kan latinske navn på en mikroskopisk smådyr-zoo, kort sagt: Om planter, dyreliv og steinarter som fins på jord er jeg selve prototypen på moderne generalmajor!

Jeg er kjent med sagatiden, både Heimskringler og Trymskvider, løser vanskelige kryssord, alle paradokser lett bestrider, siterer elegeisk alle synder til Elagabalus takler merkelige kjeglesnitt om så de kommer helt bardus, kan skille Raphael fra Dow og Zoffanij, de toskene, og synge kvekkekoret fra Aristofanes' Froskene!

Så kan jeg nynne flerstemt om en opera er litt innafor, og plystre all musikk fra det forbante tullball ``Pinafore''. Jeg kan skrive kileskrift fra før den babylonske språkreform, og gjengi all detalj hva angår Caratacus' uniform; kort sagt: Om planter, dyreliv og steinarter som fins på jord er jeg selve prototypen på moderne generalmajor!

Når jeg vet hva som menes med "mamelon" og "ravelin", når jeg ser forskjell på missilet og på fugl Pingvin, når jeg ikke rundt sorti og bakholdsangrep uforsiktig trør, når jeg forstår nøyaktig hva en kvartermester faktisk gjør,

når jeg har lært meg litt om ymse fremgang i artilleri, og vet mere om taktikk enn yngste nonne kan om liturgi, kort sagt, når jeg har lært litt mer om elementær strategi, vil du si at ingen bedre generalmajor sin hest kan ri!

For min kunnskap, skjønt at jeg er bentfram eventyrerisk, er oppdatert kun til det som kalles napoleonisk; men dog, hva angår planter, dyreliv og stein på jord, er jeg selve prototypen på moderne generalmajor!

[esters-notepad]

This translation is a present for @catkin-morgs-kookaburralover The original poem was written by Gustaf Fröding (the guy I mentioned to you yesterday) during his stay in the asylum. It's one of his most read poems.

The snail's song

Sun! Sun! Shine,

light, light, glow,

gravel path slow,

green grass fine,

here lie still,

eat my fill.

Easy come,

no hurry here,

much food near,

tasty, yum.

Hm, hear crash,

hm, from where?

Should I beware?

Black shoe smash,

best to crawl back

into one's shack.

[godzilla-reads]

Best Haiku by Bashō

Original:

Furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

Translation by Lafcadio Hearn:

Old pond — frogs jumped in — sound of water.

Check out this site for some different translations 🐸 (art below by Matsumoto Hoji)

[king-of-men]

The Battle Hymn of the Republic is probably most familiar as music; but in translating it I found that it is really excellent as poetry. Consider that famous phrase, "the grapes of wrath"; it is a dead metaphor now in English, killed by overuse out of its original context. Seeing it with the fresh eyes of a different language let me appreciate the power of the image: The grapes of wrath, from which are made the wine of wrath - heavy on the tongue, hot in the belly, a fire in the blood; the wine that soldiers drink before battle, that makes them charge the cannon's mouth. It's a phrase anchored in physicality, if you don't slide right past it through familiarity; "He is trampling out the vintage" - I am pleased that in Norwegian I was able to add an additional verb here, "han har trampet ut en årgang og av vredens druer smakt". I don't know if Mrs Howe had drunk of the wine of wrath herself; but when she wrote that, she'd surely had a glass or two of the mead of poetry.

I have dropped the refrain "Glory, glory, hallelujah", which relies for its best effect on being sung by several hundred deep male voices marching down a dusty road with a battle at its end; it is fine music but does not really contribute to the poetry of the words alone. I've kept, however, the concluding "…is marching on" that punctuates each verse, making it "…er i anmarsj", slightly archaic Norwegian that fits well with the religious imagery. This turned out to be the most difficult part to illustrate, in a poem in which I struggled much more with the images than the words; in the end I gave up on getting any sort of metaphor for "truth marching on" through StableDiffusion, which I used for the triple-alpha rhymes, and instead put in contemporary paintings and drawings. At any rate this serves to mark the refrains as distinct from the main verses.

The final line, which Howe wrote as "let us die to make men free", is now often sung as "let us live to make men free", presumably on the theory that dead men do not actually accomplish very much and the real goal is to make the other side's soldiers die for their cause. The argument has undoubted force. On the other hand, so many of the men who sang these words in deadly earnest genuinely did die to free the slaves; died by the hundreds of thousands, by bullet and canister and cholera. My translation, somewhat unfortunately, avoids the difficulty entirely with "menns frihet er vårt krav"; the triple-alpha rhyme scheme is a cruel master here, and I could not find any way to work in either life or death.

Jeg har sett med egne øyne Herren komme i sin makt; han har trampet ut en årgang og av vredens druer smakt. Han har sluppet asgardsreien løs og lyn fra sverdet brakt. Hans sannhet i anmarsj!

I hundre vaktmenns leirbål har jeg sett ham klar til kamp; de har reist for ham et alter her i aftnens røk og damp; en rettferdig dom jeg leser, og jeg hører bødlens tramp: Hans dag er i anmarsj!

Jeg har sett hans skrifter flamme i stål og krigersk mot: ``Forakt skal dere hevne, og jeg tilgir deres bot''; la helten, født av kvinne, knuse slangen under fot, For Gud er i anmarsj!

Vi har hørt trompeten kalle, det blir aldri mer retrett; han veier alles hjerter, for hans domstol er vi stedt; Vær rask, min sjel, å svare ham; føtter, vær beredt! Vår gud er i anmarsj!

Han ble født i liljens skjønnhet langt der borte over hav; i hans bryst var det en glorie som hver enkelt nåde gav. Han døde for menns synder, og menns frihet er vårt krav! For Gud er i anmarsj!

[polysprachig]

Lord Byron—To Thyrza, lines 1-12 (English->German)

From the tragedy portion of my translation portfolio (linked). (The comedy portion is still in the works.)

There was a already a German translation of Byron's 'To Thyrza' [Without a stone to mark the spot] using the ABAB rhyme scheme, and since I was experimenting with rhyme and metre (and torturing the translator-poet), I decided to go with AABB instead.

Without a stone to mark the spot, 

Kein Stein an jenen Ort platziert,

     And say, what Truth might well have said,

Mir bleibt die Wahrheit noch bewahrt:

By all, save one, perchance forgot,

Wie du, Geliebter, jung und reif,

     Ah! wherefore art thou lowly laid?

Begraben schon, ‘ne Leiche steif.

By many a shore and many a sea 5

Von weitem haben wir uns geliebt,

     Divided, yet beloved in vain;

Egal, dass uns das Meer getrennt.

The Past, the Future fled to thee,

Zu Asche wurdest du, zu Staub,

     To bid us meet—no—ne’er again!

Auf ewig—ohne mich—im Grab!

Could this have been—a word, a look,

Gäb’ es ein Zeichen, Blick noch Wort,

     That softly said, “We part in peace,” 10

‘Nen Abschied vor der Reise fort,

Had taught my bosom how to brook,

Dann wüsste ich zu atmen noch

     With fainter sighs, thy soul’s release.

Und ruhiger käm’ der Tränenausbruch.

[mayakovsky]

Простыни вод под брюхом были. Их рвал на волны белый зуб. Был вой трубы — как будто лили любовь и похоть медью труб. Прижались лодки в люльках входов к сосцам железных матерей. В ушах оглохших пароходов горели серьги якорей.

Bed sheets of water beneath a belly.

A white tooth ripped them into waves.

The howl of a funnel—as if were pouring

love and lust through the funnel's copper.

In the cradles of inlets boats nestled

against the breasts of their iron mothers.

In the ears of deaf steamships

burned the earrings of anchors.

—"The Port," 1912

(translated by @suresne)

[miyamiwu]

Revising a poem translation I did last year and... god, I HATE translating poetry 😭

I mean, it's fun but

Translating from Tagalog* whose sentence structure (V-S-O) is different from English (S-V-O) is HARD. It makes the original enjambment difficult to keep. I am so tempted to make the lines end-stopped, but who am I to decide how the lines should be cut?

Moreover, the enjambed lines, I just realized, add a sense of perturbation to the persona, whose words in the poem sound completely calm and rational. And I love that because it keeps the delicate balance of intimacy and distance in this poem intact. Removing the enjambment will be reducing the persona to a cold, calculating person.

There's also the matter of what verb tense and aspect to use!

Each Tagalog verb has three basic finite forms which are often referred to as past tense, present tense, and future tense. But this labeling is misleading. The “present tense” form could be used as a past progressive (“She was singing the Ave Maria when I arrived”) as well as a present progressive (“She is singing the Ave Maria”) or present habitual (“She sings the Ave Maria beautifully”). Similarly, the Tagalog “past tense” form can be used like the English simple past (“she sang”) present perfect (“she has sung”), or past perfect (“she had sung”).

– Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction by Paul Kroeger

And oh, don't even get me started on active vs passive voice...

----

*Not using the term “Filipino” because this poem really is only written in Tagalog. There's a difference between the two, and not just politically

[poet2cope]

Don’t ask us for the word (E. Montale)

Don’t ask us for the word that can assert

Our shapeless form from every side, that states

Whatever thing we are in burning case,

Shining like saffron-flowers in the dirt

Ah the man that’s strolling down the street

A friend to others and himself, who finds

All things to be so sure and never minds

His shadow printed by the dogday heat!

Don’t ask us for the spell that shows the way

Towards new worlds. We’ve got dry, warped and gaunt

Syllables, that’s all, and we can say

The things we are not, the things we’d never want.

— translation: yours truly

[johbeil]

Paul Celan – The word of going down deep

The word of going down deep that we have read. The years, the words since then. We still are who we are. You know space is infinite, you know there is no need to fly, you know: what wrote itself into your eye deepens us into depth. – Paul Celan From Die Niemandsrose (1963). Translated by Johannes Beilharz (© 2023).

[beinahr]

The Guest Anna Akhmatova (tr. by Lau Beinahr)

[drpanda99]

Two Poems on Crabapple Blossoms

So poetry club for this week had a poem called 海棠 or crabapple blossoms. When I began to translate it, I realized it referenced a different, more famous poem. In order to get a full understanding, I wanted to translate the older poem too, so here we are! Poems below the cut.

宋・苏

东风袅袅泛崇光， 香雾空蒙月转廊。

只恐夜深花睡去， 故烧高烛照红妆。

Crabapple Blossoms

Song poem by Su Shi

The spring winds weave through branches of sublime lustre, A fragrance circles the porch under snow-limned moon. My only deep-night fear is the blossom's slumber, Hence, the long-flamed candles that light her fine red robes.

The imagery of this poem is gorgeous. The references are super interesting and it was a bit hard to parse at first because it builds on a historical story. For this poem, I kept each line to 12 syllables given that the original poem is in meter but does not rhyme.

1. Aka spring winds 2. This flower represents the woman. This is based on a tale about emperor Ming of Tang comparing Yang Guifei (a very famously beautiful concubine) to a crabapple blossom and how he fears disturbing her sleep. 3. The red clothing again represents high quality women's clothing. This entire poem is a metaphor based on the Yang Quifei story in my opinion!

海棠

宋・俞桂

海棠袅袅弄臙脂， 雨入枝头睡正宜。

最是高人有遗恨， 杜陵因甚却无诗。

Crabapple Blossoms

Song poem by Yu Gui

The gently swaying apple blooms made into rouge, Rain falls past branch heads sleeping in proper order. Those of highest power hold eternal regret, Why is this emperor's tomb yet without a poem?

I'm less happy with the translation of this poem than the other one and it was especially difficult to carry over the same language and meter as the original poem does. I kept this to the same 12 syllables as the previous one, but I didn't bother making them conform to more formal meter.

1. Same movement descriptor as the original poem! 2. I think this references a specific kind of red rouge. 3. The previous poem also talks about the blooms (aka the woman) being asleep. 4. This likely references the emperor and/or his concubine, especially since the tomb they mention later on is the tomb for a specific emperor. 5. This is the tomb of Han Xuandi or one of the Han emperors. I believe this poem means to wonder why this emperor had no romantic poem.