Julia Sanchez Post-talk and Peter Constantine Pre-talk - Lianbi

I enjoyed getting to know Julia Sanches last Friday. She was very kind and approachable. Her presentation is very thoughtful and full of close-reading examples and rich ideas (kind of like Ken’s). I know we still feel wonky about her translation and tone. Perhaps she feels some regret too? She works with many languages including many kinds of English, and she usually does quite extensive research. Yet she still has to work until tight deadlines and with publishers from different countries with different preferences. The UK vs. US difference here is very interesting and informative.

The Bird is a Raven is a weird story… I don’t really like it. I wonder why Peter translated this. I notice some specific features of the translation:

• Tense. The entire story is carried out in present tense. Yet sometimes the narrator goes straight from present tense into past perfect. Those moments read weird to me, for instance: “I hadn’t noticed that the dining car had emptied out.” (10) There are also some moments where the narrator used present perfect tense while I would probably just say past tense (and they have different implications), e.g. “He hasn’t touched his apple juice.” (10) I wonder how these choices were influenced by the German.

• Time. In the beginning of the story, the time when the narrator boarded the train was “22:29” in the original but becomes “10:29” in the English, without “PM”. 

• There are many short sentences throughout the story. It makes Henry sound quite like the narrator, and both sound like disinterested, uncharming storytellers. Whenever the story’s pace or vibrance finally picks up, it’s immediately dropped again. We’re forever in this sense of heavy footsteps, chopped emotions, one after another. I took a brief look at the German and the sentence lengths are similar. Is the effect similar?

• German: Eine Frauenstimme sagt: Ich will nicht mehr, ich kann nicht mehr.

English: A woman’s voice says: “I’ve had enough; I can’t go on.”

I notice here that the free indirect discourse in the original is turned into quotation, and the comma is replaced by a semicolon. Not sure that this is necessary.

• “From his movements… I think right away: a bird.” This sentence that points at the title of the story reads odd to me. I might have written something like “From his movements… I immediately thought of something that resembles him: a bird.”

Julia Sanches and "The Bird Is A Raven" reading response (03/27) - from Marina

Last class, I was a little harsh when discussing Julia Sanches' translation choices. I felt that I didn't understand the reasons why she did what she did, but after hearing her lecture, I changed my mind. For example, I hadn't thought about the importance of easing the reader into a translation. It may sound obvious, but until now, it never occurred to me that, just like in TV series and movies, a translator must slowly introduce the reader to the translation and its foreignness.  Julia talked about numerous (and very important) things in translation, but I would like to mention the “limited amount of strangeness points.” I found this concept interesting and logical, but I would’ve liked to ask her what those points are, I mean, what are the parameters used to determine the strangeness of the points and how many strangeness points are allowed per translation, and how would they be best spent.
 
I considered the “The Bird Is a Raven” translation good. There were some minor details that I thought sounded strange, but nothing alarming. I felt it was a quick read, at times disturbing but enjoyable. 

Julia Sanches, Peter Constantine (Soren)

 I really liked Julia Sanches, much much more than I thought I would. I think her presentation was the first where I almost cried during it. I still have some questions about the narrative voice in Slash and Burn, but I think most of the other translation related nitpicks I had were all answered during the presentation. I liked her running thesis of translator as guest and not as diplomat, and I thought her solution to the ambiguity in the Spanish of the "she" paragraph that we talked about in class was really great. Her slides on Mounzer's "War in Translation" was one of my favorites--on transplanting a feeling, on how your personhood is only granted to you in "the mediatized narrative" by the "exceptionalism of your life or the spectacle of your death."

Peter Constantine I have significantly more reservations about--first, I guess, for assigning us a reading like this, but also for some of his stylistic choices. Other than the more obvious reason, one of my biggest issues with the text was how inconsistent the translation seemed to be, especially near the beginning. At the start, when the text was more narration and less dialogue, Constantine seemed to go for a more foreignized, Ken Liu-esque style of translation, where he kept some of the phrases that possibly sounded natural in German but may have read a little awkwardly in English. Later on, he seems to prioritize reading experience more, going for a Susan and Chad style of domesticization, which made for a very disorienting reading experience--and not for the reasons I think he might have been going for. 

Julia Sanches and The Bird is a Raven - Wes

 

Julia Sanches Letcture + The Bird is a Raven - from Suis

 I felt that Julia Sanches had a really thorough lecture that answered the questions I had in regards to her translation approach. Her justification for domesticating the food items on the first page of “Dogs of Summer” made a lot of sense. She said she found it important to “ease the reader into the foreign place” when introducing a different culture to the English speaking audience, so she didn’t want to start off the first page with so many foreign items. I could definitely see myself considering this approach if I am ever tasked with a translation of a work that begins in a similar way. I also appreciated her justification for the English title of “Panza de Burro.” I had a strong feeling that she didn’t choose the title herself, that the publishers and editors had to do with the choice. However, she still attempted to justify the editor’s choice– that the original title wouldn’t resonate with the English speaking audience but also the majority of Spanish speakers since panza de burro is a term associated mostly with the Canary islands. Overall, she seems like a translator who is very educated and conscious of her translation choices.

The reading we were assigned to read this week was extremely disturbing. It definitely needed a trigger warning for its themes relating to violence and eating disorders. The translation, however, read smoothly. There were a couple lines that made me stop and wonder though. On page 13, I wondered why Henry says “grandmother is my mother’s mother.” I felt that in English, it’s more natural to say “grandmother on my mother’s side” and that would get rid of what I felt was a weird repetition. Also the line on page 4, “the wind is shaving my cheeks” read a little awkwardly as well. (But I’m being nitpicky.) The frame story or embedded narrative was interesting, but the story seemed really cliche. The last line was anticlimactic and cliche and I’m not sure what the title means. The line that the title draws from, Henry “quickly goes inside [the washroom] and closes the door.” Then the title line follows. I’m not sure if I’m missing something, or if something is lost in translation but I have no idea why Henry (who is described by Paul to have bird-like movements earlier) is compared to a raven here.

Julia Sanches and "The Bird is a Raven" Response — Gisele

     In class, I think I pointed out many more negative things about Julia's translation than positive ones. However, Julia had explanations for practically everything I had doubts about while reading her translations. My greatest criticism was that she had an inconsistent habit of slipping into a country accent in her translation of "Dogs of Summer," because I felt that it was jarring and out of place. However, during her presentation, she explained that she actually never replaces one Spanish dialect with another English one, which was a sentiment I really appreciated because I had similar thoughts while doing my midterm project for this class. While speaking to her after the talk, she explained that she wasn't attempting to give the character's a "country twang," instead, she pulled from the way people around her spoke to create a collaborative dialect. This made sense, considering something else she talked about was her keen ability to pick up on speaking habits as a result of living in many different places. She even mentioned the infamous "minky," which was a made-up word, as an example of her creative approach to recreating the characters' dialogue. I really liked hearing this from her, since it was another thing I attempted to do with my midterm project. Another thing I really enjoyed about her talk was our discussion regarding Anton Hur's "myth of the English reader." It seems so obvious now that the "English reader" wouldn't be monolingual, and I almost can't believe I hadn't realized that earlier—in a moment she made me realize how implausible that is. It was a very eye-opening and engaging talk, and I am really grateful I had the opportunity to meet and speak with her! 
    The reading, on the other hand, was less fascinating and more terrifying than I had been expecting. I felt gross reading "The Bird is a Raven." I often found myself thinking, Do men really think about women this way? in response to Henry and Paul's perspectives. The ending was pretty predictable, with how nonchalantly Paul listened to Henry's story I figured there must be something equally as wrong with him. I honestly found the final line, "I guess I'm just not just a storyteller like you" underwhelming and borderline cringe-worthy. Both because I can't understand what that was supposed to imply—was Henry's story a lie the whole time?—and because it just read awkwardly. The latter is most likely due to the translation, so I really want to know what others think about it. The "secondary-story-told-through-dialogue" structure actually reminded me a lot of the way some Murakami novels read, in which entire chapters can be one character speaking with little to no interruption from another. Overall, I thought the dialogue in "The Bird is a Raven" read naturally, it even had a few "like"s scattered throughout Henry's story which emphasized how young the two speakers were. The cursing was also an important part of the dialogue, especially considering some of the scenes were really intense. I'm curious as to how the English dialogue compares to the German dialogue, especially because I don't have the faintest idea what the original would sound like in German. One thing that kept coming up for me was Paul's frequent use of the word "guy." It is kind of a random observation, but I noticed he said it a lot. 

Mar 27 Julia Sanches Talk, Peter Constantine Reading Response - Rose

         Julia Sanches was delightful! She covered numerous topics from general translation theory and metaphors to specific challenges she faced while translating, but I particularly enjoyed her slides on locality in translation. I think that some of her choices—particularly “skink”—were super fun and well-informed, and she seemed willing to help out up-and-coming translators. I liked her comment on there being “power in self-doubt” in translation, able to notice what’s missing from the translation if the image is clear only to the translator. I was touched that she remembered my name from the emails I sent her two years ago, and now I look forward to visiting her in Providence. Although I am still not a fan of some of her translation choices, I feel very inspired after her talk and am grateful that we got the chance to hear the way she thinks. 

I am not exactly sure how to describe this week’s reading; it was just strange. I think that my distaste has more to do with the story than the translation itself. I know that Peter did a great job in his translation because I ended up disliking all the characters. Informal, candid phrases like “I was floored” (19), “fucked-up” (20), and “real bad at school” (32) created a clear voice for the characters, specifically two boys who were belittling women and then having sporadic epiphanies about philosophy and God. The short sentences also made this a fast-paced read, and the twist at the end was unexpected. I am just confused as to the overall arc of the story, especially the time frame, but I assume the switches between past and present meant that the boys were recalling memories from their lives. Phrases like “was I also too young to rape her?” (65) and all the loaded comments about eating disorders created an uncomfortable story from the view of the perpetrator, so perhaps this would also be an interesting read for a women’s studies course. I have never read anything like this before, and I am still confused as to what the raven represents in this story, but overall, I think I just had no idea what to expect. I wish I had access to the source text, as well, but I hope that Peter embodied the characters of the German as well as I think he did in the English.

from Brennan

 I was worried at the beginning of Julia Sanches' presentation; she seemed very eager to talk about the metaphors, and I worried it was going to take up more of her time. At least among the MFA students, I think we dealt with that very thoroughly last semester. As she moved on, however, I was very impressed with the thought she puts into locality; whether location is highly specific or deliberately abstracted. She "spent a huge amount of time on Google StreetView" and put a lot of consideration and research into her descriptions of flora and fauna.

I have to disagree with the idea that our position "in the era of Google" means that a certain amount of detail can be left out. I don't really want to have my phone open next to me while reading a book. How distracting would that be? I would rather an author leave things totally unknown than be given homework. 

I was also surprised to hear that the author of Slash and Burn was "not one for literary flourishes". I took the deliberate omission of names, and certain words such as "rapist" to be a very obvious flourish.

As to Der Vogel ist ein Rabe, I read the German first in order to get my own feel for the author's voice. I found it very well rendered into English by Peter Constantine. He definitely understands his subjects and knows how to carry over all the sordid little details of their lives.

MARCH 27TH RESPONSE - AUDREE

Julia Sanches Talk

I really enjoyed Julia Sanches' presentation. I found the translation metaphors to be a fun way to open, and I definitely was partial to the "squeezing a jellyfish" one. 

It was good to hear her talk about pronouns, because that is one thing that we spoke about in regards to the reading. The explanation she gave about Spanish being a language where the pronoun does not have to be stated every time additionally to the fact that the author deliberately chose to not name her characters, made a lot of sense to me and explained why sometimes it was hard to follow the subject of the sentence. 

I also found it interesting that she watched TV shows like "PEN15" and "Derry Girls" for slang inspiration when translating a text that was written in a Rio dialect. 

The Bird is a Raven

I enjoyed this short novel, even though at times it was quite uncomfortable to read. Both Paul and Henry seem to have quite disconcerting views of women and sex, and the way they talk about it so openly with each other was disturbing but also kept me intrigued in the stories of these bizarre characters. Women in this story were so heavily and obviously being observed under the "male gaze" but the novel itself seemed very aware of that. I am still unsure as to what Paul meant when he describes Henry as a raven, and why this is the title of this book. 

I noticed a few times where either Henry or Paul would use the word "like" in the middle of their sentences just as people often do in everyday speech, which I felt added to the realism of the dialogue, especially as they are both supposed to be quite young. I wonder if the German equivalent of "like" has the same connotation in German as it does in English (quite youthful, not very proper etc). The writing was very simple but very evocative and clear. Although there weren't many elaborate descriptions, the scenery, specifically the train compartment, was very clearly visible to me in my head. 

Response — Gisele Sanchez

    "Destination Unknown" was a wonderful title for this talk—partly because of its relevance to Ásta's book, but also because I can't say I knew where the conversation was going half of the time. This wasn't a bad thing, of course, and it made for a very interesting few hours in which I was constantly taking notes. Overall, I left the talk wanting to read the poems again and try to define the layers of meaning Ásta and Vala referenced in the talk. 

    The first thing that caught my attention was how close Ásta and Vala seemed, I thought it must be a lot of fun to work with someone you are so close with. And, for a while, I thought Ásta's unwillingness to define her poems or break them down for Vala was strange, after hearing how in tune they were with one another, I figured their translation process must be a unique one and that seems to work very well. From what I could tell, Vala's translation was really amazing. I especially thought her word choice, specifically the sheriff, was really great. The sheriff' from the poems reminded me of the whimsical turnip head character from "Howl's Moving Castle,' which matches the description Ásta gave of the original word for 'sheriff,' which was very satisfying to hear.  

    As for the reading, Julia Sanches' translations of "Slash and Burn" and "Dogs of Summer," read a bit messy, which explains why I heavily agree with some choices she made, and not with others. Firstly, in "Slash and Burn," I found that while her translation was pretty close, certain word changes she made seemed unnecessary considering how close English and Spanish are. For example, at some point she says, "quieten his nerves" instead of "calm his nerves" when the original phrase was, "le calmara los nervios." "To calm his nerves" would have been a perfectly fine translation. Other times, she makes an attempt to domesticate the work, but it ends up sounding dated or formal. For example, she uses the word "licking" instead of "la tunda," in reference to the protagonist being physically punished by her mother. Here, "licking" sounds quite off, and something like "whooping" or "spanking" would have worked better.

    In "Dogs of Summer," aside from the completely different title, her biggest translation choice that I didn't like was her tendency to slip into a country accent. For words like "abuela'"(meaning grandma) she would use "nan," and for "papas" (meaning potatoes) she used "taters." What is probably worse than that is that it wasn't consistent. Some parts would be country, like "nan," while others were left foreignized, like "tía" or "señora," which are perhaps even less familiar Spanish words to an English audience than "abuela." 

    Overall, there were aspects I liked, and aspects I didn't. I supposed that it was better than disliking the entire translation, I only wish Julia had been a bit more thorough and consistent with her choices. Otherwise, I could appreciate how she made some attempts to preserve the original Spanish.  

Asta and Vala post- talk & Julia Sanches pre-talk responses - Lianbi

 So sorry my post was late! I got sucked into “Slash and Burn” and didn’t finish reading earlier.

I liked Ásta and Vala’s talk last week! It was refreshing and inspiring to see more female translators after Huda, and see the relationship between the poet and the translator. (They have a lovely relationship, although also one that’s hard to duplicate for many of us, since Vala was first Ásta’s publisher/editor and then her translator.) I felt that Vala did an impressive job preserving many of the exact formal elements of the original, but she was more reserved in speaking about the task and her own creativity involved in it. With Ásta’s presence Vala seemed more shy and serious. I was very happy to see her open up more and more throughout the day (she was even more reserved during the MFA student Q&A) and eventually read the hyena poem out loud. To be honest, I didn’t understand why she would never read it out loud. She should be proud of what she achieved! As for Ásta, she is talented, amusing, and very fun to talk to. Since I don’t write poetry, I don’t have more to say about her creative processes. I was thinking about whether my academic, critical, logical side had at some point suppressed my creativity. I am also intrigued by the tension between the academic/research-based tendency and the creative impulse in translation. I personally love that translation involves both, but in the case of translating avant-garde poetry, the two tendencies can contradict.

I loved reading Julia Sanches’ translations. When I started reading “Slash and Burn,” I was a bit critical. I felt like the switch of perspectives was sometimes confusing, the tense was slightly odd, and the free indirect discourses made it even harder to keep track of who’s head we’re in. Yet I was able to figure out the subjectivities as I read on. I believe Julia was being faithful to the original’s stylistic features, and I find these features effective. The more I read on, the clearer the prose got. I feel like I was getting a lot of nuance out of the characters’ feelings and thoughts, even the opponent soldiers’. It seems like Julia, while translating into perfectly smooth English, is willing to occasionally go out of idiomatic usage for stylistic purposes and cultural references. For example:

“Minutes later, the soldiers set fire to everything. To all the men’s work, all the women’s hours, all the children’s chores, the recently done-up doors, the passed- down walls. Everything they had sowed and that still stood tall after the invasion was turned to the ash she found when she came looking for them.”

She delayed the sentence stem “she found” until the end, which is unusual for English but works very well to foreground her subjective experience in this sentence.

Although she successfully kept some words in Spanish, the entire piece reads very intimate and relevant and not “foreign” at all. 

Julia’s translation of Andrea Abreu is a different kind of project. She seems to be comfortable switching registers, doing word plays, using non-standard English spelling to emphasize sound or dialect, and code-switching. They are very fun to read and demonstrate Julia’s versatility as a translator.

March 20th Post - Wesley

 

Mar 20 Response to Ásta, Vala Talk and Julia Sanches Readings - Rose

         I really enjoyed Ásta's and Vala's talk since it’s always a treat to hear from both the author and the translator of a work. I liked Ásta’s philosophy on starting a poem from someplace “other than the mind” and encapsulating each word with a different energy. Although some abstract parts like the almond lost me, I deeply respect Ásta’s creativity and observance, like when she noticed the “presence” of the fan, jaja. I also appreciate her willingness to “surrender” to the ridiculousness of art, like the hyena poem. I wish that Ásta and Vala had read the whole hyena poem out loud, but at least we got a taste of it. I resonated with Vala’s comments on the difficulty that comes with understanding the source text to translate it, but “murdering” the source while doing so. There are quite a few violent metaphors in translation I’m realizing now. 

            I’ve been looking forward to Julia Sanches’ talk for a long time, and I think that her translations are well-done. Although I do not agree with some of her decisions, overall, Julia does a great job of getting a clear meaning across in the English. I am not sure how much of a say she has had in her translations of book titles, but I don't like that Panza de burro is translated as Dogs of Summer. Panza de burro, literally “Donkey’s Belly,” is a reference to a weather phenomenon in the Canary Islands during the summer when clouds accumulate at low altitudes. The term also exists in English. The book is written in Canarian Spanish, a way of remembering and officially recording the unique terms not officially registered by the RAE. Thus, I think that there is a large cultural aspect missing in the translation of Abreu’s Panza de Burro as Dogs of Summer. Nonetheless, I love choices like “Jus a teeny bit” for un fisquito namás to capture the phonetics and informal style of the source. The narrator is a girl who is in love with her best friend, Isora, and although the narrator’s name is never revealed, Isora’s name is constantly mentioned throughout the book. Isora’s name is omitted a few times in Julia’s translation such as on page 2 where Julia writes, “the two of us” for Isora y yo (“Isora and me/I,” depending on the voice you want to capture). I think that the saturation of Isora’s name and lack of the narrator’s is a key part of the book, but at the same time, I understand that Julia most likely removed some of them for clarity. I can see that Julia’s translation is written mostly in British English with choices like “nan” (5) instead of “nanna” or “grandma,” “canteen” (2) instead of “cafeteria,” and “first floor” (3) for segunda planta. I also wish that Julia kept abuela instead of “nan” in her translation, “Tía Chuchi and her nan chela” (9) because “Tía Chuchi” originally made me think that that was how Chuchi was going to be addressed by the narrator for the rest of the book. I think that abuela is easily-understood by an English-language audience, too. Panza de burro is already such a difficult text to tackle because the narrator makes numerous typos, jokes, and pop culture references specific to the Canary Islands, so I think that Julia does well maintaining both the directness and playfulness of the original Spanish. 

I enjoyed Slash and Burn, as well. I think that Julia was creative in her choices to make the writing more colloquial. For example, for faltaba arreglar varios detalles (“several details needed to be fixed/dealt with”) she wrote, “several details had to be ironed out” (12), and for para que no volviera a tardar (“so that she wouldn’t waste any more time”) she wrote, “to keep her from dillydallying” (19). Sometimes she did not follow this same technique though, and I got a bit confused. For example, el corazón le palpitaba muy fuerte Julia translated as, “her heart was beating very hard” (20) instead of using a stronger word to replace “beating very hard,” like “pounding.” I am also not sure why she wrote “father” (21) for papá in one paragraph and then “dad” in the next (or maybe she didn’t notice). I think that Julia is quite gutsy in her translation choices and I appreciate that! I look forward to talking with her about these texts and the additional experiences she’s had translating from Portuguese, French, and Catalan. 

Ásta and Vala Lecture and Julia Sanches Readings - Suis

 After speaking with Ásta and Vala on three different occasions, I got the sense that the two of them have a very close friendship that contributes to the relationship they have as author and translator; Vala has a very good understanding of Ásta’s artistic vision which contributes to her wonderful translations. Ásta is such a sweet person with a bubbly personality, I really enjoyed meeting her. She seems to have an instinctual and natural understanding of poetry. I was mostly impressed by her reading of the poems in the original Icelandic and how musical it sounded and comparing that to the English which sounded completely different. I was grateful for how thoroughly Vala answered my questions about her translation process. She answered the question I had about the poems that focused on sound–that she was given creative liberties for it and translated for the sound as opposed to preserving the meaning in the original. The two allowed me to realize that if one translates an author that is living, then it’s important to have chemistry with them.

This week's two readings have such a stark contrast despite being translated by the same translator. I read the excerpts from “Dogs of Summer” first and recognized it’s very colloquial, low-register voice of an adolescent girl. In contrast, “Slash and Burn” had a very different, more refined tone. Julia Sanches must be a well rounded writer to be able to write in two very distinct voices in this way–I was very inspired. I really enjoyed the way her translation of “Dogs of Summer” really situated me in the environment and culture of the setting, foreignizing terms like “tía” and many of the food items.

Ásta and Valla responde + Sanches response - Soren

 I loved Ásta and Valla so much! I thought Valla had some really interesting things to say on translating a work that you may not fully understand--Ásta talked a lot about how her work exists as its own entity, and how she's one of those authors that writes where the words take her, and Valla's commentary on translating such mystical work was very insightful. Their dynamic was great to watch too! Seeing an author be so close to her translator, and vice versa, was lovely and I loved hearing from both the author and the translator in relation to a specific work. I don't mean to keep bringing up Anton Hur, but there was an interview in which he said that he doesn't speak to the original author because he translates good authors and doesn't feel the need to ask them for clarification.  After watching them interact, I realized why that line made me so uncomfortable when I initially read it. 

I was a little confused on Sanches' translations. I thought Slash and Burn read a little dry, but I wasn't sure if it was intentional and written very deadpan in the original, or if it was translated that way. Korean has the same issue--sentences tend to be more direct in Korean because it's much broader in its descriptive and emotional words, and so needs less to convey more, and is often translated very bluntly without consideration for the actual weight of the emotion behind it at all. I found myself wondering if the narration, in Spanish, wasn't originally more emotional and ore indicative of a child's point of view. I thought the pure grits and gut reading held a lot more emotion and stream of consciousness-style writing, which led me to believe that the bluntness in Slash and Burn was intentional, but something about the translator's note at the end of the story tells me otherwise. 

Reading Response + Ásta Fanney's and Vala Thorrods' Lecture (03/19)- Marina

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Ásta and Vala in the Friday lecture. Ásta is one of those magical beings, and her poetry sounds like how fairies would speak. As soon as I was able, I bought her collection of poems, and I can’t wait to read them. Vala, on the other hand, gave me a lot to think about when it comes to translating, editing, and publishing poetry. She was so knowledgeable, and I appreciated her honesty. What I take from the lecture is that as translators, we must learn to let the poems or texts be. As Vala said, sometimes we tend to want “to skin the text, to pull it apart, and murder it” and try to understand everything that's happening in the original source, but we rarely stop to think and accept that there will be some things that we just can’t see or make sense of and that’s OK, we can just let them be. With Vala and Ásta, I also learned that, although very sad, sometimes in translation, we just have to make peace with the choices we’ve made and not be frustrated with what could have been but think instead of how to best translate the work we have in front of us. 

On the other hand, I think Julia Sanches’ translations of Andrea Abreu's Dogs of Summer and Claudia Hernandéz’s Slash and Burn are overall good enough, but there are some choices that I don't understand or agree with, like the second sentence of Slash and Burn, where instead of translating “the capital of France” the translator chooses “the capital of a very old country.” It may sound more poetic, but the change wasn't necessary; it doesn't add any value to the reader's experience. She also skipped some parts of t Hernandéz’s Slash and Burn, maybe because she didn't want to pass the readers the stereotyped roles of men and women portrayed in the source text, or maybe she thought of the information as useless. Be it the way it was, I agree with Lydia Davis' "Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle" rules, where she strongly disapproves of translators deleting parts of the source texts. I think translators should be as faithful to the text as possible and not delete or add elements if uncalled for, especially large chunks of text. 

from Brennan

 Ásta is definitely one of the most interesting presenters we have had so far. She was very open about how instinctual her process is, and how dependent on the environment she is working in. She surprised me when she said "This fan is so with us in this poetic moment". It goes to show how she really does think of the page as a kind of "graveyard" -- she really experiences her own poetry through multiple senses at once. It really must be difficult to set things down in words when the totality of the experience can rest on so many uncontrollable factors.

I was happy that her cover design stayed the same in English and Icelandic. I have seen so many bad or misleading covers of translations, that I was happy she didn't have to go through that.

This week's readings were also very enjoyable. The author clearly knows when a long sentence is needed, as in

"She knows it’s the capital of a very old country because it was a question on a test in her early days of school and she had to ask a classmate for the answer, even though she was scared the teacher would catch her and take away her test paper, send her out of the classroom to see the principal, then call her mother to let her know what her daughter had been doing instead of reading over her notes every day like they’d told her to at the start of the year".

This is great characterization, and good on the translator for not "fixing" it. (We discussed this kind of problem in Dr. Waters' class last semester, so it's good to see it in practice.)

Had anyone else encountered the word "minky" before this class? It was new to me; so new that it doesn't have any connotations in my mind. Translating profanity must be somewhat like translating dialect, because of how localized and charged it is. That is to say, translating all kinds of vulgarity is hard.

Forevermore Response (late) Marina-03/13

 I wanted to wait until class to comment or write my response because I had a hard time understanding the poems. I loved listening to the video that Soren showed us because I had no idea how the Icelandic could sound like. I felt it sounded like a fairy language of some sort, very magical. I also found some of the words the author and translator use so magical, like "moonshots" or "moon/lunarsnakes." It adds so much to the Icelandic folklore and history. I wonder what other Icelandic poets are doing and why is Asta not well know in Island!

Forevernoon Response - Gisele Sanchez

    Forevernoon was more of an experience than poetry alone. I found many of the creative choices Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir made with her poems gave the collection a whimsical and fairy-like tone that made created a really unique reading experience. The compound words, for example, are seemingly made-up and go unexplained, and yet in the world that exists within these pages, they made perfect sense. I wonder how the translator went about translating words like "lunarsnakes," "ghostboots," and the title itself "forevernoon." I am curious whether the translation process for such words was easier than we might think; were these made-up compound words simply direct translations? I do think while the magic of it all is alluring, the poems were definitely uniquely written and their structure even more interactive and playful, I can't say I fully understood their meaning. My reading experience was like being in a state of hypnosis—I knew what I was experiencing, but not entirely what was happening in the poem. 

    Some words were left untranslated, which I am curious to hear about considering each speaker we have met so far has taken a different opinion when it comes to the debate regarding foreignization and domestication. I personally like it, it is a reminder for the reader that the text they are reading was not written in English. Any way a translator can make their English-speaking readers interact with the original language, especially with uncommon languages such as Icelandic, is a notable exchange between cultures; these interactions are what make English a means of access to a larger audience rather than the reason culture is "lost in translation. "

March 13th Response - Wesley

 

Mar 13 Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and Vala Thorrods Reading - Rose

Forevernoon transported me across time and space, and each time I thought I landed somewhere to be able to understand what was going on, I was picked up again. The book was lyrical and direct at the same time, and reading it made me wonder how it would be read aloud, perhaps accompanied by music or as the music itself. The bareness of the language made up of dispersed verbs and nouns created a rhythm that gave each section a beat, and invented compound words like “luckdagger” (18), “napepond” (33), and “ghostsequins” (67) added new interpretations to the many I already had. Each section followed its own set of rules and form in that there were no rules and no form, so I felt like I was constantly dreaming while reading, trying to make sense of something that seemed to have no sense. I was also interested in the spacing of the lines, with single words followed by couplets followed by tercets followed by longer stanzas. I felt like I was playing an imaginary game of ransom notes, moving words around the page to see what new feeling I got from the poem. I liked the succession of poems from “[Carriage A]” to “[Carriage B]” to “[Carriage C],” and then from “[THIRD WINDOW]” to “[SECOND WINDOW]” to “[FIRST WINDOW],” again giving me little idea of what to expect. Some of my favorite lines were “we sipped spring water by an open window in the limerick room” (37) and “a velociraptor locked in a closet in a flower in front of the / frontal dream” (41) because I was so confused and mesmerized at the same time. 

        I wonder what Vala Thorrods’ process of translation was like, and I especially wonder if she began translating poem-by-poem from beginning to end, if she picked one to start randomly, or if she hopped from fragment to fragment. I couldn’t help but read some lines like, “aí ha hhííí / jaja haí hah hahah heh / tchah tsk-tsk” (60) out loud, so I can just imagine the fun that went alongside playing to the sensorial aspects of the poems. As Thorrod describes in her translator’s afterword, Ásta’s poems are always looking to get “somewhere” (81), and it is the reader’s choice to step onto Ásta’s vessel or not, capturing any bits of the journey that they can. The goal is not to make sense of the poetry, but to come along for the ride and see where one ends up. I feel like if I were to have translated this text, I would probably think of it as both the best and worst thing I have done, feeling both relief and frustration. I am most looking forward to—hopefully—hearing Ásta and Thorrod read the originals and translations out loud so I can hear their own rhythms to the pieces, hop back on the vessel, and discover new destinations. 

March 13 Reading Response - Audree

 The first thing I noticed about Forevernoon is the use of words that put together to create new ones that I am unsure of the meaning— "forevernoon" being one of them and a few others being "napepond,""moonnuns," and "Icaruswax." I am curious as to what these words were in the original and how the translator converted them, because they don't actually seem to mean anything in English (apart from forevernoon which does make some sense to me as a word). Other words such as "Gumbabw" and "bumgamb" don't seem to mean anything at all, and I am curious again as to what they mean in the context of the poems but also how they were translated and what they were in the original.

In the afterword, the translator specifically says that her translation of Àsta is in a way her own interpretation of the poems — "I have drawn for the anglophone reader a new map, pointing the way to some of what I have found." Indeed, the writing is at times extremely elusive, and it is hard to know what the poet is actually talking about. What made reading these enjoyable for me is that I was able to let them wash over me after a while rather than try to make logical sense of what she is trying to recount. Certain  imagery resonated with me, and most others didn't, but I found it interesting that the translator was able to say that the very nature of Àsta's writing makes it so that there is not one route of meaning down which she could follow as a guide. 

Forevernoon Soren Chang

 I'm really captivated by the language used in Forevernoon--her poetry has a distinct, soft voice that seems to nicely narrate even the darker, grittier parts of the poem, but the words themselves are so peculiar. I want to talk about this in my presentation, but I really want to know how she stitched the words together, what prompted her to do so, and how Thorodds went about translating these words. I'm also interested to know the reason for the formatting, for the sudden and lightly jarring colloquialism in certain parts, and why just this reading, with no other contextualizing information, was provided to us. I kind of liked going into it totally blind and unaware--I was pleasantly surprised by the whole collection and, though I found it almost a little too edgy to follow fluidly, I can respect the stylistic decision behind it and how nicely that just out of reach feeling ties in with the poems' thesis. I really liked the fusing of modernization and nature and spirituality and the human self--typically people refuse to weave all those topics together for fear of betraying one of them, but I thought it was done quite nicely. 

Comments from Brennan

 Forevernoon would seem to pose different problems to the translator than would prose, or than would more traditional forms of poetry, such as a haiku or a sonnet. I was immediately struck by the visual element; I didn't feel I was really appreciating the poem until I literally zoomed out and saw the shape of the page. Sometimes I felt myself trying to find a concrete shape in the typesetting; a brick, or a wisp of smoke, or something else related to the lexical part of the poem. I wonder what kind of weight the translator gave to this. I imagine it affected the word choice; keeping a line to the same length in English as it is in Icelandic. I wonder how hard it was. Longer English novels are sometimes split into two volumes for publication in German translation.

The compound words, e.g. "moonrotations" and "lightspiritstar" made me envious of this particular translator's freedom. Working with German sci-fi, I am always trying to find elegant ways to represent novel compounds in my source texts. I don't know if this bold strategy would work with what I aim to accomplish, but it does tempt me.

Vala Thorodds Translation of Ásta Fanney Sigurdardóttir Post - Suis

 I was very captivated by these poems. Vala Thorodds suggests in her afterword that the reader is taken on a journey in this book “through a vessel whose destination is unknown,” and I definitely felt some sense of that (81). Moreover, I felt that I was always reminded of the presence of a/someone’s perspective. The poems entitled First Window, Second Window, and Third Window read like scenes through the frame of a window (36-38). In First Window, there is a list of things that are reflected “in the eyes,” (38) reminding me again, that this is a perception, and later, that “we see everything through a black hole” (70). This constant reminder of a lens/perspective (serendipitously) reminded me of Huda Fakhreddine’s comment that a translation is one interpretation of a text so I was very conscious of this work as a translated work throughout my reading of it (which is something I haven’t truly done before this program).

I also was enthralled by the specificity of the poet’s language that creates a very vivid imagery at times. For example, a “feather” is described as “fall[ing] slowly and erratically through the air” with a question that follows it: “how does a feather hurry?” (43). The seemingly oxymoronic words, and the specificity of the adverb “erratically” painted the image so realistically for me. Some of the language also read very painterly to me, such as the “hazeblue mountain and brown slopes covered with crisp moss” that also evoked a sense of vivid realism (37). My favorite poem describes the moon reflecting in a body of “white water” (42). The visual form of the poem (the words on the page) are arranged to cause the reader’s eyes to oscillate across the pages, creating this effect of swaying or undulating water. Poems that reflect the content in its form are very striking to me.

I have one question I would like to pose to the translator about the poems on pages 55, 58-60. These poems seem to focus on the phonetic aspect of language with the constant repetition of words and lyrical rhymes like “tadpole with a glad soul” (59). I am curious as to what her approach was with such poems, whether she translated the meaning or the sound, what her thought process was for translating such poems.