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.

Original Post One Week One

This original post comes from the calisthenic we did in class today about images and whatnot.

Once, as a child, I slammed a girl against a wall, told her to go home. Home, where a white haired woman feeds her dog a cookie from her gelato cup, the sky, some untranslated shade of blue. Blue, like frescoes half peeled from age. Half a woman, naked and pointing at the door, staring without smiling. Almost me, almost my mother, sister. Thus, I am shaped by the quakes of this city. Maybe we're all just kayaking down an Italy we're supposed to see but can't absorb. Maybe we're all just cracks from a brush.

Memory Post One Week One

This morning, after a run around the aqueduct where I sat on a stone ledge around a medieval castle (of what I hope to be a princess, because how cool would that be?), I wandered to breakfast at Bar Duelle. Here, in this skinny building echoing of American pointing and repeating Italian words, I order a panino and wait for a cappuccino, watching the brunette girl behind the counter smack, tap and steam her way quickly through the process. Laughing at something I don't understand, I flip the bar magazine's page, coming across an ad for a bike, slogan telling me to "rise up my darkness." People surround me and I look up to watch the owner of this bar clamber over her poodle, tied to a chair, to demonstrate the art of cappuccinos. As I raise my hand to try and make my way back behind the counter, it's a Sunday at J. Christopher's and some snot nosed teenager has asked me for a J's Turtle Latte without the caramel and hazelnut, and what he or she really wants is a cappuccino, so could I please bring that before taking the order. I grab the packet of espresso and smack, tap and steam my way through the process, just like the brunette girl in this bar. But unlike the "grazie mille" from Sydney, sleep deprived and caffeine deprived, as I hand the cappuccino over to the snot nosed teenager in America, texting his or her significant other or bashing my waitress-ing skills via Twitter, I am unacknowledged and left needing a raise for this.

Junkyard Image One Week One

From Frankfurt to Rome I flew in an aisle seat across and one row behind a shorter brunette-ish woman and her very German looking husband with a facial hair that reminds me of some Brad Pitt character's. In order to pass the time, she crawled over her graying husband and his paper and swayed her khaki'd butt back and forth, back and forth, in my face.

Travel Writing: First Impressions

Normally when I fly, I'm that girl gripping the arm rests praying to God that the plane doesn't fall out of the sky or that the baby in the row in front of her would shut up or that the zzzQuil she took three hours before take off would kick in so that the slight shaking of the plane would be forgotten. However, this trip, all of that was forgotten as soon as we touched down in Frankfurt. There, as I whipped out euros to help Kelsey pay for the best airport latte we could find, I realized I was going home.

First impressions? That I was home. I immediately knew that up the street would be the smell of fresh pizza and gelato wafting down the cobblestones, through the legs of teenage girls in camo and mesh and older men with thumbs clasped behind their backs. I fell in love again with the scent of cigarette smoke and Daniela's "absolutely interesting." But it was when I saw the aqueduct lit up by a spotlight at 11 o'clock pm, that I knew Spoleto would always be crammed inside me with a little espresso residue as lubricant, making room for more spaghetti carbonara and bistecca di vitello.

But let me tell you, while no one cried at the airport, I wanted to cry as soon as I started walking around. One, because I couldn't believe I was back. Two, because I realized then and there what that meant. It meant I was really a veteran. It meant that I am now required to remember things like what "frutti di bosco" means or how to be patient. I imagined that this would be like riding a bike, that it would all come back to me immediately. But, as my first impression was last year, I am officially overwhelmed. There is so much intake of information the first few days: how to flush a toilet, what the bidet is (and how it works), HOW BIG MY STOMACH EXPANDED...but I feel like I'm functioning on autopilot while the person inside of me is wrestling a language around, trying to grab and hold the flip flapping Italian tail of a Dantean monster: Italian tail, Haitian arms, French feet, Spanish hands, with an English torso and head. A wrestling match I probably won't win in five weeks. That wrestling match didn't match up in my head with last year's impression. I don't ever remember struggling with feeling foreign in terms of language, but I do now.

Honestly, it's because I've been here before.

Seeing Bar Duelle again affected me more than any of the monuments, probably. Maybe it was because of last year and the memories made giggling around bowls and bowls of pasta. I'm hoping that happens again this year, because that's Italy. One version is most definitely the monuments, but the other version is what happens around food and people. That's my first impression of Italy: food is highly important, as is company. That impression didn't change at all in my mind.

I've been here before. I can "suck the marrow" to a whole new level because I know how to dress. I know some people. I am okay with being looked over by middle schoolers with pompadours. But I don't remember not being okay without the language.

Travel Writing Preliminary Post Two: Cliches

Last year, I discussed the idea of quaintness...and the necessity to talk about food (I think).

This year, I want to talk about something I discovered while reading for my Translation class: The necessity to talk about difference.
Yes, Italy is different from America. Yes, the food is different, the architecture is different. The SKY is different (sometimes), but does that really mean we have to talk about it all the time?
I find it tiring to read about how different places are from each other. What makes one the original? What makes one the normal that everything else is based on?
I think every place is a translation of the other. A shifting culture that allows the very essence of the world to exist. The very reason that traveling is so much fun...to experience something new, something translated into a relevant norm. Not anything different, necessarily...just translated.

The other thing I discovered as a sort of cliche was the way they're always depicted as angry or lovers-ey. I was watching a commercial for Gelato by Haagen-Dazs that first depicted two Italian people (obviously a couple) fighting INTENSELY until the girl (it's always the girl, isn't it?) discovers the Gelato sticking out of the brown bag and they start to feed each other and tell each other they love the other and all that...until she asks him if he's going to apologize...and then they start fighting again. If that's the way Italians are painted, we saw the wrong ones last year. That's all I'm going to say. But that's not relevant to writing about travel in Italy at all...

If we are being specific to travel writing cliches, I think that everyone finds that they have to write about the coast or being at Pompeii...but I'm finding more and more that I want to discover the little places, the small towns hidden in the foothills or in between major train stops, like Arezzo, where we got lost last year. I'm excited to be able to "get lost" more, because THAT'S the true Italy, if you will...The Italy that the guidebooks don't tell you about...The Italy that is the difference between a traveler and a tourist.

Travel Writing Preliminary Post One: Expectations

The supplied prompt asked us to describe "what you expect to find there, your own particular “baggage,” in terms of what you have come to believe Italy will be like" in a minimum of 200 words. Well, my "baggage," if you will, comes from my trip last year. The epic awesomeness that I enjoyed last year seeps through to my everyday when I take the few minutes to think about this year's trip. Dr. Masters recently posted to the Facebook page, right above Dr. Davidson's reminder that we have "one.week.left," about the "tears and strangeness" that we will all feel. I remember the tears, and the strangeness, but only one from personal experience.


I was one of the few who didn't cry from personal exhaustion, or mental breakdown, during last year's trip, and I think that might be my personal baggage. Don't get me wrong, I don't plan on crying this year, but there has been a lot more personal drama in my life since last year's Italy trip, so five weeks in a country that feels more like home than America might be emotional for me...we will see....
So in a nutshell, I expect to feel happy, joyful, at home. I expect to find the same people that I met and loved last year: Daniela, Luca, Emanuela, Elisa, Samuelle...I (hope) that they remember me.
I expect to miss the people from last year. It was OUR SPOLETO. Megan called this year's trip "Spoleto, the Next Generation" and I believe that the incredible villa we are living in will be like "The Real World:Spoleto" (yet another Expectation), but it's going to be depressing not being able to down a jug of wine with Tyler and Jenna and whoever else split that with us (that part was a little hazy)...
I expect to be overwhelmed again: so many things to do, so many things to see, so many new places I want to day-trip to with my best friend and my new friends...my new family...Because if anything, I expect to find a whole new family in Spoleto, just like last year.
I expect that not to change.

For the Next Five Weeks...

For the next five weeks this will be my creative writing/translation class blog site. You can follow my Italy adventures in class here.