Monday, March 13, 2023

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. "

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