Translation of Neruda's Sonnet 88 (LXXXVIII) from 100 Love Sonnets (Cien sonetos de amor)

The following is a translation I did of Neruda's Sonnet 88 (LXXXVIII) from his Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets). I've pasted the original below my translation. Please let me know what you think, especially if you are a fellow Spanish speaker/translator!

LXXXVIII (English, My Translation)
The month of March returns with hidden light
and boundless fish slide through the heavens
blurred earthly vapors stealthily progress,
one by one all things fall into silence.

In this crisis of erring atmosphere, through luck,
you collected the lives of the sea with those of the fire;
gray movement of the vessel of wintertime,
the figure that love brought to the guitar.

Oh love, rose soaking from sirens and foam,

the fire dances and ascends unseen stairs
and wakes the blood in insomniatic tunnels

so that waves may consume themselves in the heavens,

the sea forget its riches and its lions,
and the world plummet into dark deceit.

LXXXVIII (Spanish, Original) 
El mes de Marzo vuelve con su luz escondida
y se deslizan peces inmensos por el cielo,
vago vapor terrestre progresa sigiloso,
una por una caen al silencio las cosas.

Por suerte en esta crisis de atmósfera errabunda
reuniste las vidas del mar con las del fuego,
el movimiento gris de la nave de invierno,
la forma que el amor imprimió a la guitarra.

Oh amor, rosa mojada por sirenas y espumas,
fuego que baila y sube la invisible escalera
y despierta en el túnel del insomnio a la sangre

para que se consuman las olas en el cielo,
olvide el mar sus bienes y leones
y caiga el mundo adentro de las redes oscuras 

Check-in 3

Being a senior is far more exhausting than I had expected. The closer I get to graduation the more I want to take a quick jaunt in time to my freshman year anxiety and be like "do you even lift?"

Now, freshman year was a tough time, and is a tough time for everyone, but honestly my freshman year was a walk in the park when it comes down to how much work there is to do for me right now. Don't get me wrong, I love what I'm doing and what my life is like right now and I have a strict policy about time travel anyway, but I also sometimes miss the days where I had time to actually read a book that wasn't for work or class.

Speaking of class, I turned in my annotated bibliography and about 4 pages of analysis on specific portions of my research. The bibliography took much more time than it should have. I was struggling for a while to find sources, because I simply haven't done a large research paper since last fall. That isn’t to say I forgot how - trust me when it comes to working a database or pulling from the stacks I've still got it - I just needed a little adjustment to get back into the searching and skimming mindset. I also am 110% grateful that I have a carrel this semester because dealing with all of my library books otherwise would be a nightmare. Between my Sor Juana research, my poetry course having 8 textbooks, my pragmatics research and the fact that my Greek book is bigger and more complicated than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I would have snapped my back in half by now.

I'm still debating what I want to do for my research project for my pragmatics course, but I think I have settled on something to do with the differences in the use of 'se' in Spanish, the 'se' impersonal and 'se' passive in particular. I'll be using Harry Potter: La Colección Completa as a source of corpus data, which should work well enough for a class project. Plus this means I get to read Harry Potter (and by read I mean Ctrl+f the word 'se' and ignore reflexives) for homework!

I do like my regular readings too though, we just finished up Petrarch, who was a nice read after Ovid and Catullus, who were a bit too raunchy with their love poetry for my taste. Still didn't quite enjoy him as much as Sappho, but that's neither here nor there. Every poet has their own style, and reading things in translation also confuses things.

I'm going to cut this post off here because have a test tomorrow that is worth 10% of my grade, so I've been studying hard for that, even though I do feel slightly unprepared given everything else I've had to do this week. My stress levels have been pretty high lately, so I think I'm going to make myself a nice cuppa and review my flashcards before getting a good night's rest.

Cheers,
Talia

Check-in 2

This semester is doing its best to crush me, but I won't let it. I was ill last week, leading up to the weekend, and it caused me to get slightly behind on my work. That said, I was a little bit ahead before this, so I suppose things have just evened out. I still need to get caught up in Pragmatics and Love Poetry – those were the two classes I missed last week – and so right now I'm working through our second homework assignment for Pragmatics, which includes some interesting wordplay involving unicorns, and recreating a Sappho poem for my Love Poetry course.

Our assignment for Love Poetry is to take what fragments are left from a Sappho poem of our choosing from the Anne Carson translation I mentioned before, and 'fill in the blanks' as it were, recreating the poem as if it were written in Sappho's time. Currently I am struggling with this as I fight the urge to modernize the poem and as I try to find a voice not my own.

Speaking of poetry, I have recently undertaken a new project. I know, I know, I don't exactly need more things to keep me busy, but I have to have fun sometimes right? This side project can definitely be considered fun. When I was at Bread Loaf early in the summer I had the privilege of attending many panels and talks, as well as individual/small group meetings with various editors and agents. One of the people that I ended up talking to was Chad Post, who was there as a publisher/editor for Open Letter at the University of Rochester. In addition to publishing, Open Letter runs a weblog and international review source called Three Percent. After leaving Bread Loaf, I decided that I would sign up to write occasional reviews for Three Percent, and I received my first book today (October 4th) and so far I love it. It's a book of poetry, but I shan't say more than that here. Once I finish writing the review and it goes through editing I will be sure to post a link to it on this blog.

On the topic of editing, my work in the Student-Scholar Partnership is going well, and I continue to be very happy with this project. To have a paying job, part-time or no, that is in my desired field is an absolute dream for someone my age, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity.

Literary Translation is my dream, as readers of this blog may know, and as readers will also know, my thesis is centered around Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and translations of her poems. At present I have scaled back the active translations as I am focusing a bit more on the content of my secondary source material for the critical introduction, although I of course work on bits and pieces when I have those rare spots of free time. I have an annotated bibliography of sources for my research seminar due next Monday, so I have also been working continuously on that.

Another research project that I am working on this semester is for my Pragmatics course. I'm still not entirely sure what I want to investigate yet; but our initial proposal (topic & research question, methodology idea, list of proposed papers) is due on the eleventh, so I'll have to come up with something soon.

Although I enjoy all of my courses and projects, I am developing a soft spot for my course on Ancient Greek. Learning this new (to me) language is a bit like solving a puzzle and slowly unwrapping a gift, and seeing all the pieces come together and getting a closer look at the prize is very enjoyable to me. When I am stressed out over bibliographies and papers and poems, untangling a sentence is oddly therapeutic.

Getting out all my thoughts on paper (or on screen I suppose) has a similar affect, so in a way I feel indebted to this blog for helping me process my strengths and weaknesses this semester. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my mind.

Cheers,
Talia

Check-in 1

Hi All! I had a really busy weekend and completely forgot to upload this! I've put reminders in my agenda though, so hopefully I'll have something posted on time for the next update (which is currently tentatively scheduled for Sunday October 1st).

This semester I am working on many projects, and trying not to get overwhelmed. In terms of classes, I am taking four this semester, in addition to writing my thesis. One of those is a research seminar, which thankfully has some overlap with my thesis, although they are not exactly the same, since the class is taught in Spanish, and my thesis is being written in English.

I am taking a course on love poetry, which I quite like. We just wrapped up reading some Catullus, and are now continuing on with Ovid. Our first poet was Sappho, whose work I thoroughly enjoyed, although I lament the fact that there is so little left for us. For anyone who wants to read her work (which honestly should be everyone) I recommend the Anne Carson translation If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, which is the one we use in class.

Speaking of Sappho, I'm enrolled in an introductory course of Ancient Greek, which I am enjoying immensely. Declensions aren't as scary as I thought they would be, and finding my way to meaning in this ancient language is like solving the best kind of puzzle. There are a LOT of sentences about Homer's brother, but I can deal. My professor is awesome, and is the same one I had for my Classical Mythology course last semester.

The final class I'm taking this semester is Pragmatics, and it is yet another repeat Professor as I had her for Semantics last semester. This course is much easier than the last, since there is as of yet no set theory, and it plays more with actual language, which is something I missed in Semantics, as we worked more with logical data in that course. I missed in Semantics, as we worked with more logical than raw linguistic data. Both are important to the domain of linguistics studies, and I am glad to have taken Semantics for enriching my general linguistics knowledge, but so far pragmatics has been much more my speed.

Outside of actual class hours I am of course keeping up with my homework assignments, but also working on my thesis, which is official now, and will be concentrated on translations of selected poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, accompanied by a critical introduction. Working on those translations is a joy, but hard work. Many of her poems are quite long, and the one that I am currently focusing on is 152 lines and they are tough ones.

I have recently started working with one of the scholars at the Women's Studies Resource Center at Brandeis, Mary Berg, on her translations, which I greatly enjoy. Right now she is working on a bilingual edition of short stories by the Cuban writer Laidi Fernández de Juan. It's an exciting project, and one I am glad to be a part of.

So that's it for now! I just wanted to give you a small taste for the content of the blog this semester, and I will update again soon!

Cheers,
Talia

Finding Poetry in Potter

As this is being posted, present Talia is at the Midlebury Language Schools. In the meantime, I (Past Talia) shall tell you about one of the projects I did at MISTI-Con. There were lots of awesome panels and people and it was just genuine fun, but one I particularly enjoyed was 'Finding Poetry in Potter' were we were given chapters of Harry Potter books that were separated from the bindings (which was a bit painful to see) and we proceeded to cross out random words so that we could create poems. This has been a tradition for some time, and while it hurt to maul the book in such a way, it was kinda fun too. Both of my poems were from Chapter 22 of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and since I messed up using the sharpie and changed the conjugations of some of the words, I am not going to post the pictures. I have typed up the results though, and so you can enjoy them below.

P.S. 

Is it my fault? Excited,

keeping him uncertain?

Surprised, do'you reckon?

"He's mine," I read and reread,

stepping back from the barrier,

suspicions confirmed

(in his usual fashion)

snarling, staring, clutching.

Forever unhappy.

Dignified Disapproval

It was addessed "Dear."

I hope this finds you

I don't know whether

you're used to hiding.

I won't tell you,

in case this falls

into the wrong hands.

Some doubt the best

I believe they haven't a hope.

There something I

never got around

to telling you.

It was I, who seemed

to think it was worth

the fright.

I had only hoped

to catch a glimpse

before starting

my journey.

But I think the sight

of me closed something.

Send word.

And I will give it all.

Happily.

Feel free to share these with anyone you think would enjoy them, but I would appreciate credit for my creative efforts. 

Cheers,
Talia

Note: Because of an accident in the publishing schedule for this blog, this was posted on tumblr on June 20th, instead of my Bread Loaf Evaluations post.

On Poetry and Translation

I think that poetry is a beautiful and important part of our history. Poetry allows us to express our thoughts and feelings in a therapeutic and elegant way. Poetry is important because it presents a way for people to connect with one another in with deeper expression than with prose. For me, the most important part of the poem is the flow. The form of expression can be just as important as the content when considering a poem whether you are writing it yourself or it is a work of translation. The form should match the content, because the tonality of the work can be utterly changed with format.

Take for example, the Irish folk  song Green Fields of France. I am a firm believer that music is a vivid form of poetry, and this song is no exception. There are many versions, but my two favorites are both by The High Kings. In one, the song has a slow and graceful melody, that makes it a quite beautiful and meaningful song. The other version is no less meaningful, but has an upbeat tempo that makes the song bigger and more enthusiastic. Both takes on the poetry of this song are quite lovely, but the first time I heard them I didn’t even realize they were the same song until I examined the lyrics.

From this we can understand that tone and flow are some of the most important parts of a poem, and yet they are also malleable, depending on who composes the piece. Everyone writes poetry differently because poetry is a reflection. For some that means a reflection of the self, or of an experience, or of knowledge that the poet is comfortable with. My poetry contains my thoughts and hopes and dreams, and I make my own mark with everything I write.

Here is when I fully turn to translation, that delicate art. Aside from authors and poets who translate their own works, the translator is taking up someone else's voice, and changing it into another tongue. The translation is a different entity from the original, because it requires a leap of faith towards oneself and one's abilities to reimagine the work in a new context. In his essay An Act of Imagination Philip Boehm notes that "what allows us to summon a new creation from the original and give it a life of its own is our empathetic imagination."* So when I translate a poem, I am not only shaping the words through varying amounts of linguistic prowess, but also putting myself and my imagined consciousness into the poem.

That said, every time I look at a poem that I have translated, or even more so poems I have written myself, there is always something I want to change. The poem is always forming itself, even as I go back to it again and again. During my independent study last semester I was hesitant to share my poems with the professor because I never felt like what I had done was enough, and I was revising right up until hours before my selected poems were due. Maybe I was overdoing it a wee bit, but honestly, I don't feel like I was.

Tomorrow I head off to Middlebury's 3rd Annual Bread Loaf Translators' conference, and I couldn't be more excited. In preparation for my workshop I have been reading through The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Language in Translation as was directed by my workshop leader, Idra Novey. We only had to read part I, but I read all four because I'm a nerd and translation is my passion. Also because I read ahead whenever possible, and sometimes even when it shouldn't be. I already quoted one of the essays, but let me quote another. In Pierre Joris' A More Complex Occasion he speaks quite a bit about poetry and translation, and one quote speaks out to me:

[W]hat many years of practicing (and thinking about) poetry and translation have lead me to is a sense that the often-stated difference in nature between the supposedly pure and unalterable 'original' poem and an always secondary 'impure' poem is much exaggerated. […] A poem is […] a variable thing: the poet's hand-written poem is not the 'same' poem when first published in a magazine, which in turn is ever slightly different when published in a volume, then a selected collection, and later in a posthumous collected volume. The poet's public readings of the poem, its being set to music by a composer, its translation into one or ten or however many languages ― all these events do change a poem, enriching it, making it into a more complex occasion.

 If we acknowledge the poem to be such a mutable complex of occasions, then nothing is more translatable, nothing demands multiple translations more than a poem ― and nothing enriches the poem more than being translated.⁰

I realize that is a very long quote, so I'm going to stop this post here, giving you just a little food for thought.

Cheers,

Talia

*Boehm, Philip. "An Act of Imagination." In The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Language in Translation, 27. Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts, 2014. https://www.arts.gov/publications/art-empathy-celebrating-literature-translation

⁰Joris, Pierre. "A More Complex Occasion." In The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Language in Translation, 68-69. Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts, 2014. https://www.arts.gov/publications/art-empathy-celebrating-literature-translation

Slower version: Green Fields of France

Fast-paced version: The Green Fields Of France

Stand Up

One method of translation that I particularly like was introduced to me by my Creative Writing advisor. We took one of my translations and taped it to the wall, original Spanish on the left, and my English translation on the right. Something about having to stand up changed my perspective of the poem.

Usually I translate sitting down. Now I know I have claimed before that my physicality while translating is something decidedly lacking in consistency, but the unifying characteristic of it is definitely the sitting. Whether in a chair, on my bed, on the floor, I am always sitting, hunched over my work.

Standing, having the pages taped to the wall, equalized something I had not realized was disproportionate. Instead of my protective, possibly stifling hover over the words as I wrote, the physical change opened up a mental one, and I could feel myself enabled to interact with the text as though it were more malleable than before. I realize that this sounds bizarre, but these are true observations of my behavior. I looked at my work with new and fresh eyes.

I'm not having you on when I say that I truly feel the text came even more fully alive to me that day, and it was in those fresh moments that I found new words. I've tested since, and it works for writing original poetry too. So if anyone out there struggles with writer's block, here is my suggestion – stand up. It'll make you think.

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.

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.

Tests

I just finished my placement test to ascertain my academic level in Spanish for when I go to Middlebury this summer. I've been accepted to go to the 7-week Spanish program at Middlebury Language Schools. (More information below) I'm not sure how I did, because there were a lot of questions having to do with Ser/Estar and also the subjunctive, which are things I'm a bit shaky on.

I am fairly fluent when reading Spanish, but when it comes to minute details in grammar I am sorely lacking. This is not to say that I don't understand or can't create the verb forms; I'm just not always completely grammatically correct when I say them. People can understand me when I speak Spanish, and I can understand them, but I have slight issues with grammar. A comparable English mistake would be mispronunciation or "I were going to the store" or "I go to class yesterday." 

Going to Middlebury is going to be a great way to improve my Spanish, and I am very much looking forward to it. I enjoy translating and I know for certain that the more proficient I become in Spanish the better those translations will be. I often have to look up a word or two in a dictionary while working on a translation project, but that could also be linked to the fact that I am translating out of 17th century early modern Spanish and that is not easy for many people, let alone someone like me who is not fully fluent. I intend for these translations to be my thesis project, so it is important that I get them right so that once I have finished my work. Poetry in translation is immensely difficult, but I believe it to be worthwhile.

Cheers,
Talia


Information on the Middlebury Language Schools: http://www.middlebury.edu/ls