Re: Poetic translation (was: ULT)

At 12:35 -0400 30.5.1999, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown scripsit:
>
>> ["Stabat Mater"]
[snip]

>> No English version
>> I've met comes close to retaining the simplicity of the Latin.
>
>There is a similar problem with the German Christmas carol
>"O Tannenbaum".  All English translations are massively
>over-literal and sound terrible; I have the choice of singing in
>German or using some totally unrelated words "We stand beside/
>The Christmas tree [...]".
>
>On a higher level, Goethe's "Ueber allen Gipfeln ist ruh"
>has the same trouble: it is very delicate, and all translations
>ruin the delicacy.
>
>In the reverse direction, Poe's "Raven" and Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"
>both resist translation with all their strength.
I've tried to put "Ueber allen Gipfeln...", "Raven" and several poems by
Blake into Swedish.  Can't say the result was heartening.

The most horrible was when I tried my teeth on "The Tyger".  I asked my
Blake-savvy boss if he could come up with a rime on 'bjaert' ("bright") an
he snapped: 'fjaert', which means "(a) fart"!  So there I sat with the
equiv of
"Tyger, Tyger burning bright, nightly forests' silent fart" engraved int my
cortex...  Tiel fartas la Shvedigho de Blake! :-)

OTOH they say Schiller's translations of Shakespeare stand the test of time
much better than his (Sch.) own plays, because he was at least as great a
poet as Shakespeare, but Shakespeare was a much better dramaturgist than
him.

BTW I recently saw a modernization of "The merchant of Venice" where
Shylock was a Swedish bank clerk and the Venetian merchants were
shop-owning immigrants from the Middle East.  Very refreshing from the
prejudices of the original!

/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)