Original Post One Week Five

This is an improv off of James Wright's “Saying Dante Aloud”
 
Rappelling off a Waterfall

You can taste the sweat and iron coursing through in warming and deepening puddles like a penny melting under your tongue. You stiffen for a minute, waiting for the man to charade directions about legs out like sitting in a chair while keeping butts down, you look at a lizard on the side of the canyon, blended in with the rock and rising water.

What I really liked from the piece was the whole first line...basically the only line. But specifically "under your tongue." I think the fact that the whole poem was based off something you couldn't see, surprised me. I wanted to use that location for something that you can see and feel and figure out how those two could play off of each other. 

Translation Response Week Five

This is a response to Gabby's post about Ciardi's preface found here.

"Gabby: I find it very interesting how Ciardi stays true to the ear and places importance on the sound and rhyme rather than the meaning. I kind of agree with his idea of transposition: there is no way to be exactly the same when two languages are so different, but I’m curious about the difference between transposition and translation, since the two are the same idea of bringing some work from one group to another. In my mind, transposition is more jarring than a translation because in a sense, translation has been mended for the ear. So, what does one lose by sticking with a transposition, all the while meshing in a rhyme and standard conventions for English? I admire the use of rhyme and I think Ciardi does it in a way that doesn’t butcher the language so bad, but I’m curious as to why sound and rhyme matters more to him than the meaning. Maybe it’s the stretch it creates for English, the work it puts on himself as a translator and the language as a whole."

Response to Blog Week Five

This is a response to Trevor's blog post found here.

Trev,
This is a really interesting piece because of the line "calling for people to trust the man rather than the artist." It calls into question the idea of the frescoes and the marble, especially in that church, which was fake. I find that interesting, and something that might want to become more central: the idea of fakeness in terms of churches. You could think about the church in Assisi the same way, as gorgeous as it is, it seems etched in fakeness. I think the title must be "only the dead live painted" because it's probably the most interesting line of the whole piece. I do enjoy "I watch Jesus Christ disappear." It's the most unexpected line. I want more of these people though. Especially the man with his eyes closed. Who is he to you? What else is he doing, saying? What does he do later? These might be things to think about for branching out. Maybe he's a painter, or someone from his family did these walls...maybe he's on a pilgrimage to see all the major St. Francis churches. Stuff to think about.

Reportage Post One Week Five

I'm sitting in the middle of a stream, yanking at the leg of a wetsuit, praying it fits. We hiked up and around a mountain, trying to get to the top of the waterfall, only to rappel down. As the two guides tighten the harnesses of everyone around me, I squeeze the teeth of the zipper as one of my friends guides it up to my neck. The guide with two earrings in his right ear tugs at one of my harness bands, and we are off, trekking down stream, stepping only where the water rushes. Traction is better where nothing grows. As the kid with the GoPro strapped to his helmet tells me to be careful, I slip smack on my butt, bruising my fall, and he catches it on film.

An hour later, I'm staring over a 90 foot water fall, watching a girl dangle, clutching the knotted rope at the end of her carabiner. The guide hardly watches her, lowering out of habit, and the man next to me lowers himself into the water while waiting, sings a song in Italian and splashes himself with water from his shoe. I think about how I'm going to trash these shoes after this.

Translation Problem Week Five

Morte del cinghiale

Era un cinghiale, la macchia nera sui sassi,
brulicante, cinghiale
prima di giungere qui, sul sentiero di roccia
e castagne, forse appunto attirato
dalle dolci castagne, dal sole
che filtra e s'incendia, e trafitto
dal sole, dal tempo, e ben altro: difficile
dire palottola, meglio la peste
suina, o uno squarcio segreto, subdolo
che lavora sotto la corsa e il grugnito, sotto l'ansia
di corsa e grugnito, da fame
e di piaceere che lo spinge la notte per foreste
e dirupi, e intanto un sordo
tradimento cresce piano,
in silenzio, nel frusciare
di rovi e cespugli divelti,
di muschi sconvolti
come da frana
o vita che si spezza, magro bosco
perduto ed ora esausto, il punto estremo
dove un nervo s'inalbera, un muscolo
arresta e s'impenna, e anche il sangue si gela: qui, dunque,
la fine, il caro verbo deponente
di vespe e castagne autunnali, funghetti e ruscelli
che appena piu oltre gorgheggiano, merlo e ghiandaie.
Neppure carogna, ormai, ma un teatrino di pelle
smangiata che s'incrosta nel terriccio, una tradotta
allegra di vermi bianchi e di formiche,
un banchetto concluso. La pelle,
le setole scure, le zanne, e poi niente.

Version close to the group                 Version I did by myself later

Death of the Wild Boar

Death of the Wild Boar

It was a wild boar, a black spot on stones, swarming, wild boar, before arriving here, on the path of rock and chestnuts, perhaps attracted just  to the note of sweet chestnut, to the sun that sparks and bursts in flames, and pierced by the sun, by time, and much more: difficult to say if it was a bullet, better the porcine plague,  or one secret gash, sly  under the flow and grunt,  under the anxiety of the flow and grunt, the hunger and the pleasure that pushes him toward the night forests and crags, and meanwhile a dull betrayal grows slowly, in silence, in rustling brambles and uprooted bushes, upset moss like a landslide or life that breaks apart, thin forest  lost and now exhausted, the extreme point where a nerve shoots up, a muscle arrests and rises up, and also blood freezes: here, then the end, the dear deponent verb of wasps and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams that scarcely warbles over them, blackbird and bluejay. Either carrion, or almost, but a little theater of skin eats away what encrusts in the soil, a military train alive of bright white maggots and ants, a conclusive banquet. The skin, dark bristles, tusks, and then nothing.

It was a wild boar, a black spot on stones, swarming, the wild boar before arriving here, on the path of rock and chestnuts, maybe attracted just to the note of sweet chestnuts, to the sun that sparks and ignites flames, and pierced by the sun, by time, and much more: it’s difficult  to say if it was a bullet, better than the swine fever, or one secret tear, sneakily working under the flow and grunt, under the panic of the flow and grunt, from hunger and pleasure, pushing him through the night’s forests and crags, meanwhile a deaf betrayal grows slowly, in the silence, in the rustling brambles and uprooted bushes, in devastated moss like a landslide or broken life, in the lean forest, lost and now exhausted, the extreme point where a nerve inflames, a muscle seizes and spazzes, and blood freezes: here, then, the end, familiar verbo deponente of wasps and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams that slightly warble over them, blackbird and bluejay. Not even carrion, nearly, but a little skin theater gnaws away what corrupts the soil, a military train  alive of bright maggots and ants, an ultimate banquet of skin, dark bristles, tusks, and then nothing.

    The hardest part to translate, for me, was the line “da fame/e di piacere che lo spinge la notte per foreste” which literally translated to: from/the hunger and the pleasure that he/she/it pushes the night into/from/toward/through forest. The reason this was so difficult was one, I had to either decide to gender the wild boar, and two, I had to figure out the structure of the second half of the line. I imagined it to mean that hunger and pleasure pushed the boar through the night’s forest, the darkness, so that’s why I shifted it a little bit.
    The other part of the piece that really confused and challenged me, was with “il punto estremo/ dobe un nerve s’inalbera, un muscolo/ arrests e s’impenna, e anche il sangue si gela” which literally translates to: the point extreme where a nerve shoots up, a muscle arrests and fletches and also the blood freezes. The word “fletches” confused me after the native speaker had to Google Translate it. I figured it to mean something like “rises up,” which is what the dictionary said it to mean. The other problem I ran into was the idea of sounding like a translation. It’s pretty obvious to me that “shoots up,” “arrests and rises up,” and “also blood freezes” sound like a translation. The question I dealt with was figuring out what a better, more English-y way of saying these things would be. I guess one might say that I was trying to bring the reader to the poet, or trying to bring the poem into colloquially, and I am, but because it sounds more normal that way.
    So I ended up thinking about exercise and the way one strains their body to the ultimate point of exhaustion: what would that be called? I couldn’t come up with the word, so I settled for the “extreme point” and moved on. The “nerve shoots up” part would never be said anywhere, so I tried to think about what that actually meant. Coming up with “inflames” was my way of making “shoots up” more direct because shooting up with pain was most likely inflaming.
    Then comes the part about “arrests and rises up” having to do with muscles. Arrests was pretty easy to think about, because when one is arrested, they are stopped or seized, held. From there, rises up was somewhere along the lines of inflamed, but more physical. So when I think about rising up, I think about losing control, and that means a muscle spasm. So “rises up” shifted to “spazzes.” This way there is also a little bit of alliteration with “seizes and spazzes.”
    The final part of that catalog, the part about blood, was only funky sounding because of the “and also.” So, in order to make it smoother to the ear, I took out “also” because “and” inherently means “also.”
    There were a couple of little words that I switched around, like the original “l’ansia” which transliterated into “anxiety,” but I changed it to “panic” because it made a more visceral sound, and I cannot imagine a wild boar being anxious. Panicked, yes. I also cut “vita che si spezza” (life that breaks) to “broken life” in order to allow the piece to move quicker and I didn’t think that from a meaning standpoint or poetry standpoint the piece lost anything by those cuts. I also changed “di muschi sconvolti” (of moss upset) to “of devastated moss” because the “landslide” that comes after makes “upset” seem so much more intense. Which is also why I changed “s’incrosta nel terriccio, una tradotta” (incrusts in the soil, a military train) to “corrupts the soil, a military train.” The corruption kept with the militaristic feel of the rest of that line.
    These were the biggest changes that I made to smooth out the piece. I made some small flip flops in modifiers, since in English modifiers come (mostly) before the noun.

Junkyard Post Four Week Five

There's a pacifier lying on the dirt in front of a statue of some important man from Gubbio's past. The blue plastic is missing the clear nippled end, the part that matters to most children, and parents. Behind it, in the park, a mother bounces her little girl, crying. I'm half wondering if this was hers, half wondering how long it's been here. Not old enough to be the statues' daughters' of course, but definitely kicked around by a few teenage future soccer stars. The World Cup starts tonight, one of the boys says, and I finally look up, realizing we are walking towards the church.

Translation Question Week Five

"...consider a particular moment in the eighth circle (for your Wednesday reading), when Dante and Virgil encounter Ulysses (Odysseus). You will note that Virgil instructs Dante to remain quiet, that he (Virgil) will speak to Ulysses. The reason he offers is that Ulysses may be "disdainful" (in Mandelbaum's translation) of Dante's Tuscan dialect. Interestingly, however, in the next canto, Dante meets Guido da Montefeltro (still in the circle of the fraudulent counselors). In that episode--which I know you are not reading for class--Virgil says the opposite: "You speak; he is Italian."

I find it fascinating that this is only part of the Inferno in which two cantos are dedicated to the same sin: fraudulent counsel. And here, at this most curious spot of the Inferno, we have an issue, I believe, of translation. Why does Dante-poet construct this sense of decorum and language, translation and comprehension? Why must Virgil play the intermediary, if we look beyond the surface-level reasons Virgil offers to Dante-pilgrim. (Remember: Virgil, too, is but a character in Dante-poet's epic.) And why must Dante carry the discussion in the following canto, which, all the obvious differences aside, treats the same sin?"

Dante-poet constructs a two canto’ed circle because the reader must deal with two different versions of Dante-pilgrim and Virgil. In the canto with Ulysses, we see Dante-pilgrim/listener, who must allow Virgil to talk and be the intermediary for Dante because there is a sense that Dante might not understand the importance of intelligence. Dante-poet, as the writer of the “Christian epic” put Ulysses in Hell because of the stock he put on finding knowledge and having intelligence. Dante-pilgrim is not on this quest for eternal knowledge, but Dante-poet interjects with a conscious censoring of his knowledge. Virgil, and Dante-poet, might be working as an intermediary in order to modulate his intelligence because he doesn’t understand the Greek ways like Virgil does: “I crib and confine my intelligence” (Mary Jo Bang, XXVI:21). In the next canto, however, Dante is familiar with Guido da Montefeltro and might have been in Ravenna while Dante was exiled there. He was a Ghibelline captain but worked against the Ghibellines later in life. This man was not as thirsty for knowledge as Ulysses was and would not have been disdainful of someone lower in status, as the Italians would have been to the Greeks. Virgil allowed Dante to talk because it was safer for him and more would have been accomplished. Dante-poet constructs a sense of decorum and language because language is the easiest way to discuss status. The fact that Virgil was familiar with the Greek tradition and Dante was not, allowed for Virgil to communicate with someone of that stature. This is a commentary on the importance of knowledge, and when one does not gain the same knowledge as the rest of the world, then that puts one behind. Dante must carry into the next canto to differentiate between the levels of fraud, between the differences in these characters.

Junkyard Post Three Week Five

Marmo Finto

In St. Francis' Church in Gubbio, there is no marble.
The town, too broke for nice stone, paid painters to swirl designs
onto the walls and pretend the reds and browns were real.
When we moved to Georgia, my mother, curls sticking to her sweaty skin,
painted age on the front of the oak cabinets, told me it's a faux finish
and makes our house elegant. It looks real, even up close.
Gubbio wanted elegance too, except it only looks real from far away.
Kind of like you, telling me you're fine and that you're happy.
But unlike my mother's painter, your mask doesn't look real up close.
You're a church wall, facaded in the swirls of elegant marble,
but when I stare, squinting hard, there's nothing.

Translation Response Week Five

This is a response to Ashley's blog post found here.

   I find myself questioning the reinsertion of footnotes because as you have said, it seems to make the piece harder to read. I question the fact that it brings the reader closer to the original text, it seems to do just the opposite, because it might be translating more than what was in the original. I believe it was Eco who warned against bringing more to the translation than what was originally in the text. I find that footnotes do exactly what they are supposed to do: fill in the blanks without being intruding to the text but when the footnotes are reinserted as part of the text, it takes away from what the original was trying to convey.
    In can see how this eliminates the necessity for the extra pages of information, but how many of the questions regarding the reinserted references are actually answered? Footnotes, in my opinion (and Mary Jo Bang is sparse with hers), are more helpful in the end than the reinsertion technique seems to be. I’m curious as to how the footnotes in the text works with James’ idea of foreignizing. It seems footnotes in the piece would aid foreignizing because of the convoluted nature of each new line. However, he also talks about how this is making the piece accessible to the reader, but it doesn’t seem that way in reality. It’s like a contradiction.
    Plus, he keeps a rhyme and rhythm, so that must also help to keep the piece a little foreign, but not in the sense that he was aiming; it butchers the English to fit so many different spaces: from the footnotes to the rhyme, the English language is doing more work than the Italian did in the original and that’s where I find the translation most interesting. It seems as though James and Bang (and maybe even Carson) are creating more work for English than Dante created for Italian.

Junkyard Post Two Week Five

Our Landlord has a kitten. The first thing one of the roommates says to me when I walked through the door. This kitten, all white with six black smears on the rump, is about as long my forearm and mews slightly when I picked him up. His claws clench my shirt when he spots my earrings, and I shift him to the right. He claws my boob. Placing him down, he runs to the food bowl under the chair and sneezes while drinking. Looking around the garden, I imagine he has much to play with: from the white dandelions, to the small bricks piled against the wall, but still one of the boys picks him up, cuddles him in the crook of his arm and brings him inside to sleep. It's only in the morning that he regrets it: the cat poops at 7:00 sharp, carrying him outside makes for three plops on the floor and using half a bottle of Listerine for disinfectant.

Memory Post One Week Five

Swirling red wine while a woman asks us what the first scent is,
I see my father, swirling, sipping, smelling his own glass
in Dahlonega with my mother. We're looking for a second home
in the mountains and they're checking off golfing, leisure,
and welcome baskets with cheese. But I'm alone here,
on the mountains in Montefalco, not looking for a home,
but learning of almonds and chocolate and the way the sun hits grapes
in the field, the way I still stare out the window at thousands of vines,
like my fifteen year old self, only this time, I can drink too.

Junkyard Post One Week Five

A woman with short, curly hair buckles under the heat of the open air market
and her daughter clutches her arm, screams help me, but it's in Italian
and I don't know what I can do. Part of me doesn't think she's talking to me,
as I scurry over and the black man from another tent pushes me out of the way,
rescuing us both. Another woman nearby grabs a wicker chair
and begins to make her way through the crowd, but the old woman is flat
on the ground and has no use for the chair. Looking at us, she places the chair down,
says something I can't decipher and for the first time in five weeks,
I feel tears well in the corners of my eyes. I have done nothing with my life.

Original Post Two Week Four

This is a piece that involves the Eye-Rhyme idea mixed with some of McCannell.

I remember my mother's knife
and her first apprehension
to pockets and some vast encryption
of the unplanned typology of knights.
All men are composed of similar
element: a heart, bones, the unending desire
to bed a woman half their age, deter
the older, some combination of extracurricular,
struggling to distance, not only themselves,
but their mothers and sheep and dead boars.
My recipe, two sheets of uprooted dignity, tore
from a notebook in mountainous theatrics,
cooking is an essential component
of worldliness: cutting culture into company.

Translation Response Week Four

I actually responded to Jenna's post about her translation's preface because I just love discussing Dante translations.

You can find the original post here.

My response:

Jenna,
Obviously, I'm not going to think the fact that Carson brings Dante to us as a bad thing: Bang does it as well and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The fact that I don't have to work so hard is quite nice when it comes to such a subject as Dante, and I think the colloquial nature of the piece offers something else in terms of meaning. I find it quite hilarious that Carson tries to terza rima, but I also admire it. I guess we could consider him butchering the English language, but isn't that just an inverse of what our translators are doing to the originals? Especially mine, in a sense. The terza rima attempt differentiates Carson from Hollander or Ciardi, but also offers something to talk about and understand from a translators perspective. He's trying to capture the importance of terza rima, which was immensely important at the time. Granted, he's butchering English, as I mentioned before, but that doesn't matter to him as much as the rhyme does. I can't remember if it was just something we talked about in class or if it was a theorist, but every translator finds something important from the original. Bang chooses to focus on the meaning and the content, Carson, I think, is focusing on the rhyme. I think it's cool that he does that.

Translation Question Week Four

When reading Mary Jo Bang's Inferno, her preface speaks large volumes on what she finds translation to be. On page 10, she writes "Translation is a method of bringing the past back into the present--across geographies, across different time periods, and across cultural difference--and sharing what is common to all. That act is both homage and theft...Translation keeps a work of literature alive by simultaneously dismantling and reclaiming it. For the translator, there is an intense--and paradoxical--intellectual pleasure that comes from making a text that has already been made by someone else. It is a strange collaborative camaraderie." 


While reading this, I immediately thought of the Ortega y Gasset article, where they say: "Translation is not a duplicate of the original text; it is not--it shouldn't try to be--the work itself with a different vocabulary...translation is a literary genre apart, different from the rest, with it's own norms and own ends...translation is not the work, but a path toward the work...no more than an apparatus, a technical device that brings us closer to the work without ever trying to repeat or replace it." (61)

I think this is what Mary Jo Bang is trying to get at when she says translation is both homage and theft. Because a translation cannot be exactly the same, inherently translation is an interpretation of the original text, it will be a refraction of the original. The extent is up to that translator. That is also what she means when she says that translation is about dismantling and reclaiming. She has dismantled the original Alighieri Inferno and in its wake is a reclaimed Bang Inferno. By bringing it over to the reader, she is doing what Schleiermacher calls "moving the reader toward [the writer]"
 (49). She aids the readers by bringing Dante into the present, which she says, in another part of the preface, shows Hell as a never changing place. She shares references that are common to all so as to help the reader understand the original in a way that is relevant to the current age.

This also dates a piece, makes it its own relic, which Bang understands. I think this version of Dante has its own place in the record books of Dante translations because it offers something that the others do not: modernity.

Translation Problem Week Four

This is the transliteration for Sydney's, Anastasia's, and my poem.

Death of the Wild Boar

Age the wild boar, the spot black on the stones,
swarming, wild boar
first to arrive here, path of rock
and chestnut, maybe note attracted
to the sweet chestnut, to the sun
that filters and bursts in flames, and pierced
by the sun, by time, and much more: difficult
to say if it was bullet, better the plague
porcine, or one secret gash, sly
that works under the flow and grunt, under the anxiety
of the flow and grunt, the hunger
and the pleasure that he pushes the night toward forests
and crags, and meanwhile a dull
betrayal grows slowly,
in silence, in the rustling
of brambles and bushes uprooted,
of moss upset
like a mudslide
or life that breaks apart, thin forest
lost and now exhausted, the point extreme
where a nerve shoots up, a muscle
arrests and rises up, and also the blood freezes: here, then
the end, the dear deponent verb
of the wasp and autumnal chestnuts, little mushrooms and streams
what scarcely over they rumble, blackbird and bluejay.
Either carrion, or almost, but a little theatre of skin
eats away what encrusts in the loam, a military train
alive of white maggots and of ants,
a banquet conclusive. The skin,
the bristles dark, the tusks, and then nothing.

Reportage Post One Week Four

To the woman praying in a church in Perugia, Italy

As our tour guide talks about the importance of the architecture, 

I watch you with a blue cross body bag, making the sign of the cross 

and kneeling in front of a small shrine for Mary. 

The man next to you dangles a camera from his wrist as he adjusts

his Hard Rock Cafe: Amsterdam shirt and scratches his stomach. He almost hits you.

As you glance up to the candles to Mary's portrait, I almost hear your prayer 

and whisper one of my own. Entering into your world, I disrupt the solitude, 

apologizing for this man, for me. I'm sitting in a foldable lawn chair in the back. 

Memory Post One Week Four

Walking down the street to Ostello Dante in Ravenna, four men on bikes lurked outside a barred grocery store at 8:30 pm. Four other men, across the street, talk to a woman who reminds me of the mother from Precious. Fifteen Americans, separated at a crossway, wandered through the "hood" of Dante's exile. I'm next to a wall of lilac bushes and I'm five again, in my backyard, chasing the neighbor's beagle against the chain link fence. My mother echoes through the yard, calling for grilled cheese, for nap time, but I don't listen.

Junkyard Post Four Week Four

Our first apprehension as travelers, being touristy. Offsetting the pull to magnets and keychains plastered with the Pope's face or the bags with little coliseums and fountains, are we offsetting ourselves? Rome first appears to everyone as it did to me the first time last year: loud, magnificent, smack in the middle of a contemporary city. As I stare up again, Rome imposes on this piece of history and a pigeon shits on my hand. 

Junkyard Post Three Week Four

While listening to one of the students read from Ciardi’s Inferno, I turn towards the aqueduct, watching two men jog past us. The one closest to us wears a bright yellow jogging vest and tight blue shorts. I wonder if they enjoy living here, running over ruins. It’s like the people of Spoleto turn the lights on for us, museum curators for a town that manicures the walls of another Spoleto: one from thousands of years ago, fighting the Byzantines and Alexander, one that spilled oil from the top of a building and blocks out the weeds. We want to see something spectacular, something Rome is not: controlled. Tamed. 

Junkyard Post Two Week Four

The couple in front of me interlaces their fingers and smile sidelong at each other while walking down Via Mercato. I smell the man in the pork food truck slicing sandwiches for the passerby's and I wish I had three euro. Stopping for gelato, the couple sits down and eats the wafer from the top out of each other’s cups and I imagine Paolo and Francesca reading about love and Lancelot, while burning in the eternal fire of nothingness. Spoleto isn’t there yet.

Junkyard Post One Week Four

Sitting at the bar by the aqueduct, I watch the bartender throw a stick to a sheepdog while listening to my professor discuss abstractions in poetry. While the dog runs down the street, I hear a car honk and the students beside me laugh at something said. I’ve missed it, so I turn back to them, just in time to listen to the girl across the table, with ombre hair, read her piece about her father. The baby a couple of tables away cries against her mother, purple dress bunching at the stomach and I wish my mother could still hold me.

Original Post One Week Four

This is an imitation off of James Wright's "Ravenna (2)" translation.

Spoleto (2)

The children of Spoleto,
With their wide eyes and clinging hands,
Carry a backpack from school,
Filled with a history of hundreds of years.

The children of Spoleto
Laugh like they have a secret all their own:
Lost, dark. And when they cry, a murmuring
Coo sinks through the cracks of cobblestones.

The children of Spoleto play
Like animals: wild, yet content.
They whisper future's song without knowing
Words or tune.

The children of Spoleto age,
Slowly and quickly, they age into the shadows
And all they know is they're here
And won't ever leave.

Translation Question Week Three

"The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase" (113). I'd like for you all to consider that comment, particularly in light of Schleiermacher, Borges, Jakobson, and Eco. For haven't most of them championed translations that defy literalness, that even presuppose its impossibility (or at least illegibility)? What particular baggage does Nabokov (an emigre' Russian polyglot and literary provocateur) bring to bear on this argument? What does he mean, for example, by a literal translation's supposed "use" value? What, in other words, lurks behind that comment? What does it tell us about Nabokov's theories of translation? 


So, the thing that killed me about Nabokov, was the fact that the man was a tennis pro in France, a translator and writer in three languages (Russian, French and English), and an amateur butterfly collector (or something like that.) That baggage, the knowledge of so many things, is what Nabokov brings to this argument of literality. For him, it seems that so much of translation comes from learning about what is happening and giving that to his reader. He brings up the question of “can a translation…keep the form of the original, its rhythm and its rhyme” while being faithful to the whole text (119). He believes it can happen, since above that question he mentions the idea that literal translation is redundant because anything that is not literal is not a translation. I think, for Nabokov, the translation is supposed to bring the reader into the world of the writer. Footnotes are utilized to explain things to the reader, since twentieth century English readers would not understand aspects of ancient Greek works. I think his idea of a literal translation’s use value speaks to what it offers the culture it is going into. For instance, the use value of a Dante translation would only work if it was a literal translation with numerous footnotes about the allusions and references. The translation’s use directly correlates to what it teaches a culture. That’s the reason for footnotes. That’s the reason for literality. That’s the reason behind usefulness. Everyone else (translators) don’t teach us with their translations because they make translations too accessible by already shifting the piece to fit the culture. Mary Jo Bang and Nabokov wouldn’t get along at all.

Junkyard Post Four Week Three

In the church of St. Ignatius there is a painting in the left chapel by the door. I don't know the name,
or the painter, but what I do know, what I do see first, is the cherub in the bottom left corner, clutching the leg of the man closest to her. I can't help but stare at the blood red cloth covering her backside, as the white cloth of the man covers her face, blending into the flowers above her head.
I follow the cloth up to the haloed man's face, staring up at the cherubic group gathered around what looks to be a glowing post on a cloud. The other cherubs wave their hands and lie on clouds underneath the post, all but the one at the bottom. It's me.

I'm sitting in this chapel while all the other students are staring at a piece of artwork above them: the dome that's not a dome, Pozzo's fresco of the ascension of St. Ignatius, the four corners of the Earth, and I'm in the far left corner, huddled against a wooden pew. This piece, dark but welcoming, with the two centered men facing the audience, a space just for me, for you. I don't have to look too closely to see what's happening, unlike Pozzo's ceiling fresco I'm able to come close and see the feet of the men, see the astonishment on their faces, see the fallen crown in the bottom right.

To be that cherubic girl means I must sacrifice some happiness to be left here on the ground. To be that cherubic girl, I must veer off the road, veer into the corner where I watch the rest enjoy the art we must know, must feel. Half naked, stripped of the American "godliness," failing to ascend into Spoleto, or Rome's, eternal romanticism. Am I destined to cling to the leg and white robe of some haloed priest? Why can't I stand? Why can't she?

Response to Blog Week Three

This is in response to Gabby's post here.

Original Post:

Yes or no,
take my hand or let me go.
Careless grasps and empty
words have made me feel like i'm
the only one who's hurt.
I'm sorry.
Blame me and we can move on.
"It's not you it's me" is what I've heard for so long.
But it's not.
You were the one who cheated,
or have you forgot?
Pulling me this way and that,
feeling the venom of your love
paralyze me while i gasp for a breath
when my chest is caving, sinking.
I love you.
That's what you told me
but how can that be so when
i'm holding on for dear life and your
barely even touching,
me that is.
So don't throw shade into my face
and give me a fake embrace.
"It's not you it's me".
"It's not you it's me"
But you're wrong, because it is me.
I gave you something desperately,
and yet you couldn't see how strong I clung.
I held on to you like nothing else had meaning except to see
you smile like the sun.
I gave my soul to someone who had conditional love.
I was the fool, not you.
I am a queen and I deserve to be cherished
and put first,
Not thrown in the alley like scraps that cats
can scratch and match their trash with.
Never again can you turn this sunlight blue.
So let me tell you something baby,
I don't deserve you.

My Response:

Gabby,
This piece is extremely intriguing because it’s got a clear sense of narrative. It’s very telling, in a good way: in the way that allows the reader access into this personal experience. Now, however, it is time to think about inserting images for the narrative. One place I can see a cool image occurring: “I’m holding on for dear life and you’re/ barely even touching.” What happens if this turns into some image of animals or an instance you’ve seen outside in Italy? Think about what kinds of images might punch harder than narrative. I’m really interested in the “don’t throw shade into my face/and give me a fake embrace.” Is shade the literal shade from a tree? That’s a really cool image that I think might be expanded upon…you could play with the idea of being in the shade of mountains or something like that. Also, I love the images that you pull at the end: “not thrown in the alley like scraps that cats/can scratch and match their trash with./ Never again can you turn this sunlight blue.” I think the most intriguing part of that image is turning sunlight blue. I have no idea what that means, but I love it. So, basically what I’m saying is: allow yourself more of the opportunities to be surprising. Allow your narrative to dive off a cliff and do something super crazy. I’m working on that myself…I like control and little wrapped up packages of poems and I’m working on surprising myself and the reader. You do it with your images. So bring more images in and let them talk as well.

Reportage Post One Week Three

This originally was a prose-ish reportage post, but turned into a poem...I'm justifying it as reportage because it lays out things I've witnessed this week.

Translating Italian

While you're standing in line
at the one fast food place,
I sit, waiting for you and your friends,
dressed in running shorts and wife beaters,
to finish ordering pizza and cheeseburgers
in Charleston accented Italian and leave.
I know enough Italian to know that you don't know
enough. I'm all about voyeurism these days.
We're all observing a life we're not supposed to.
All allowing ourselves to be a part of some Carravaggio,
like the "Burial of St. Lucy," and the grave diggers
of Spoleto aren't letting you in, unlike me.
It's all about respect here. All about that outfit of black,
the costume of provincial life that the teenagers can't grasp.
I walked past a man with a Frosted Flakes shirt and yellow
jeans, something you can't buy for less that 89 euro here.
The city blocks it's own from economic prosperity.
Stuck in limbo, between city and country, Spoleto
and I waver--not American, but not fully Italian,
stripped of whatever culture I'm supposed to be defined by,
not quite naked, but not covered in the cotton of Thailand
either. It's a charade, like the one we played in language class,
where I pulled scrivere and started to scribble waves of blue
on the board. Can you guess the word, the translation, and
the person I'm supposed to be after this?

Memory Post One Week Three

I'm not even in the car ten minutes when someone tells me I should stay an extra day.
I'm home for two nights to watch my sister walk across a stage
and become an adult, but all anyone cares about is who's going to sit where
and where I'm going to be staying. My parents, divorced a year, planned back to back
events. My grandparents, separated since my dad's 30's, brought their own travel buddies
and staying in separate camps. I cried myself to sleep that night.
Half from the anxiety of sitting cross legged in front of the gate to Atlanta
for three hours and half from the railroading in an Acura.
I fell asleep to the sound of her breathing, her calm in and out breath,
mirroring three years ago, when she watched me walk across a similar stage
on a similar field, and sitting in front of the similar turf the next morning,
wearing a red and black polka dotted dress and staring at a picture of me and my friend,
I'm not really here. I'm there, on the field at the 50 yard line, imagining college,
aching to be away from high school but not home. She's aching to be away from both,
but not me. I'm her rock, and she's mine. Remembering her feet off the ground, my hands
at her shoulders, screaming about some small s and t pronunciation, grates at me now.
Grateful for the separation, she runs to me, but I'm running to her, to that green gown
that clashes against her blue dress and my shoes, to that cap with an Alabama A.

Translation Problem Week Three: Article

My original Italian:
"A Venezia mi accorgo di uno stato d'inversione di quasi tutti gli elementi. Mi è difficile distinguere tra ciò che esiste e ciò che sembra un'illusione, un'apparizione. Tutto mi sembra instabile, mutevole. Le strade non sono solide. Le case sembrano galleggiare. La nebbia può rendere invisible l'architettura. L'acqua alta può allagare una piazza. I canali rispecchiano una versione inesistente della città."

A translation:
"I notice a state of inversion for almost all the elements in Venice. It is difficult for me to distinguish between what exists and what seems to be an illusion, an apparition. All seems unstable, changing. The streets are not solid. The houses seem to float. The fog can render the architecture invisible. The high water floods the piazza. The canals reflect a non-existent version of the city."


What I find most interesting about this piece is that the words are extremely easy to translate (if I ended up doing this correctly). Yes, I did utilize some online dictionary action, but for the most part, I just read this and recognized a few things. Some of my classmates and I were talking about how Jhumpa Lahiri's writing style is very simplistic and easy to understand. It makes it easy to translate because not a whole lot is complicated. What I found most interesting while translating was the fact that she writes very poetically while still maintaining comprehension with the languages. I admire this for many reasons: one being that, as a creative writer, I imagine that meaning is easily lost in translation, but I don't believe that occurs. I found this piece, as I've said before, easily translatable, and I believe it is because she translates her own work, or at least that is what I remember being prefaced to this assignment. She is able to modulate the work herself, so that might aid to the translation's accessibility.

Translation Response Week Three

This is a response to Ashley's translation problem from last week regarding Moira Egan's back-translation project. Find the whole post here.

" Parthenocissus tricuspidata

   I see another
tree in the dark garden and
     I think it must be
     a weeping willow,
but when I ask, he says: No,
     it is a laurel
     bound in an immense tangle
of ivy that from it is hung.
     one that does not do
     harm to the host, but hangs
symbiotically, and that’s enough
     for posing poetic.
There goes
another dismal illusion,
     I say, and he laughs. "

My response:

I find a lot of the choices here extremely interesting, especially what to do with lugubrious. I, too, changed the word because it sounded too clunky, too syllabic. But the interesting question here, is why we both kept “symbiotically” and not “lugubrious.” For me, “symbiotically” was much more of a technical term that offered more to the piece than “lugubrious.” It offered something about the speaker, that they would know a lot about symbiosis and how it works. But in the same sense, lugubrious does that as well. I liked the fact that you chose “dismal.” It offers another connotation to the illusion that one may not get from lugubrious. Dismal makes the darkness continue. It allows for a sense of sadness that comes from your word “tangle,” which I admire as well. Tangle and maze are two very different words and I like the confusion and frustration that comes from “tangle.” I kept “maze” because it made this relationship seem orderly, and that’s a reason why I chose “elegiac” to replace “lugubrious.” You mentioned changing to “tangle” for that chaotic connotation, but doesn’t that directly contradict the idea of symbiosis? The “pose poetic” was rough for me. I like what you did with the “posing poetic,” making it seem like it’s a facade, but that also kind of contradicts with tangle, while still working with dismal and symbiotically. I really admire the fact that you stayed really close to the transliteration. I think the poet in me tried to go crazy. I also admire the fact that you kept the title. I forgot all about the title, and I really enjoyed your rational for keeping it. Personally, I agree with the idea that it offers a commonality across all translations and languages. I like the fact that most languages derive from one…It makes everything seem so much more accessible and that, in a way, everything is within our reach.

Junkyard Post Three Week Three

I stand to receive the flags for Graduation in Ray Manus Stadium and listen to the Roswell senior chorus harmonize the National Anthem. My dress sticks to my butt in this 90 degree weather and I think of the basilica of St. Francesco, where I would be if I wasn't here. I remember the air conditioning, the lapus lazuli rendition of baby Jesus and Mary talking about who loves him more between St. John the Evangelist or St. Frances himself, and the ornate wood mosaics. But it's May 23rd and my sister stands on the field in a forest green gown, ready to walk across a stage and turf.

I hear about cheap leather belts and bags, about how cool the tour was and how the man at the leather store was super nice. Everyone's named Mauro or Luca, it seems. I swipe through pictures while names that aren't my sister are called. I think back to the gelato that I didn't eat, the pigeons, the graffiti that I don't see on cement walls in America, and I'm abroad-sick. When my sister tells me "Thank you for coming," my heart swells against my ribs, pushes my lungs back and up into my throat, keeps words from coming out.

Junkyard Post Two Week Three

This is based off an exercise with Anthony Hecht's "The Hill."

In Gubbio, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision, or rather, deja vu, while on a leaf path
next to an empty ring of cement around a fountain
filled with old rainwater. But it was nothing like
the movie with Denzel Washington, or those moments
when people see gods or hear commands. Instead, I
was below a three storied mansion, curtained windows
beckoning to me and my friend. We were outside Manderly.
Rebecca, from somewhere in the forest, echoed a plea,
something about apples and lace, and the old boat house
down at the river, but the door under the hill, meant
for plumbers, forest rangers, or dwarfs, cut her off to me,
and I fell over a tree root. Picking myself up and out,
I searched for a lake, for her, and some sense of a goodbye. 

Junkyard Post One Week Three

A woman in Spandex and boob receipts sits four rows in front of me on the airplane, when she decides to get up and walk back to her husband. It's twenty minutes until we are supposed to pull away from the gate and she's shifting. Her black suede bag, too big for the aisle, bumps my shoulder and I nudge the woman in a fur vest next to me, who for the next eight plus hours won't eat, drink or watch anything. (Not that she could help that last one, she had a malfunctioning "entertainment center.") I look forward as the flight deck announces that there's a leaking fluid valve and it'll be 45 minutes until we're airborne.

Original Post One Week Three

This is based off of James Wright's translation of Hermann Hesse's "Ravenna (1)."

Spoleto (1)

I, too, have been in Spoleto.
It is a little city, dead,
that has fountains and an aqueduct.
You can read about it online.

You walk up the hill and across the bridge:
the streets are cobbled and smell of pigeon shit and sewers,
emptied of a hundred thousand years,
and cats and graffiti decorates the walls.

This is what old books are like-
You read them, breathe in, and soak
in the fact that World War Two missed this city.
So small, folding in on itself.

Translation Response Week Two

I responded to Sydney's post here. 

Syd,

This is a super smart translation decision. I would have first tried to do something with ice cream, but like one of the readings said (I think Eco), you can't translate more than what was already given. I wonder how it would sound with something like "dream with your eyes open." It sounds weird out loud, but it's seems to be the opposite of that "eyes wide shut" idea. I know we talked in class how we don't really say "stop dreaming, open your eyes," but I think we do...but not in so many words. It's the idea of "follow the yellow brick road" or "if you can dream it, you can do it." So I would say first that I like what you chose, but second that I would wonder what something like "dream with your eyes open" would be like.

Translation Question Week Two

This week's question is regarding the idea of rebelling against your own language when you translate.

I find this question super interesting because it accurately portrays the translator as a ghost writer that doesn't have ties to a specific language or culture. When Ortega mentions the fact that a translator "is translating himself from a language to a terminology," it gets me thinking about how translation only works if both the writer/translator and the reader have "previously and individually come to an agreement" about the words and their meanings, so therefore, the idea of translating culture comes back into play, since each culture has their own connotations and definitions of words. This then results in a difficulty translating some phrases. For example, one of the readings talked about Sylvia's silvies, and we discussed the slang term from Gomorrah. Sometimes, words are just placeholders, and that makes the translator betray their own language when deciding on a substitute. You're translating a culture. So sometimes you must betray that culture for the sake of another.

However, I believe the translator betrays a little of both cultures and languages. Since there is no way to keep everything from the original in a translation, in a sense, the translator betrays the original by giving something up. After reverse translating the Egan poem, I feel like the pulvarization and molding that I had to do also betrayed the translation because I had to create something different from the original to attempt a reflection. It is here where I begin to question the ghostliness of the translator because as much as we want to believe that the original writer wrote what we read, technically, it's not true. Technically, it's the translator that wrote it because they had to betray their own language and act as the original writer.

Junkyard Post Four Week Two

Walking to the Train Station at 4:29 AM in Spoleto, Italy

It's easy to cross the normally stuffed piazza,
instead of mopeds and teenagers, there's two cars and a cat.
The streets, lit like noon, welcome me and the crossroads
of morning. At the station, a man stands behind me at the ticket kiosk
as a bum sits on his cardboard box on the bench. I hear someone
blow their nose outside and I'm at home: eight years old and waiting
for my father outside the men's room, anxious to go,
but I can't remember where.

Junkyard Post Three Week Two

I used the Moira Egan Transliteration exercise as one of my junkyard pieces for the week since it focuses on one specific image.

I see another puddle
in our bedroom, shining
and I think it must be
a reflection, but when I
ask her, she says: No,
it is a leak escaping
in a small echo of freedom
we want, a realization
we haven’t learned, but
escape silently, and fail—
a faint translation.
Here I am, sopping up,
another masked attempt,
I say, and she nods.

Translation Problem Week Two: Moira Egan

I followed Sarah Stutt’s lead with the two translation idea and tried that for myself with the Moira Egan piece. In the first one, I tried to follow the transliteration closer like we saw Stutt do with the first of her two Rilke translations. In the other one, I allowed myself a little more creative freedom in terms of form. The “misery of translation,” as we discussed Monday, was the parts with the words “lugubrious,” “enough,” and the middle section when the ivy started to be brought in. I was very off-put by the multiple uses of the word “ivy” so close together in each line. I looked jumbled to me and I wanted to spread the moment out and elevate the language without changing the structure too much. I kept most of the commas and the way the line breaks, but I found that the word lugubrious didn’t give me the connotation that I think the piece wanted. When I read the word “lugubrious,” I found myself thinking of a burden or something that held back the subject (in this case, the tree), so I wanted to change the word to connote a togetherness and wholeness, even a “paying homage” type feel. I looked up synonyms for the word lugubrious and found “elegiac,” which to me, connotes all the things that I felt the ivy was trying to do for the tree, since there was no harm done, but it just hung there, using the tree as a home. The other instance that proved especially tricky was the “in pose poetics.” I had, and still have, no idea what that is trying to say, but I imagined it to be something along the lines of: the ivy is posed in the tree as they walk by, much like poetry is posed for the reader, almost fake. So I took out the “in” and just changed it to “posed poetics” because I like the assonance and alliteration.

The one on the left is the first translation (the closer), the one on the right is the second (the free-er).

I see another plant in the garden’s dark  and I think it must be a weeping willow, but when I ask him about it, he says: No,  it is a laurel  bound in an immense maze  of hanging ivy which does not harm  the host, but hangs symbiotically and enough, in posed poetics. It disappears in  another lugubrious illusion,  I say, and he laughs.

I see another plant  in the garden, dark and  I think it must be a weeping willow, but when I ask him, he says: No, it is a laurel bound in an immense maze  of hanging ivy, not harmful to the host,  but symbiotic and necessary, posed like poetry. Here it disappears  in an elegiac illusion, I say, and he laughs.

Response to Blog Week Two

This is in response to Trevor's Junkyard 1 from this week.

Trev,
This is a really cool piece because it offers a lot in terms of content. Not to sound like I know everything about poetry, but I think you could benefit from cutting some stuff. Like the three or four lines around the precipice part...sounds a wee bit poesy. There are a couple other moments when you use some extreme abstractions, like the last stanza, where there's Italian history and time and dancing ancient...I know you were trying to do the 80/20 thing, but I think it falls a little short of unexpected usage. I have a version (like the first piece) where I did some cutting that might be sort of unexpected, if you want to take a look.
As much as I critiqued in that first part, I truly love many moments: the part of the  "Dante’s four-leafed clover plucked/ and chewed in a field of bitter words;"sticks out right now, as does "slowly erasing the mortar." And I admire the specificity like Pope Urbano and Marlboro Gold, but you might be able to get away with just Marlboro in that case.
I truly look forward to reading your posts because they always offer so much in content and imagery and specificity. You've got the nuts and bolts, you just gotta fine tune some stuff...which errybody can help with!

Junkyard Post Two Week Two

The Italian girl, a student here at the vocational school, dressed head to toe in white, shifts her chef's hat back to center as she sighs, looks to her friend, back to me, opens her mouth, closes it, and sighs again. In front of her, on the table, lies a pile of flour in the shape of a bowl. In the valley of the flour mound lies four eggs and on the rim of the mound, piles of sugar topped with hunks of butter. It's the second time I've seen butter in Italy. The first was in our cook's kitchen while assembling an apple cake. Butter isn't found here, as isn't measuring utensils. My fellow American baker states that "the Americans would flip if they were here," or something like that. I laugh and the students turn and stare at us, not sure if they should smile and laugh or not. I focus my attention to the professor dressed in a black chef's coat- she wants me to be violent with this dough. Kneading as violently as I can, I pull away from the dough, acutely aware of the layer of fat that coats my hands and nails, itching to wash. As I bubble the soap, I take a minute to turn and look about the kitchen, watching the Italians maneuver delicately around the Americans, us just trying to stay out of their way.

Junkyard Post One Week Two

The economic store, TerraNova, sits right on Corso Garibaldi, or the strip, as one might think in America. We walked in to Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" humming between bubble jackets in red, blue and black, and mesh t's that read: "Because you can, so you will." Someone grabbed a pair of shoes from the bottom of a table with some gray baby t's with tigers and rainbow backgrounds. The shoes, black with sewed rainbow stripes, were a size 39. Not knowing what that meant for American sizes, I stepped towards the counter, asked the woman scanning packaged dress shirts if she spoke English and when she didn't, somehow managed to pull a "trentotto" out of my just-had-Italian-class exhaustion. She stared at me, and spouted a slew of Italian and "basta," which I translated to: the only ones we have are out already. Turning around, a black bag with "hear the noize" welcomed me to the side of the store with terrible translations as a woman with "party hard" printed across her chest walked in from smoking a cigarette.

Original Piece One Week Two

This was an improv off James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota":

Palazzo Mauri

Under your feet, tires crumble
and churn down the gravel road,
coughing like a pigeon in black light.
Down the street behind the abandoned
magazine stand, the church bells waft behind
one another into the crossroads of the evening.
To your left,
in a fountain of algae and water,
full of yesterday’s pockets and golden hills.
You step forward, while the moon approaches overhead.
A tuft of white fuzz tosses around, searching for your hair
and we have learned nothing.

Memory Post One Week Two

There's jousting in Arezzo in July, I say to my professor as we hike up the gravel path mountain. Huffing and puffing, I imagine the knights from Orlando Furioso or Medieval Times, where I went in sixth grade, right before I moved.

The horses, a deep shade of brown, carried their riders, dressed in different colors, across the sand in the arena as each side of the building cheered wildly for a jouster. I don't understand why medieval peoples found this fun-watching men get shot off a horse while wearing armor.

Chicken juice drips down my wrist and I stop to wipe it on my pants, we never got utensils or napkins. Later, at home, I say a quick thank you to the men who invented these items. My friend screams and waves a yellow flag in the air, spitting bread in the kid's hair in front of her. I watch as he turns around and swishes his hand through.

Reportage Post One Week Two

Norma, the English woman at the table next to me, is in the middle of a story about a dog when I come into the conversation. She first saw the skin and bone dog and knew that it needed to go off and die, but instead, she built a relationship through food and water. The problem was, as her story went, was that this wasn't even going to be her dog. It was for her brother, who ended up not taking care of it for the whole winter. As they moved into talking about bringing pedigree dogs into Italy, they sound like those who discuss human trafficking and I watch a grandfather and his granddaughter, learning to ride a bike. She jumps off and runs into the gelateria, leaving her grandfather to push the bike, hunched over, up the hill. Two boys in little blue suits run after each other, nearly plowing over groups of people, and Norma stops and stares for a minute. The woman across from her in a purple turtleneck, Gale, asks about the jacket Norma is taking off. I imagine both she and Gale are sweaty, since it's about 80 degrees and they are dressed as though winter is coming. I shift in my seat, trying to avoid their conversation, watching instead a floral girl and wonder what it would be like to grow up here.

Response to Blog Week One

This is a response to Hannah's blog post here. The blog post covered an original post regarding the exercise from class where the lines were very jarring and kind of slammed up together. Very cool exercise.

Hannah's original post:

"A woman walks up the hill, talking on her cell phone, the click of her heels echoing down the alley. Purple-necked pigeons coo forlornly on the rooftop of the neighboring house. Thus, all beauty dissolves. Once as a child, I announced that green has an expiration date. Maybe we're all trees with four seasons. Maybe we're all in desperate need of life."

My Response:
"Hannah,
This is super awesome! I love the jarred nature of this piece-the way the pigeons are slammed up next to some dissolving beauty and the woman with the cell phone. The expiration date and the trees makes such a cool connection because green does change to death when the fall and winter hit. I really want to know where the desperation of life could go. How does that tie into dissolving beauty? How can the piece continue? Maybe not at the legitimate end of the piece, but connecting through the middles. I know the original prompt called for us to be jarring and disconnected, but now there's the exciting opportunity for you to piece a little more information. For instance, I'd love to know more about how this woman and the pigeons connect with dissolving beauty. I think that is such a cool instance to look at because one is very natural and the other represents a culture that is becoming more widespread: technology. How does beauty push through technology or how does technology engulf beauty? Those are some questions you can ask yourself as you continue on with this piece. Maybe it'll turn into an essay where you intermingle different paragraphs with this connective tissue, or maybe it turns into a poem where you just talk more in depth in the lines between. To me, I see this as a poem. Something very image rich and interesting. You're right there...I love it!"

Translation Problem Week One: Slogan

The slogan that I found was in an advertisement for a financial information book. I can only imagine that this book deals with what seems to be difficult information. The slogan reads, in Italian: IMPOSTE
Offresi guida veloce alle nuove tasse, detrazioni e agevolazioni

Now, as I was doing some research about the words in the advertisement, I found that "imposte" could mean "to offer/to post" or "to impose," or even "tax." The rest of the sentence came to something like, "offering guidance quickly to new taxes, deductions and concessions." When I thought about translating this into something that English speakers would be more inclined to pick up, I skipped the first word, since it can mean so many different things, and chose to focus first on the second part: "offering guidance quickly to the new taxes, deductions and concessions."

First of all, it's really wordy in English. I feel like I need to keep the idea of the new tax concessions and deductions, since that seems to be the whole reason for the book, but the "offering guidance quickly" has too many syllables for anyone to be attracted quickly. So, instead, I thought about "quick guide."

This advertisement seems like one of those Craigslist ads for someone soliciting themselves for tax help. In these sorts of ads, the first line of the ad was in all caps and full of financial jargon. I think that a book definitely needs an advertisement that involves that jargon to prove that it is legitimate.

So a smoother translation could be: "quick guide to the new tax deductions and concessions." But this doesn't capture the bottom of the advertisement which says "rivolgersi a: CORRIERE DELLA SERA." This translates to "turn to the Evening Courier." This conveys the sense of solicitation that "quick guide" doesn't convey. The "imposte" might help with this issue.

Imposte: I came to the conclusion, from the context of the "offering guidance" underneath it, that this word was in the verb form, thus meaning "posted." This then tackles the issue of being an advertisement. So: "POSTED: need quick guidance to new tax deductions and concessions? Turn to the Evening Courier." But this seems really long. Even though it combines the idea of offering services and the financial jargon.

POSTED:
Evening Courier provides the quickest guide to new taxes, deductions and concessions.

I switched "offers" with "provides" because it has the connotation that this is attainable for everyone, which, to me, is the point of the book: to provide accessible information regarding taxes. Plus, when I read "provides," for some reason I get the thought that only this book can give me this information. It connotes a sense of singularity to me.

I also got rid of the "turn to" before "Evening Courier," because the idea that the advertisement wants the viewer to pick their product is inherent without having to say "turn to." Instead, I made "quick" "quickest," in order to help the product stand out even more against any other books that might discuss the new taxes.

Junkyard Post Four Week One

Translation

As the toilet bubbles a brown liquid back to the rim, I holler through the bathroom wall to my roommate for the towels. The shower, puddle growing to the door, can't drain. This isn't a third world, but reminds me of Haiti in the lack of showers, toilets, English. It's just older pipes, and not English. Not different, original. Another writes of flowers bursting through concrete, it's just age. Like wrinkles, we fight the inevitable, the destruction of ourselves.

Junkyard Post Three Week One

What strikes me the most is not the artifacts, but a left over, a remnant from the family of this home. Maybe she was eight, ten, or a boy. Maybe this mark wasn't even a height, but a calendar, a day planner. Looking out the window, I imagine the dressed thespians in a tunic or toga, sashaying Italian across the mosaic'd grass. Some paint chips from the iron railing as a spider struggles to regain its webbing. I holler across the amphitheater for a couple to reenact Romeo and Juliet, and he scales the wall, not quite making to the window arch, not quite the Assassin's Creed. Some Australian tourists with earbuds stop at the gate, peer through the rod bars, watching almost enamored at our American beauty, or maybe the Roman recklessness.

Junkyard Post Two Week One

Under the Roman theater there is a tunnel. The tunnel, hidden by bleacher like posts, opens to a gravel pile, a dug up history older than our country. My mother wonders if I'm having fun here, studying abroad in one of the smallest cities in Umbria. Amidst this series of historical artifacts, a weed no taller than my calf, encircled by a blue and black checked scarf by TRN 1961. An Italian company. I suppose it's deliberate, reminds me people lived here more than the bowl shards with the etchings upstairs. I wonder if this tunnel was home to many a make out session. A lover and his Italian girl, pledging themselves for five minutes, never ending like the underground Roman city, never imagining a fall out, a pillaging translation of reality.

Translation Question Week One

The question posed in class today: "What do you mean that translation doesn't reflect but refract?"

I am extremely interested in this refraction idea because of the violence that we mentioned in class. Refraction connotes a sense of breaking apart, of separation and recreation into something else. Reflection connotes a sense of mirroring, of a legitimate duplicate of an original. Translation isn't a mirroring because there is no way for a translator to copy everything exactly the same from one work to another. We decided that a translation was bringing one culture over to another, and that requires some adaptation, because as we know from being in Italy, one culture is not the exact same as another. Everything bases itself upon perspective. Refraction creates the perspective of violence because in a sense, translators pillage the text for importance, for what to carry from the original into the new text. Translations, bringing across cultures, carry over some aspect(s) of the original culture into a new, adapted text, that allows this second culture the opportunity to experience the original culture in a way that is relevant to the second.
In a way, translation is about relevance, about accessibility. But for me, translation dissects one culture, pulls apart the original text and brings some aspect into a new text. We mentioned Dante multiple times because of the amount of translations available. Specifically, Mary Jo Bang's, which incorporates modern culture. Without having read much of it so far, I am really excited to see what she does with it: to see if she captures the politics of the original or if she forgoes that for the modernity factor. In discussing Dante, we focused on the idea of form: if the terza rima matters or if it is okay to move it into blank verse. I believe that this is the idea of refraction. Moving something from one culture to another causes something to change. Terza rima was the most important form of the time, blank verse is the most prominent form of our time, so when a translator decides to refract a text into blank verse, the translator decides to focus on the meaning of the text and the importance of what is actually in the text, therefore, refracting the original into a different form.
I find translation to be refraction, not reflection, because there can never be a mirroring of a text. It's relatively impossible to mirror an unrhymed dactyllic hexameter text or terza rima text in the English language because our words don't rhyme or have the same syllables as other languages. That's why it's refraction: something has to change, just like when light refracts or we go fracking for oil. Something changes from an original to a translation.

Reportage Post One /Invisible Cities Prompt

This is based off of an excerpt from Invisible Cities by Calvino.

If you believe anything, believe that the glass covers the seventh century and the second century.
I could tell you of the girl in the library wearing a pink bubble vest, who sits on an iron precipice between today and yesterday, but Spoleto is two cities. The first, a Roman Amphitheater, bathhouse, and frescoed Papal home turned library, where fountains spout water from an aqueduct made for crossing and trading potted goods. A city covered by the second, a modernized version of the first, where town hall councils fight to tear down old, bring up new, move past the history and find America in the plastic cafe chairs, in the hamburgers, in the coke light vending machines. Refurbished, upholstered, translated.