Semester Wrap Up

Well it's been a while hasn't it? Finals week managed to chase me off the internet for a fleeting time. I was up at 6 every day to go to the library and complete work in my carrel. I had a bunch of meetings too, but at the end of the semester what it boils down to is just concentrating and getting sh*t done. I'm not even that upset by it, because finals are the culmination of all that we have achieved over the past semester, and I am proud of all that I have accomplished. This was a great semester for me.

My Creative Nonfiction course taught me much about my writing and my personhood. My Classical Mythology course was fascinating because the class taught me how to look at the world within the context of myth and storytelling and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. For all that I might have complained about how difficult Semantics was, I appreciated the challenge, and I gained a set of skills that I do not find trivial.

That said, my favorite part of the semester was working on my independent study. By virtue of it being a course I created for my goals, it was everything I had wanted. I learned about translation, I learned about Sor Juana, and I learned more about myself along the way. This semester was a growing experience for me, and I feel like a new and better person for of it.

Cheers,
Talia

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.

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.

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.

note-taking

I'm curious about the way that other people take notes. Mine vary by class, but some classes I mix it up. For example, my Semantics Professor puts all of our handouts online, so in that class I print out the handouts into OneNote, where I then use my surface and surface pen to make notes directly on the handout and on the side part of the OneNote page with rule lines on it. This works fairly well, with exception of when the professor hands out something that has not been posted on the online forum we use. In my Creative Nonfiction class, I make notes in my writing journal, and for my independent study I keep it almost entirely on my OneNote, with the exception of sometimes writing in a translation journal when I feel like doing something on paper.

My class that gives me the biggest issues is my Classical Mythology class. I simply cannot every decide how I want to take notes. The Professor talks very fast, And everything he says is interesting, and his slides are wall of text and I sometimes have no clue how on earth to keep up. What seems to work best is for me to Just write down phrases he says, and then look at the slides after class, but the sheer amount of information to learn can be overwhelming. I have a great advantage in that I have lots of knowledge about Mythology (Greek and Celtic in particular) but I still struggle at times, so I cannot imagine how it would be for someone with no Mythological background. The Professor is great though, and I'm glad I'm in this class, challenging as it may since I enjoy the material immensely.

Cheers,
Talia

End of Translation

From Jacques Lezra's End of Translation: "The question of how humanists  make the case for the value of  their disciplines to others […] is a  matter, it is understood, of  translation." Translation and politics are intimately linked in the view of this paper and he notes that translation is a "master term" when discussing the understanding of the Humanities and their current state, and the place they hold in a society in which they are dwindling.

I am a Comparative Literature major, and our program is very small. In addition to the fact that the humanities are dwindling, we have a firm requirement of taking upper level courses in a language other than English. This tends to scare people away from the program, which is unfortunate because it is a great one (I'll admit, I'm biased as the Undergraduate Departmental Representative of the major!)

As someone who is very passionate about language, culture and communication I am always startled when I come across people who aren't because to me language is one of, if not the most essential ways that we communicate with one another and I believe that we should be encouraging multilingualism because with different languages come different ways of thinking, and everyone can benefit from that. I'm not saying that language learning is something that everyone needs to do (I know that for some people it is an impossibility) but rather that widening our gazes into other ways of life is essential towards looking at each other deeply and complexly, and being multilingual can help with that.

At the very least, I believe that one should study other cultures and traditions, even if only from a monolingual standpoint, in order to gain a mutual understanding with others on this earth. In the wake of this, translation, in all its complexity, is made even more necessary. Not only do we have to translate the words, but sometimes even concepts.

People sometimes argue nature vs. nurture. Whatever one might believe, it is undoubtable that where we grow affects how we do so. There is no denying there is inequality in this world, and as my Mythology Professor pointed said the other day in class - despite what we tell our children not everyone can do everything they set out to in life, and many people are born into this world who are at a crippling disadvantage. Some crosses are too hard to bear. Looking at the world like this can be bleak, but it is a reality. And I seriously doubt that we can ever fully grasp the realities of others without humanities and without translation. 

In the same essay referenced before, End of Translation, Lezra speaks about rights and asks whether they are "translatable across cultures, languages, races, religions  in the name, or under the aegis, of a purportedly universal  standard which is also a universal  translating machine: 'Human'  rights?" This is a startling question, and one I cannot possibly answer in a blog post. I will leave you with this question and encourage you to read the essay in full. (Linked below)

I hope that readers of this blog enjoy my musings, because while I'll write them anyway, it's fun to see what other people think.

Cheers,
Talia

Jacques Lezra, End of Translation: https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/end-of-translation/