When ПушкинComes to Shove

[Inna Caron]

It seems to me that you are single-handedly dismissing well over three hundred years of poetry translation practice, by many, many talented poets, into many different languages. Not to mention a great many scholarly works on the history of translation (not "pretend translation"). However, as it often happens, it all comes down to a difference in personal philosophies. Unless this particular segment of the discussion is of interest to other SEELANGS readers, I invite you to continue it off-list, if so desired.

Sincerely,

Inna Caron

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] on behalf of Judson Rosengrant [jrosengrant at EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:38 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] When Пушкин Comes to Shove

In response to Inna Caron: you miss the point.  The dishonestly lies in
pretending that the rhymed verse translation is a translation in the same
sense that a rendering of literary prose is a translation: that the offered
text represents in some full sense the meaning of the original.  The rhymed
verse translation rarely does any such thing--as you yourself unconsciously
acknowledged when you said, "leaving the reader haunted by a line or an
image, which is hopefully [!] (though not always [!]) most representative
[?] of the translated poet's intention [?!]."

My point isn't that the pretended translation can't be a good poem in its
own right (it can), but that that's what it is--another poem, and not what
it seems to claim to be, the thought and art of someone else.  Marshak's
versions of the sonnets may be good poems in Russian, but they are not
Shakespeare, and anyone who relies on them will have an inadequate
sense of the originals, to say the least.

As Jakobson said, poetry is by definition untranslatable.  That is a sad
fact, perhaps, but inescapable.  One can make versions of Pushkin like
mine (I gave you an example) or even much better than mine, but they
will still not be true translations.  They will be adaptations or, to use
Dryden's term again as a way of reminding you that this is a discussion
that English-speaking people have been having for over three hundred
years, imitations.  Imitations can be good poems but they can't pretend
to 'represent' the original's 'intention', whatever that may mean.  They
are simply something else, skillful or not as the case may be, but quite
definitely something else.  The rest is obfuscation or mendacity or
inflating one's own self-indulgent creative escapades with the name
and authority of a genuine master and all to common.


Judson Rosengrant, PhD
PO Box 551
Portland, OR 97207

503.880.9521 mobile
jrosengrant at earthlink.net

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