Scribbles

When I find I have written something I am very proud of and have worked very hard on, my immediate impulse is to let someone scribble all over it. If there is anything I have learned in my 21 years of life, it is that the best things always come from collaboration.

In the past this has mostly been on resumes and essays, correcting grammar and formatting and things I may have missed. Where to expand, where to cut down, and here I should put a semicolon. With a creative process, it is something altogether different.

Some people might see scribbles on a page as a challenge, as something to fight against, that you have failed. But for me that is simply not true. Scribbles on the page are the secret ingredient to writing a good poem, essay or short story, or a translation of any of the above. Scribbles on the page show dedication to the topic. For me scribbles on a page are not a symbol of failure but a symbol of success. When I'm working on a project and someone takes the time out of their day to scribble all over my writing or translations I am so, so happy because it's a sign of care and dedication. It's recognition of the fact that what I am doing is hard, but I have people to support me in what I do, and for that I am very thankful.

I could have never gotten to where I am today without the assistance of the many people who have shaped my life, especially the ones that did so with scribbles.

Storytelling

For the past two Classical Mythology lessons I have gone to the focus has moved away from lectures to storytelling. There are many options for our final project in that class, but the one I am going for is to write an adaptation of a myth. All of the prompts have to do with storytelling, and that is why we had someone come in to talk to us about it. He told us that we create stories as groups, and it is only together that we can stich the pieces into each other to form the whole. All we can really do is set the stage for what can happen and then step back to let the best things emerge.

Is a story really a story until you tell it to someone else?

Thoughts on Translation

When working on my translations I had trouble with the translation in terms of how to convey both the beauty and the message of the poem, which was difficult for me at first just from reading the Spanish, as Sor Juana uses syntax in ways that, as someone who is very familiar with, but not fluent in the language I struggle. It makes sense of course, because in English we also use complex syntax in poetry, but the difference here I feel is that the languages change syntax in slightly different ways. Sor Juana's poetry contains many reflexive verbs, and because the third person and formal second person overlap greatly, I have to make judgement calls on who the poem is referring to in the context of the sentence. The verb forms are difficult because of this, and I have always had trouble with reflexive verbs, which compounds the problem. Furthermore, the poems often leave out a subject, or reference a subject that was in a previous line or stanza, and so keeping track of the persons can be difficult for me, especially since I am not a native speaker.

Another struggle I have with this poetry is that the poems do not have titles, and so I am in an ambiguous position in terms of creating one or sticking with just a number. The question of whether or not to title the poems is a conflict for me, because while I may wish to title the poems as my own, I wonder whether doing so would be claiming too much of what isn't necessarily mine.

This of course comes back to the question of whether the translated work belongs to the translator, or the original creator. Then I wonder what Sor Juana would think about my translations, and I wonder again whether it is fair to change the words of someone long-dead.

Where is the line? Have I crossed it or am I just not there yet? Will I ever get there?

Or is it a line that doesn't exist except in my mind?

These are questions that I think deserve further thought. I hesitate to say that the author is dead - especially as I am a creator of original works in addition to being a translator. So basically I'm not even sure what I think. I just have a lot of thoughts in a lot of places, and grappling with them is probably something I will be doing for a long time.

Connection

In my defense, I was in a play this weekend and over-exhausted myself. That said, I think I am going to change the pace of my blog updates, and instead of simply picking a day, I will instead make a seven-day rule, that I cannot go longer than 7 days without writing a post. It's much more flexible and manageable. It's coming right up onto finals period at this point, and so it really is crunch time. I feel like I'm swimming in a pool of assignments,* and so I don't really have time to dedicate to this blog.

Now, I have a very packed summer ahead, including a trip abroad, and a few other places where I might not be able to write posts at all. Which will be sad. This blog is an experiment, but I think it's working, at least for me. I hope the people who read this enjoy reading about my various thoughts, because I like writing them.

It's my belief that Academia can be quite fun, and while I know that obviously not everyone thinks the same things as me, I always get sad when people reject the arts or the sciences, any kind of them, because I firmly believe that our capacity to engage with others in various mediums is one of the most beautiful things about humanity. Empathy and understanding are essential to us, because at the heart of it we are social creatures. 

I know that some people are introverts, and while I am more of an extrovert, I do sometimes have social anxiety, and I know that people even more introverted than me have much more than that, even they have a select few they let in. People who aren't people people still need interactions, why do you think so many of us find friends on the internet? Anyway, this post is a mess, but I hope that I have left people with things to think about.

Cheers,
Talia


*I just pictured swimming in a poll filled with all my assignments and wondered whether I'd be more likely to get electrocuted or get a paper cut

P.S. I used the word 'people' too often in this post. Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Failure

Like most people, I make commitments that I don't always follow through on. If you have followed through with every single thing you have committed to do over the entirety of your life then congratulations, you are not like most people, are you even human because I think that failure is an intrinsic trait of humanity. No one is perfect, and as my favorite JK Rowling quote goes

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all―in which case, you fail by default."*

Not posting on the first Sunday after I said I would post every Sunday probably counts as a failure, but not as much as it would be if I failed Semantics for example. Which it is quite possible I could do considering I understand type theory about as much as I understand what it would be like to hate chocolate. All things considered I'm lactose intolerant and dark chocolate is definitely my least favorite desert, so there is some understanding, but mostly confusion. I'm being over dramatic of course, it is highly unlikely that I will fail Semantics. I do think my GPA might take a hit, but not an irreparable one.

To be honest, I spent most of my break reading. I read Swing Time by Zadie Smith, Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, The Grownup by Gillian Flynn and am halfway through The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. I'd like to think I could have read more books, but I was actually working throughout the break too.

Mostly I focused on my translations, because I have been struggling with them throughout the semester. At the beginning, it really was like pulling teeth, because for some reason the words just wouldn't flow. Now that we are closer to the end however, I feel like I am closer to the text, and one night mid semester I actually woke up wide awake at half past midnight only to start translating. I would have thought it was just a bizarre dream, but in the morning, I had 100 new lines of poetry. It was a distinctly unpolished work in the light of day, but I have been pecking at what I have translated ever since and now I think it is starting to be more cohesive.

Translating poetry is difficult, because on the one hand I feel like I am betraying the words, but on the other hand English isn't formed in the same way. I suppose this is something I will struggle with for the entirety of my life, but that prospect doesn't make it any better. I am very excited for this summer though because I will be going to Middlebury's Bread Loaf Translator's Conference, and that is something to get really excited over. You can bet I will make a blog post or two about that. I’ll also just write lots of posts about translation in general though, because that’s kind of the point of this blog.

Cheers,
Talia

*This quote is now the end quote for all my emails. Previously it was “We often just accept the things that we like and complain a lot about the things that we don’t like. But if we could, like, intensely dwell on the really great things in life the way we intensely dwell on the negative things in life. I think that would be fantastic.” ― Hank Green
But the aesthetic I am going for fits better with the JKR Quote, which is from her 2008 Commencement Address at Harvard. The printed version is called Very Good Lives and sales benefit her charity Lumos, as well as university-wide financial aid at Harvard.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I realized that I don't upload on this blog regularly, not because I can't, but because I only upload when I both feel like I have something to say and when I have the time, which isn't a very common case. I have a large amount of commitments, and not a large amount of time to get them all done. My friend Emily has a blog (which is much better than mine, least of which because she's circumnavigating the globe https://ninescoredays.blogspot.com/) and she updates regularly on Sundays. This schedule helps her keep accountable to all of us who want to hear about her adventures (myself included) and I think I am going to pilfer this idea for my blog.

From now on I will also post every Sunday, as a recap of my week. That said, I will also make shorter posts, and if you care to follow me on tumblr, I also make occasional reblogs there.

Back to Emily, stealing some of her ideas and adapting them for myself is a general trend of mine at this point. It's not that I'm someone who constantly jumps on the bandwagon, more that her ideas tend to be good ones that are easy to replicate. (Other than the whole circumnavigating the globe thing), I'd rather stay in New England for now. We’re finally getting nice weather here after all and despite all the beach pictures she's posting I think Australia is going to have winter soon.

Word-for-Sense

The title for this blog is based on a classic and basic issue in translation: word-for-word or sense-for-sense. That said, even though the very name of this blog is based on translation, I haven't really been talking about translation on here. I suppose that is because for me, translation is an intimate process, and I don't always feel comfortable talking about it. It’s probably because of the imposter syndrome I tend to feel about anything and everything I've ever done or do. The feeling is an uncomfortable one, but confidence doesn't come easy for me.

My translations themselves, well, I don't particularly like sharing. I'm always terrified that I have mistranslated something, or that something is somehow 'not right' in ways I'm not fully sure I can explain. I worry that my fluency in Spanish is not good enough for proper translation and find myself hounding down words in dictionaries, picking at the poem until it is nothing but words. I tend to go for very literal translations, keeping faithful to the word, and yet my heart longs for giving instead the sense that comes from such rich poetry. Translating is maddening and sometimes I wonder why I ever thought I could do it, and others I wonder how I could possibly do anything else.

I'm doing an independent study on translation this semester and even though there are only five weeks left of class I haven't sent my professor any poems because I am terrified he will hate them. That said if I don't send him something soon he will probably fail me, so I have resolved to send him at least two poems by Friday, no matter how much I dislike the verse. (My translation I mean, the original poems are gorgeous). The only way I can improve is if I get feedback, but like most people, I am scared of rejection. Everyone fails sometimes, it's a fact of life, but that doesn't make it comfortable.

Forgetting

I forgot how to write an essay. It's always like this, I get my sources, I prepare, and then it comes to the blinking line on a freshly opened word document, and I freeze. How do I write an essay? What are words? How do I form thoughts, oh my goodness seven whole pages I'll die. Shaking in my worn out sneakers, panic. Breathe, I have to breathe and focus because I actually know a fair bit about both Harry Potter and Mythology so what makes me so scared? It isn't the grade, because I was fine with the test last week and I haven't worried about it. I think it's the writing. Every time I sit down to write I remind myself that this is what I want to do, what I am good at, but another part of me screams that everything I put to paper is shit and I will fail out of life.

Okay maybe it is a little bit about the grade.

But that doesn't mean it isn't also more. It's the idea of commitment. Dedicating myself to a topic, weighing myself down. But what is a commitment?

It's much easier to say that you are going to do something than to actually do it. But is a commitment really a commitment if you don't see it through?

Sometimes I wonder.

And I think (I know) that I spend so much time in love with the idea of doing that I lose focus on the present. I am consumed by my future, constantly reaching for that fruit just out of my reach, I am holding up a world that doesn't need holding and with a hush I let go and nothing happens but I don't know, I can't know that everything will be alright. Nothing feels alright, it feels broken, I feel broken and that love I put into the present seeps into the future. My future. Don't give up what you want the most for what you want in the moment, but when is my moment? When will what I want arrive? Will I ever be satisfied?