MetaFilter posts tagged with poetry and translation

Enheduanna, the first poet we know by name

Kattullus — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:33:39 -0800

Enheduanna was a priestess and poet in the city of Ur in the 23rd century BC and supposedly the daughter of Sargon the Great of Akkad. She is the first author known by name. Here are a number of her poems in English translation, The Exaltation of Inana, Inana and Ebih, A Hymn to Inana, The Temple Hymns and A Balbale to Nanna. Here are two alternate translations of The Exaltation of Inana, one by James D. Pritchard and an English rendering of Dr. Annette Zgoll's German translation. If you want to learn more, go to The En-hedu-Ana Research Pages.

Brindin Press, poetry translations

Kattullus — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:38:18 -0800

Brindin Press has lots of poetry translations into English online, concentrating on French, German, Italian and Spanish, though more than 40 other languages are represented as well. A boatload of translators is represented, from those toiling in obscurity to big literary names (e.g. there are translations of Catullus poems by Ben Jonson, Jonathan Swift, Louis Zukofsky, Aubrey Beardsley and Thomas Hardy). There is also a section of quirky poems. Finally, here's a rendition of Goethe's Der Erlkönig that substitutes the elfish king with a dalek.

"Chinese poetry, as we know it today, is something invented by Ezra Pound." - T. S. Eliot

Kattullus — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:03:27 -0800

[Ezra Pound] worked on and for poetry as others might work on a major scientific discovery or a drawn-out military mission. Thus, as Sieburth reminds us in his introduction to The Pisan Cantos, when, on May 3, 1945, Pound was arrested at his home in the hills above Rapallo, he immediately put a small Chinese dictionary and a copy of the Confucian classics in his pocket. Working as he then was on his Confucian translations, he knew that, wherever the military police were taking him, he would need these books.

From Pound Ascendant by Marjorie Perloff. Ezra Pound's ability as a translator of Chinese poetry has long been disparaged by sinologists, such as George A. Kennedy in Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character. Other academics have sought to defend him. Two examples are Zhaoming Qian's Ezra Pound's encounter with Wang Wei: toward the "ideogrammic method" of the Cantos and Stephen Tapscott's In Praise of Bad Translations: Ezra Pound and the Cultural Work of Translation (pdf). Eric Hayot draws the contours of this long-running debate and explores its significance in Critical Dreams: Orientalism, Modernism, and the Meaning of Pound's China. Pound's Cathay in full and a public domain audiobook version (iTunes link).

Höpöhöpö Böks!

languagehat — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:40:57 -0800

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet. He translates Icelandic poetry into English (I particularly like his versions of Sigfús Daðason), and he has an interesting interview on Icelandic poetry ("Curiously enough, back in the days the nationalists would sometimes write in danish. And writing in a foreign language was more or less seen as the only alternative to literature being a mere hobby until Halldór Laxness came along"). But really this is an elaborate excuse to post a link to Höpöhöpö Böks: Köld öld Böks mjög örg, Ölböl örlög Böks! (Warning: My wife thought the linked video sounded like vomiting.) Via wood s lot. This one goes out to my man Kattullus; hope you can stick around! "The word Höpöhöpö (more commonly written höpö höpö) is finnish and means something between 'bla bla bla' and 'bullshit'. Written in one word it’s the longest word I know that only has ö’s."

Turkish Literary Delights

Wolfdog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:52:25 -0800

A Mid-summer Night's Story - one of hundreds of novels, poems, and tales in English translation at Suat Karantay's Contemporary Turkish Literature pages. Also: Turkish Poetry in Translation (the side-by-side translations of Dağlarca are particularly well-done), and selected stories of childhood & youth from Turkish authors in the mid 20th century.

Traduttore-traditore: translating poetry

nthdegx — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:35:28 -0800

Translating poetry is really really hard.

Sean Bonney's Translations of Baudelaire

Kattullus — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:37:52 -0800

Sean Bonney's translations of Baudelaire are unconventional. Instead of following the form of the French originals they are semi-concrete typewriter poetry. In a review of the book, everyone's cup of tea, onedit magazine says that they are "certainly the best translations of Baudelaire in English ever written." Which might explain why they published 35 of them in their latest issue. You can listen to Bonney read his translations here [mp3]

Seamus Heaney and the Soul of Antigone

matteo — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 11:09:59 -0800

Love that can't be withstood,
Love that scatters fortunes,
Love like a green fern shading
The cheek of a sleeping girl.
Seamus Heaney's search for the soul of Antigone.
(more inside, with Christopher Logue)

latera ecfututa

kenko — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 08:40:24 -0800

Can't hack Catullus in Latin? How about Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rioplatense, Romanian, Russian, Scanned, Serbian, South African, Spanish, Swedish, or Welsh? You can also compare two languages side by side.

igor.boog — Wed, 06 Nov 2002 10:45:57 -0800

Poetry International Web opens today. "Hundreds of poems by acclaimed modern poets from all around the world, both in the original language and in English translation."

eoz — Fri, 04 Jan 2002 21:07:03 -0800

An interesting look at translation: Australian writer Peter Goldsworthy "on being Spanished, Deutsched, Japanesed, Greeked and Malayed", and what he thinks is gained or lost in the process. (Also: translating poetry.)