Translating Again

It might have been two months ago when I posted some thoughts about translation. At some point, I observed that it was possible for a good translator/poet to transform a bad poem into a beautiful poem in another language. I am sure this is not a profoundly original observation. I can’t imagine that the thought has ot crossed the mind of many translators, and ore than that, that such a thought has not bee the subject of several major books on translation. Still, the idea fascinates me. And today, I was pushed into contemplating this idea some more when I read a review of the translation of poems by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. The translation was done by an apparently young translator, Alissa Valles. I know very little about all the major players in this scathing epic of a review—all I know of them comes from what Hoffman offers in his review, but I know enough to feel deeply sorry for Alissa Valles, and to stand amazed at Hoffman’s authority in slamming her translation of Herbert with such ferocity. It is worth the read, because the entire drama is predicated on Hoffman’s conviction that the translations are bad and that they do not do justice to the original writing of the Pole in his Polish language. This would be an unassailable and commanding assertion if there was not the small detail of Hoffman’s admitted lack of knowledge of Polish. He has German (he is quite an authoritative and respected German translator) and some other languages, but no Polish, and he does seem to be basing what he knows of the “originals” on the already existing translations by two of the other characters in this melodrama, John and Bogdana Carpenter, two translators of Herbert who clearly have devoted all of their professional lives to translating his work into English. Hoffman is decidedly upset that for whatever reason, these translators were not asked to do this authoritative Collected poems by Herbert, but that the task was handed to an unknown (certainly to Hoffman) woman, Allissa Valles. In his review, Hoffman eventually offers specific examples of how bad her translations are compared to the translations of the same poems by the Carpenters.

Here is the real challenge for me. How can Hoffman be so certain that the translations by the Carpenters are superior only because they are better at making Herbert look good in English—better than he even does in Polish? Hoffman is good at pointing to some of the sloppiness of Valles’ translations, and in so doing he points to her word choice, her syntax, and to a great deal of what can only be described as tone. She plays a lot with language, it seems, and she appears to favor a less fluid syntax that is rooted in a quest to make quite logical and apprehensible the language of Herbert. Hoffman favors these traits even as he celebrates what he sees as Herbert’s complex and sometimes strained syntax which must function without punctuation in the original. Is it blind faith that makes Hoffman sure that it is the Carpenters who have watered down the twistedness of Herbert’s poems and that Valles is actually presenting a more accurate representation of Herbert? Or should we accept his basic premise that any great poet (and Herbert is apparently a great poet), would never generate poetry that seems to be careless about language, and that seems to be less than particular about the word choices made?
I want to buy Hoffman’s view, but I keep returning to the fact that he does not have Polish and he is always including some almost disclaiming phrase as a subtle qualifier abot his ideas because of this. It may well be that Valles is just not a gifted enough poet and so her translations may have a faithfulness to the language of Herbert in Polish, but have somehow not translated in the English. Sometimes, Hoffman’s complaints sound like those of a man who has adored a certain quality in a poet (based on a particular set of translations) and who is now quite disappointed that the poems do not sound the same. In one instance, he points to an inversion of syntax in a Carpenter translation that he says, “could make you cry.” So here are the two versions:
“He will never return to the sweet throne of her lap”
And
“Never will he return to the sweet throne of her knees.”
Hoffman prefers “knees” to “lap”—he simply declares it better and does not explain why. An explanation would help me since “knee” does not really make anatomical sense. But this is not all. He also likes the inversion of syntax in the latter, admitting, in the process, to a certain sentimentality and affect in its use. So the question is, was this inversion part of the original Polish version—are such distinctions even possible in Polihs? Hoffman is unconcerned about that—and perhaps he is correct not to be. After all, the inversion is a tonal sift—a choice that the translator makes for effect.
What Hoffman does not say, however—and this surprises me—is that Valles’ translations seem more intent on being freshly contemporary, postmodern, and somewhat intentionally unsettled in English. Could this have been her intent or is she, as Hoffman would have it, simply incompetent? This example seems to point to this very idea:
a bird is a bird
slavery slavery
a nife a knife
death is death
he loved
a flat horizon
a straight line
earth’s gravity
That is Valles’ version. Now for the Carpenters:
that a bird is a bird
slavery means slavery
a knife is a knife
death remains death
he loved
the flat horizon
a straight line
the gravity of the earth.
Okay, so why, in this instance, do I suspect that Valles’ version is more “accurate” than the Carpenters’? I have my suspicions: Valles’ version is brief, succinct and sparse. She avoids the “of” construction, which can become quite annoying in poetry, even it is as common as anything in poetry. She does not attempt to include words that would seek to explain the meaning of the poem: “that”, “means”, “remains” etc. I just suspect that all of those words are somehow part of an effort to rationalize a somewhat surreal poem. But Valles’ retains some of the mystery, which is why her translation here seems appealing to me. The problem with my opinion, however, is that it is based on nothing much, really. It is certainly not based on my understanding of the Polish language or Herbert’s intentions in his original poems. But while I have not embarked on a major review of the translated poems of Herbert, Hoffman has, and I do not get the impression that he comes with much more authority than I do.
I am surprised that he never chatted with some Poles who speak and write in English—particularly Polish poets who might have a more informed view of the matter. If he did, he never mentions it. He does indicate hat he s quite attached to the Carpenter translations and that there is a pattern in translations that even when a better translation comes along, people still prefer the first translation out of habit, sentimentality or the consequences of the “first divs”.
S I am left with the old question: ca a good translation make a great oet out of a mediocre poet? If, after all, a bad translator can make a poor poet of a great poet, then the reverse has to be true. And if this is the case, how must we related to translations?
Hoffman’s review did something else for me: It made me want to look at Herbert poetry. But now you see my dilemma. I am not sure that if I read the recommended Carpenter versions, that I will leave astounded by Herbert. Yet, I can’t help but agree with Hoffman that some of Valles’ choices as he outlined them, do seem quite amateurish and clumsy for a poet. At best she is being ironic and working for humor, but at worst she is just not as careful a poet as she needs to be to translate this work. She might be elated to know that I wlll never have an answer to that question since I doubt I will ever have Polish. I suspect that in the next issue of Poetry someone, if not Valles herself, will come and set Hoffman straight by demonstrating that the Carpenters were actually quite hopeless translators who invented everything they translated. This is, of course, a joke.