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.