The last time I wrote, the spring leaves were just opening, waxy and bright green. Now they are beginning to fall. But the gay mayor of gay Paris has a grand way to celebrate these dog days of summer... From July 21 to August 21 the city of Paris closes the right-bank access road stretching the length of the two isles and installs beach style amusements. It's (not quite) like we have a beachfront apartment! This is a little recount of my morning walk...
Pss) I will have to look into formatting options for future posts as the quality of this one leaves a lot to be desired.
I love Pink Martini's affinity for parody... despite the festive tone of this song, it's about a woman burnt out on her scene: "My bedroom is like a cage... the sun reaches in the windows... I've known the smell of love... now, a single flower among my entourage makes me sick." And the repeated chorus translates to, "I don't want to work, I don't want to lunch, I only want to forget... so I smoke..."
You might also like to check out their crazy rendition of "Que Sera, Sera!" It should make a girl think twice about that old adage!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
De Ma Fenêtre II
(From My Window II)
He forgot his cell phone this morning when he left for work. I knew it as soon as he shut the door. He slipped out so quietly. So he hasn’t called today, and it’s either because our home phone isn’t working and he doesn’t have my cell phone number memorized OR he just needed an excuse not to call me today.
I spent the morning taking Filou to the vet. It was raining and he just had a bath two days ago, so he didn’t get to run free, and he’s gotten so big—5.7kg—that he’s heavy in his cage. (I wonder how much of it is hair.) But we braved the metro and he howled in the trains. All the Frenchies were scowling at me.
Filou likes Dr. Payancé, probably because he plucks the hair from his ears. Turns out he has an infection—Filou, not Dr. Payancé—too gross to get into here, so he has some antibiotics and other treatments to tolerate for the next two weeks. I guess so do I. Dr. Payancé says that as soon as Filou starts lifting his leg to piddle like a big boy, I should bring him in for the ol’ snip snip.
I like Dr. Payancé, too. We met him at Porte de Clignancourt where we bought a couple of storage pieces from his space at the flea market—his weekend hobby, though I don’t know if hobby is the right word. When he was delivering our furniture, he met Filou, so he gave us his Dr. card. He says he has been stocking up on decorative objects, carafes and crystal. Maybe we’ll go to the flea market this weekend.
I just got back from lunch at the crêperie downstairs and will probably do some phase of the laundry and the dishes before the man gets home. I don’t know what we’ll do for dinner tonight. It’s my sister’s birthday… sure do miss her.
The parking patrol officers are combing the streets… One man argues, or tries to, but she just goes on writing the ticket. A delivery man—parked on the sidewalk on Avenue Victoria—just lets her write it and leave, takes it from the window and slips it into his jacket pocket, goes on loading his hatchback.
Police on horseback clatter up the street, and the clamor of recess creeps around the corner, gets tangled in the tree branches. I can’t believe it’s taken me until now to realize that THIS is the tree lined street Shaun saw in my cards last summer… signifying happiness. Where are the mirrors, the man with the gold-framed glasses?
He forgot his cell phone this morning when he left for work. I knew it as soon as he shut the door. He slipped out so quietly. So he hasn’t called today, and it’s either because our home phone isn’t working and he doesn’t have my cell phone number memorized OR he just needed an excuse not to call me today.
I spent the morning taking Filou to the vet. It was raining and he just had a bath two days ago, so he didn’t get to run free, and he’s gotten so big—5.7kg—that he’s heavy in his cage. (I wonder how much of it is hair.) But we braved the metro and he howled in the trains. All the Frenchies were scowling at me.
Filou likes Dr. Payancé, probably because he plucks the hair from his ears. Turns out he has an infection—Filou, not Dr. Payancé—too gross to get into here, so he has some antibiotics and other treatments to tolerate for the next two weeks. I guess so do I. Dr. Payancé says that as soon as Filou starts lifting his leg to piddle like a big boy, I should bring him in for the ol’ snip snip.
I like Dr. Payancé, too. We met him at Porte de Clignancourt where we bought a couple of storage pieces from his space at the flea market—his weekend hobby, though I don’t know if hobby is the right word. When he was delivering our furniture, he met Filou, so he gave us his Dr. card. He says he has been stocking up on decorative objects, carafes and crystal. Maybe we’ll go to the flea market this weekend.
I just got back from lunch at the crêperie downstairs and will probably do some phase of the laundry and the dishes before the man gets home. I don’t know what we’ll do for dinner tonight. It’s my sister’s birthday… sure do miss her.
The parking patrol officers are combing the streets… One man argues, or tries to, but she just goes on writing the ticket. A delivery man—parked on the sidewalk on Avenue Victoria—just lets her write it and leave, takes it from the window and slips it into his jacket pocket, goes on loading his hatchback.
Police on horseback clatter up the street, and the clamor of recess creeps around the corner, gets tangled in the tree branches. I can’t believe it’s taken me until now to realize that THIS is the tree lined street Shaun saw in my cards last summer… signifying happiness. Where are the mirrors, the man with the gold-framed glasses?
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Le Renard
A man’s hand smoothing a dead girl’s eyes shut, a wedding ring gleaming. An exotic dancer still costumed, dead in her bathtub only half full of water, her wrists scarred, no blood…
A wife reports her husband missing, two days and Gerd, the detective, tells the wife that no news is good news and she should call him if she hears any. When the husband finally calls his wife, he asks her to meet him in their usual place…
Now someone else is in the dead girl’s house, someone who knows where the safe is, in the stairwell behind the innocuous art…
Phone booths and gloves, people following people in cars, lurking in shrubs, money changing hands at the men’s club…
She was asking too much of him, wanted him to divorce his wife. He tried to make it look like suicide.
“Make it look like:” Maquiller—to make up, as with make-up… invent… but I digress.
It’s called Le Renard, or The Fox. France 2, a public television station, runs two episodes back to back each afternoon. The series is German voiced over in French, and the last line of every show is “Monsieur so-and-so or Madame/Mademoiselle, you’re under arrest for the murder of M. so-and-so.” Then the camera stops rolling on a final image, usually the accused being led away or handcuffed—the background for the closing credits with good German names like Helmut, Eberhard, Rolf (at least two,) Johannes, Jutta, Gunter, Helga, Hermann, and Claus (again, at least two of them.)
The main character is never addressed as Renard. His name is Leo Kress, Commissioner Kress. He’s balding, with sparse, white hair and thick, almost round wire-rimmed glasses that make his blue eyes look just a little too close together, or maybe they are. He has a sturdy nose with one of those short, narrow moustaches, not wider than his lip, and three inspectors in his équipe: Werner—the young, efficient evidence collector… his glasses are like mini versions of le Renard’s; Axel Richter—an awkward, lightly black man who has a lot to learn from the Renard. Axel does most of the driving and usually works in tandem with the third—Gerd, whose name I was able to hear only after I had seen it in the credits, a younger Renard, no moustache, usually tan. If I pay very close attention, I can almost grasp their witty banter. There’s also the coroner who arrives first on the scene—ready, when the detectives arrive, with his preliminary estimates of time and cause of death. He emphasizes their inexactitude.
Most of the stories involve a love triangle, or other polygon, older men and younger women, drugs and cash, and family businesses with feuding spouses, parents and siblings vying for control. Often there is a pair of murders, or a second one—always one of the suspects. Everyone is a suspect. Consequently, the list of standard alibis is long: “I was drunk, passed out, I don’t remember anything.” “I was in my car.” “I was at home, alone,” or they say they were with a spouse who may or may not agree to confirm the lie. This alone rarely indicates the murderer.
The detectives uncover large amounts of cash which might equate to hired hits, drugs, or bribes—in French, faire chanter, “someone making someone else sing.” Cell phone calls are researched, fingerprints dusted, passports are confiscated, and agendas—calendars and motives—are considered, but mostly there is a lot of questioning. The usual “Last night, where were you?” features prominently in the promo and in various versions throughout the drama: “Where were you last night between ten and midnight?... Where were you this morning between three and five?” They say they are obligated to ask this question, but they never start with it. They work up to it.
Eyes shift, hands fumble, and the camera captures the inspectors catching it all, informing their instincts. They exchange knowing glances, and roll their eyes behind the backs of the liars they interrogate, and everybody lies for all sorts of reasons: secretaries claiming not to have had sexual relations with their dead bosses, husbands—or wives—claiming not to have known about their dead spouses’ affairs, parents protecting—and implicating—children. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the Renard ever finding himself in the difficult situation of having to charge a child with murder, but the violations against them—and the ones against women—never go unpunished.
Like with many stories, it’s not so much what’s said or shown as what’s not. The answers are always in what’s missing… that is until all the pieces come together just before the arrest. A few murderers evade the Renard by committing suicide—jumping from a window, a noose, a shot to the head with the murder weapon.
The opening credits appear over a series of segments from the ensuing episode—the story’s characters—suspects or victims—each in various moments of stress, pivotal moments you will soon be able to contextualize. Thanks to these almost previews, you know from the beginning if you’ve seen the episode before, so at first it’s confusing when there is an actor who has played a character in another episode. Does s/he make a good criminal? Was s/he the culprit last time? I can never remember. On very rare occasion, they play reoccurring characters. Maybe I should try to guess from the opening scenes who the murderer is. Only sometimes is it the most obvious choice—the unidentified man smoothing the dead girl’s eyes shut, the missing husband.
A wife reports her husband missing, two days and Gerd, the detective, tells the wife that no news is good news and she should call him if she hears any. When the husband finally calls his wife, he asks her to meet him in their usual place…
Now someone else is in the dead girl’s house, someone who knows where the safe is, in the stairwell behind the innocuous art…
Phone booths and gloves, people following people in cars, lurking in shrubs, money changing hands at the men’s club…
She was asking too much of him, wanted him to divorce his wife. He tried to make it look like suicide.
“Make it look like:” Maquiller—to make up, as with make-up… invent… but I digress.
It’s called Le Renard, or The Fox. France 2, a public television station, runs two episodes back to back each afternoon. The series is German voiced over in French, and the last line of every show is “Monsieur so-and-so or Madame/Mademoiselle, you’re under arrest for the murder of M. so-and-so.” Then the camera stops rolling on a final image, usually the accused being led away or handcuffed—the background for the closing credits with good German names like Helmut, Eberhard, Rolf (at least two,) Johannes, Jutta, Gunter, Helga, Hermann, and Claus (again, at least two of them.)
The main character is never addressed as Renard. His name is Leo Kress, Commissioner Kress. He’s balding, with sparse, white hair and thick, almost round wire-rimmed glasses that make his blue eyes look just a little too close together, or maybe they are. He has a sturdy nose with one of those short, narrow moustaches, not wider than his lip, and three inspectors in his équipe: Werner—the young, efficient evidence collector… his glasses are like mini versions of le Renard’s; Axel Richter—an awkward, lightly black man who has a lot to learn from the Renard. Axel does most of the driving and usually works in tandem with the third—Gerd, whose name I was able to hear only after I had seen it in the credits, a younger Renard, no moustache, usually tan. If I pay very close attention, I can almost grasp their witty banter. There’s also the coroner who arrives first on the scene—ready, when the detectives arrive, with his preliminary estimates of time and cause of death. He emphasizes their inexactitude.
Most of the stories involve a love triangle, or other polygon, older men and younger women, drugs and cash, and family businesses with feuding spouses, parents and siblings vying for control. Often there is a pair of murders, or a second one—always one of the suspects. Everyone is a suspect. Consequently, the list of standard alibis is long: “I was drunk, passed out, I don’t remember anything.” “I was in my car.” “I was at home, alone,” or they say they were with a spouse who may or may not agree to confirm the lie. This alone rarely indicates the murderer.
The detectives uncover large amounts of cash which might equate to hired hits, drugs, or bribes—in French, faire chanter, “someone making someone else sing.” Cell phone calls are researched, fingerprints dusted, passports are confiscated, and agendas—calendars and motives—are considered, but mostly there is a lot of questioning. The usual “Last night, where were you?” features prominently in the promo and in various versions throughout the drama: “Where were you last night between ten and midnight?... Where were you this morning between three and five?” They say they are obligated to ask this question, but they never start with it. They work up to it.
Eyes shift, hands fumble, and the camera captures the inspectors catching it all, informing their instincts. They exchange knowing glances, and roll their eyes behind the backs of the liars they interrogate, and everybody lies for all sorts of reasons: secretaries claiming not to have had sexual relations with their dead bosses, husbands—or wives—claiming not to have known about their dead spouses’ affairs, parents protecting—and implicating—children. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the Renard ever finding himself in the difficult situation of having to charge a child with murder, but the violations against them—and the ones against women—never go unpunished.
Like with many stories, it’s not so much what’s said or shown as what’s not. The answers are always in what’s missing… that is until all the pieces come together just before the arrest. A few murderers evade the Renard by committing suicide—jumping from a window, a noose, a shot to the head with the murder weapon.
The opening credits appear over a series of segments from the ensuing episode—the story’s characters—suspects or victims—each in various moments of stress, pivotal moments you will soon be able to contextualize. Thanks to these almost previews, you know from the beginning if you’ve seen the episode before, so at first it’s confusing when there is an actor who has played a character in another episode. Does s/he make a good criminal? Was s/he the culprit last time? I can never remember. On very rare occasion, they play reoccurring characters. Maybe I should try to guess from the opening scenes who the murderer is. Only sometimes is it the most obvious choice—the unidentified man smoothing the dead girl’s eyes shut, the missing husband.
De Ma Fenêtre I
(From My Window I)
It’s Sunday morning and he’s sleeping late. Filou is snuggled against my left leg on the sofa and Buddy stakes out the space to my right. Sophia is, as is often the case, perched on the breakfast bar by the open kitchen window. Outside, intermittent drizzle drifts between the buildings like aspiring snow. Someone once told me that it’s always a little bit warmer just before it snows.
On the sidewalk below, people line up around the Théâtre du Châtelet for a matinee of something. The access road along the Seine is closed to traffic, but the bicyclists and pedestrians haven’t taken to it yet. A crowd of demonstrators descends upon the Hotel de Ville where a few early-bird ice skaters make their circles in the temporary rink. If there were any leaves on the trees lining Avenue Victoria, I wouldn’t even know about the demonstration; though from here, I have no idea what they’re marching for. Pigeons. Sirens.
I’d take pictures for you, but I can’t find my camera. He asked for it yesterday when he was working on the printer and he doesn’t know where it is. Anyway, I have a long list of things to do today… Laundry is waiting in the bath room, unfinished crafts are piled up on the table. I want to make a fruit salad for brunch, maybe a goat cheese omelet and some toast with orange marmalade. There will be dishes. We’re too late for the Sunday marchée, so we will certainly make the trip up rue Saint Denis—past the closed store fronts and daylight hookers—for the week’s produce and kosher meats. I want to paint my nails… and then there’s the Salon d’Agriculture at the exposition center.
I like the days he’s home. It’s nice to have someone to do things with… for. While we’re out, I gather images, keep them until they burn a (w)hole. I’ve got a few poems in the air, on my virtual desktop, but I probably won’t get to them today… unless he’s content to stay a while in bed and watch TV. (He likes the science and society documentaries, and there’s always a few worth rewatching on PersoTV—a cable channel devoted to client generated footage and films.) If not, there’s always the solitude of his work week…
It’s Sunday morning and he’s sleeping late. Filou is snuggled against my left leg on the sofa and Buddy stakes out the space to my right. Sophia is, as is often the case, perched on the breakfast bar by the open kitchen window. Outside, intermittent drizzle drifts between the buildings like aspiring snow. Someone once told me that it’s always a little bit warmer just before it snows.
On the sidewalk below, people line up around the Théâtre du Châtelet for a matinee of something. The access road along the Seine is closed to traffic, but the bicyclists and pedestrians haven’t taken to it yet. A crowd of demonstrators descends upon the Hotel de Ville where a few early-bird ice skaters make their circles in the temporary rink. If there were any leaves on the trees lining Avenue Victoria, I wouldn’t even know about the demonstration; though from here, I have no idea what they’re marching for. Pigeons. Sirens.
I’d take pictures for you, but I can’t find my camera. He asked for it yesterday when he was working on the printer and he doesn’t know where it is. Anyway, I have a long list of things to do today… Laundry is waiting in the bath room, unfinished crafts are piled up on the table. I want to make a fruit salad for brunch, maybe a goat cheese omelet and some toast with orange marmalade. There will be dishes. We’re too late for the Sunday marchée, so we will certainly make the trip up rue Saint Denis—past the closed store fronts and daylight hookers—for the week’s produce and kosher meats. I want to paint my nails… and then there’s the Salon d’Agriculture at the exposition center.
I like the days he’s home. It’s nice to have someone to do things with… for. While we’re out, I gather images, keep them until they burn a (w)hole. I’ve got a few poems in the air, on my virtual desktop, but I probably won’t get to them today… unless he’s content to stay a while in bed and watch TV. (He likes the science and society documentaries, and there’s always a few worth rewatching on PersoTV—a cable channel devoted to client generated footage and films.) If not, there’s always the solitude of his work week…
Saturday, February 2, 2008
A Taste for Translation
I've been sick in bed all week, so I decided to recycle an article that I wrote last January for Kate Ozbirn at California Quarterly. She wanted something that discussed the pleasures and challenges of literary translation for a general audience, and so I think it might just be appropriate to share here and now.
At the time I wrote the article, I had just finished two translations for The Translator's French Quarter... one of my own poems into French, which required more than editorial assistance, and an English translation of a short story by one of my favorite contemporary French writers, Hélène Cixous. I was in Paris for the winter break thinking only of my thesis and trying to take some time off before my last semester of grad school. Much to my surprise, Kate received the article without hesitation and published it in her "Poetry Letter & Literary Review" with minimal revisions not reflected below. Thanks to her quick work, it was my first publication.
I have since had the honor of receiving a prize in their annual poetry contest this past summer and the poem has been published in their recent volume, 33.4. For a copy, send a note explaining your request, and a check for $7.50 to: Membership Chair, 21 Whitman Court, Irvine, CA 92617.
Thanks for reading!
A Taste for Translation
Tonight the Paris rain falls—not in “ropes” like the French idiom says it does and like it does in August, but in tiny droplets that would make weightless snowflakes if it were February instead of January—nothing to catch a cold over, but enough to turn the streets wet and dark like Ezra Pound’s black boughs; and so the word “rain” does not suffice. I find a heated terrace and duck in with my groceries, “command” a cup of tea, and pick up a menu waiting on the table next to me for the dinner crowd.
Montmartre is a tourist friendly quartier, so each item on the menu is translated into English: The Pave de Rumsteck becomes a “Rumpsteak Paving Stone,” the Cote de Boeuf is an “Ox Coast” instead of a “side of beef,” or “spare ribs,” or whatever it is, and under Tartine de Maison the translator has written “Pot House.” Given the context, these are amusing mistakes that a native English speaker could not make, but as a second language learner myself, I admire the restaurant owner’s courage—though some would say haste or simply inexperience—to sit down with a dictionary and put such literality to print.
Because to translate into a second language often results in such folly, most of us stick to the target languages we know best—our native ones, but levels of fluency in source languages vary widely. Many translators maintain a certain distance from the original text hoping to most naturally replicate it by working in collaboration with others who have more instinctive facility with the source language—like Pound did, and like the owner of the restaurant should have. They may not even care to learn the source language. Others prefer to go it alone, dictionaries, thesaurus, and all their own interpretations on the table like the ingredients of a family recipe to be sampled and measured together until it tastes the way it is remembered. The main difference between the two extremes is that those who do speak the languages they translate may be more obviously under the influence of the source language than those who do not. This serves to stretch the boundaries of the target language. Furthermore, the more sharply the translator’s own voice is honed, the more likely it is to infiltrate the resulting translation.
To pretend that a translation is, can or should be free of such influence is also folly, because whatever aesthetics the translator assumes, there is always collaboration in translation, even if only between the author of the original text and the translator. Sounds of the language and their effects, the breaths and lengths of the lines, and the subtle implications of word choice and order are initially lost forcing the translator into inventions and manipulations that beg permission from the original authors. The art of translations is a process, an attempt to reconstruct the images and impressions of the source text in a language that did not give birth to them to begin with. This communication with another writer is the literary translator’s driving force, the raison d’être, the passion for slowly transforming a text’s every word, and it is as tantalizing to the poet translator as a Tartine de Maison would be to someone with the munchies.
More importantly, this exchange makes the process of translation an inevitably regenerative exercise that teaches us, word by word, the possibilities and limitations of our own languages. We must decide what strangeness can be stretched and still understood and what will take our readers too far away from the original, especially those readers who cannot penetrate the text as we can by having an understanding of both languages. We revel in the multitudinous gains and losses before deciding how best to recast the text to keep meaning from being lost or even only refracted taking the reader to places never implied while the meaning and music of the poem slip and slide between languages, cultures, and epochs. For example, the French word vrai divides itself into two English ones: “true” and “real.” How the translator chooses one or the other should have as much to do with the sounds and rhythms of the surrounding words as it will with theoretical debates about the differences between the two. The translator must look forward into the minds of the readers and back into the mind of the author being channeled, and the older the source text, the more complicated the questions.
Despite all this reader-writer-text interplay, ultimately, like an archer shooting arrows at a bull’s eye, the translator pursues the target language alone word by word finding it sometimes easy to hit the mark, sometimes impossible. If, for example, a native French speaker were to read this article, the image of a duck—perhaps dunking its head into a lake after tiny bits of food—would be evoked by my ducking into the café terrace. The verb “to duck” does not translate, but the resulting image is almost appropriate. On the other hand, the menu’s implication that a choice cut of meat is a paving stone is hardly a desirable one in a town so chock full of competing restaurants.
Still, I decide not to report the menu’s miscommunications to the server, pay for my tea, and head off into the evening. Perhaps the absurd connections will inspire some non-Franglais speakers to reconsider the assumptions of their relationships with English. Besides, the slight rain has stopped and the clouds are clearing. By the time I reach my apartment, I will have a different sky above me and a whole new batch of questions to try to answer. I will be up late tonight for there is much to be said, and re-said.
Unfortunately, not all poems can be translated, but we continue to try, to search for ways of conveying what can be said in other languages. After all, the main reason we translate is to share the foreign texts we so enjoy with others who do not speak the language, and, as with any collaboration, there will be compromises, but we believe the rewards of such gifts to be greater than the costs.
At the time I wrote the article, I had just finished two translations for The Translator's French Quarter... one of my own poems into French, which required more than editorial assistance, and an English translation of a short story by one of my favorite contemporary French writers, Hélène Cixous. I was in Paris for the winter break thinking only of my thesis and trying to take some time off before my last semester of grad school. Much to my surprise, Kate received the article without hesitation and published it in her "Poetry Letter & Literary Review" with minimal revisions not reflected below. Thanks to her quick work, it was my first publication.
I have since had the honor of receiving a prize in their annual poetry contest this past summer and the poem has been published in their recent volume, 33.4. For a copy, send a note explaining your request, and a check for $7.50 to: Membership Chair, 21 Whitman Court, Irvine, CA 92617.
Thanks for reading!
A Taste for Translation
Tonight the Paris rain falls—not in “ropes” like the French idiom says it does and like it does in August, but in tiny droplets that would make weightless snowflakes if it were February instead of January—nothing to catch a cold over, but enough to turn the streets wet and dark like Ezra Pound’s black boughs; and so the word “rain” does not suffice. I find a heated terrace and duck in with my groceries, “command” a cup of tea, and pick up a menu waiting on the table next to me for the dinner crowd.
Montmartre is a tourist friendly quartier, so each item on the menu is translated into English: The Pave de Rumsteck becomes a “Rumpsteak Paving Stone,” the Cote de Boeuf is an “Ox Coast” instead of a “side of beef,” or “spare ribs,” or whatever it is, and under Tartine de Maison the translator has written “Pot House.” Given the context, these are amusing mistakes that a native English speaker could not make, but as a second language learner myself, I admire the restaurant owner’s courage—though some would say haste or simply inexperience—to sit down with a dictionary and put such literality to print.Because to translate into a second language often results in such folly, most of us stick to the target languages we know best—our native ones, but levels of fluency in source languages vary widely. Many translators maintain a certain distance from the original text hoping to most naturally replicate it by working in collaboration with others who have more instinctive facility with the source language—like Pound did, and like the owner of the restaurant should have. They may not even care to learn the source language. Others prefer to go it alone, dictionaries, thesaurus, and all their own interpretations on the table like the ingredients of a family recipe to be sampled and measured together until it tastes the way it is remembered. The main difference between the two extremes is that those who do speak the languages they translate may be more obviously under the influence of the source language than those who do not. This serves to stretch the boundaries of the target language. Furthermore, the more sharply the translator’s own voice is honed, the more likely it is to infiltrate the resulting translation.
To pretend that a translation is, can or should be free of such influence is also folly, because whatever aesthetics the translator assumes, there is always collaboration in translation, even if only between the author of the original text and the translator. Sounds of the language and their effects, the breaths and lengths of the lines, and the subtle implications of word choice and order are initially lost forcing the translator into inventions and manipulations that beg permission from the original authors. The art of translations is a process, an attempt to reconstruct the images and impressions of the source text in a language that did not give birth to them to begin with. This communication with another writer is the literary translator’s driving force, the raison d’être, the passion for slowly transforming a text’s every word, and it is as tantalizing to the poet translator as a Tartine de Maison would be to someone with the munchies.
More importantly, this exchange makes the process of translation an inevitably regenerative exercise that teaches us, word by word, the possibilities and limitations of our own languages. We must decide what strangeness can be stretched and still understood and what will take our readers too far away from the original, especially those readers who cannot penetrate the text as we can by having an understanding of both languages. We revel in the multitudinous gains and losses before deciding how best to recast the text to keep meaning from being lost or even only refracted taking the reader to places never implied while the meaning and music of the poem slip and slide between languages, cultures, and epochs. For example, the French word vrai divides itself into two English ones: “true” and “real.” How the translator chooses one or the other should have as much to do with the sounds and rhythms of the surrounding words as it will with theoretical debates about the differences between the two. The translator must look forward into the minds of the readers and back into the mind of the author being channeled, and the older the source text, the more complicated the questions.
Despite all this reader-writer-text interplay, ultimately, like an archer shooting arrows at a bull’s eye, the translator pursues the target language alone word by word finding it sometimes easy to hit the mark, sometimes impossible. If, for example, a native French speaker were to read this article, the image of a duck—perhaps dunking its head into a lake after tiny bits of food—would be evoked by my ducking into the café terrace. The verb “to duck” does not translate, but the resulting image is almost appropriate. On the other hand, the menu’s implication that a choice cut of meat is a paving stone is hardly a desirable one in a town so chock full of competing restaurants.
Still, I decide not to report the menu’s miscommunications to the server, pay for my tea, and head off into the evening. Perhaps the absurd connections will inspire some non-Franglais speakers to reconsider the assumptions of their relationships with English. Besides, the slight rain has stopped and the clouds are clearing. By the time I reach my apartment, I will have a different sky above me and a whole new batch of questions to try to answer. I will be up late tonight for there is much to be said, and re-said.
Unfortunately, not all poems can be translated, but we continue to try, to search for ways of conveying what can be said in other languages. After all, the main reason we translate is to share the foreign texts we so enjoy with others who do not speak the language, and, as with any collaboration, there will be compromises, but we believe the rewards of such gifts to be greater than the costs.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Smoke Free Paris
In case you haven't heard by now, on January 2 the ever-rumored no-smoking law was passed in France; and while I am generally in favor of smoking prohibition, I have discovered a few, shall we say "problems" with its Parisian application...
1. Sometimes, especially at night, the sidewalks in front of certain bars are so packed with banished smokers that it's easier to take your chances and walk past in the street...
The weather has been unseasonably mild, so this isn't as uncomfortable as it will be soon enough. This small crowd is nothing to compared to others I've pushed my way through.
2. This fact and increased outdoor smoking in general lead to other obvious problems...
... though at least one bar has created this simple solution...
"Would you please put your butts here."
3. Apparently, police officers are still free to smoke in their patrol cars and paddy wagons. This doesn't seem fair, does it? (I'd love to show you a picture of this, but I have yet to be quick enough, let alone brave enough, to capture it.)
4. Hookah bars all over town have gone out of business. C'mon! Even in California we allow hookah smoking, don't we? And if I want to get political, this fact alone could be seen as an intentional side effect aimed at Arab establishments... but no one seems to be going there over here.
5. Last but not least, the problem I see as saddest is a certain change in lifestyle that this regulation has put into motion. Smoking--more specifically the required lingering associated with it--is at the core of Parisian culture... not that all Parisians smoke, but the ones that do have always set a sort of pace, a counterbalance to the frenzied city life so many Parisians live.
As you can imagine, this has been a hot topic on the news and in cafes and bars. Some establishments are already reporting reduced profits, and interviews show smoker after smoker talking about how their coffee breaks (pause cafe) and their famous conversations have become much shorter, even less frequent.
In the long run, people will adapt. Most are glad to have smoke free meals, and most of the smokers I've ever known even like the excuse to excuse themselves from social situations at certain intervals. I'm curious to see what the regulation does to cigarette sales. The line at our neighborhood tabac doesn't seem any shorter, but you know... change takes time.
At any rate, here's hoping the weather stays agreeable.
1. Sometimes, especially at night, the sidewalks in front of certain bars are so packed with banished smokers that it's easier to take your chances and walk past in the street...
The weather has been unseasonably mild, so this isn't as uncomfortable as it will be soon enough. This small crowd is nothing to compared to others I've pushed my way through.
2. This fact and increased outdoor smoking in general lead to other obvious problems...
... though at least one bar has created this simple solution...
"Would you please put your butts here."
3. Apparently, police officers are still free to smoke in their patrol cars and paddy wagons. This doesn't seem fair, does it? (I'd love to show you a picture of this, but I have yet to be quick enough, let alone brave enough, to capture it.)
4. Hookah bars all over town have gone out of business. C'mon! Even in California we allow hookah smoking, don't we? And if I want to get political, this fact alone could be seen as an intentional side effect aimed at Arab establishments... but no one seems to be going there over here.
5. Last but not least, the problem I see as saddest is a certain change in lifestyle that this regulation has put into motion. Smoking--more specifically the required lingering associated with it--is at the core of Parisian culture... not that all Parisians smoke, but the ones that do have always set a sort of pace, a counterbalance to the frenzied city life so many Parisians live.
As you can imagine, this has been a hot topic on the news and in cafes and bars. Some establishments are already reporting reduced profits, and interviews show smoker after smoker talking about how their coffee breaks (pause cafe) and their famous conversations have become much shorter, even less frequent.
In the long run, people will adapt. Most are glad to have smoke free meals, and most of the smokers I've ever known even like the excuse to excuse themselves from social situations at certain intervals. I'm curious to see what the regulation does to cigarette sales. The line at our neighborhood tabac doesn't seem any shorter, but you know... change takes time.
At any rate, here's hoping the weather stays agreeable.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Grey
Every once in a while, I make it to The Other Writers' Group held upstairs at Shakespeare and Company on Saturday afternoons. Last week the room was packed... people occupying every inch of bench that circles the room beneath the bookcases... English speakers from every corner of the globe, men, women, old, young... poetry and fiction writers with varying degrees of experience--in writing and in life. This particular Saturday started with a short story about a young man feeling glum after coming to Paris who was fascinated by another young man who seemed better acclimated to the foreign experience. One was dressed all in white, the other in mostly black... I bet you can guess which was which. This seemed to me most cliché, the black and whiteness of the characters and their attitudes, but ultimately, the scene got me thinking...One member of the group asked why he should care about these characters. I took a more compassionate, yet still critical approach: "This is clearly YOUR story..." the young author was having trouble adjusting to what was supposed to be an idyllic experience abroad. I know this dilemma intimately. "Why don't you try drafting out more of the images and emotions in first person..." a suggestion more than a question. His desire to separate himself from his troubled protagonist by using the third person only served to elevate the tried and tired nature of the narrative. I wanted to be closer... to someone, anyone... closer than third person, closer than the unbelievability of black and white allows. I continued, of course: "For me, the grey in Paris has always been a challenge. Look outside. Nothing is black and white here. Everything is grey, and that can be depressing, but I think if you explore the greys in your story, your characters will have more depth, if this is what you want..."
Sometimes the bells of Notre Dame or a passing ambulance siren reminds me to gaze out the window of the famous bookstore. I always feel lucky to be there, even when the scene is grey and wet and chaotic along the busy quai... and I'm sure this view has its effect on my listening...Another guy read a section from his novel in progress about gay angst and the difficulties discerning between love and sex, reality and virtuality in his evolving world, again from the safe distance allowed by the third person. The critic asked again why he should care, and another older member of the group reacted strongly to the almost graphic references to gay sex. I, on the other hand, wanted to be sitting at that table in that bar, perhaps in the Marais, with those three gay lovers, not just passing by on the street hearing some supposedly omniscient recount of their exchange: "I think your intentions are noble, but in my experience, the lines between sex and love are not so easily drawn." I returned to the idea of grey and applied it also to his search for the real in the virtual. "True and false, real and virtual are just words." He asked me if the first person might help him as well, and I had to say it probably would.
Real or virtual?
This building just off the Champs Elysees is under construction... not because it's melting. Turns out that's just a giant canvas made to trick the eyes of passers by.
Even indoors, some of my favorite scenes are in shades of grey... like this sculpture of Sappho at the Musée d'Orsay.
... and speaking of women poets, one read at our workshop, or rather she recited... a very moving poem she wrote with the new year in mind. She hadn't written it down... but she read so lyrically and went on so long that we all fell into a sort of zone, rivers and bridges and breezes taking over our thoughts. Many were bothered by her repeating images and lines, but to me, they seemed essential to the poem's trajectory... cycles and community and the dependability of movement and change. But what troubled me was a phrase that came early in the poem... something like "You can hang a bridge on a single breath if your spirit is strong and true." What is a spirit anyway? And how do I know if I have one, and if it's strong and true? These abstractions seemed terribly exclusive, making this listener feel as if her lack of understanding was some sort of spiritual defect. When I mentioned it, she was disappointed. She had, of course, chosen those words specifically. Does this make them the best words for the poem? Did my reaction to her abstractions reveal too much about me? What does it mean when "true" means nothing?
I've spent the last week waiting for perfectly grey days to photograph, but the truth is, (hehe) as grey as Paris is in January, there is always color here. The khaki Seine, the warm beige buildings like the paths in the parks, the patchy sky... especially in the morning and at at night. I think the French have done an exceptional job of working with the landscape's light.
In Color Theory, I learned that white is the absence of all color... black, the presence of all colors fully saturated. In life, I have learned that all days, even grey days are only in between. Even what we are inclined to describe as black is only some dark grey, and anyone who's painted anything ever is only vaguely familiar with the endless spectrum of whites.
Maybe all this talk of grey is a result of my visit to the colorful Pompidou Center last week. I resisted its modern exterior for so long, but have come to love it best of all the museums I've visited. Its permanent collection is already a bit text book, but on Level 4, the exhibits are always changing. This last time, I was drawn to the black and white watercolors... 
I especially like the way the art is changed simply by photographing it... the reflections in the glass add another element, record the interaction.
The contours and relief of this white "cave" have all been traced in black and you can walk around inside... you don't have to take off your shoes, but flash photography is still strictly prohibited...
And there is the usual dose of black and white photography. Who doesn't love black and white photography, right? But the term seems inadequate now... BLACK AND WHITE... noir et blanc, rain or shine, right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, good and bad, happy... sad. It is possible, maybe even necessary to be both. The human "spirit," like its landscape, is not so easily divided; it is simultaneously strong and weak, for even strength can be a weakness, and weakness a strength; it is both true and false, even if only misguided. Sex is rarely either making love or simply sex; desire is friend and foe; hunger is passion and lack and too many other things to list.
I'm sure I could go on and on, but the city streets are calling...
It's rainy and windy and very grey out, but Cole Swensen is lecturing tonight in the Marais as one of her collections has just been translated into French. For me, she is the the Pompidou of poetry... a sort of theory in verse. I look forward to the brain stretch. Coincidentally, her recent publication, The Glass Age, works out connections between art, life, and industry... especially the meaning of reflections, fragility and transparency. I may have to pick up later where I left off... thanks for listening.
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