The road's crying shoulder

visual translation/transformation of a pictogram from the interior of B.C. (I like how this "street" sign seems to be saying something laconic about the landscape behind it, commenting rather than proscribing or warning.) The "pictogram" is derived, --by cutting up the moose into an asemic moosefont-- from the image that accompanies Fred Wah's ol moose in ski-doo-type world poem.

I’ve been thinking, in light of my last post about Fred Wah’s transcreation of B.C. Native pictograms, of how translations are a filtering through a particular screen, a particular knowledge paradigm. I wondered how I might “translate” Wah’s poems through some different screens. Here are a few interesting, though not particularly successful ways.

The first is translated by finding words (or words containing the most letters of the Wah original) in the (Canadian) Indian Act (Certainly one frame within which the First Nations experience is viewed.)

so:

ol moose inside ski-doo-type world
sliding down the milky way

becomes:

leaseholds mortgage instance Saskatchewan-does-property world
seriously downward the family way


The second is a translation using prompt phrases from Google search bar. Many of use wear Google goggles when we see the world. It certainly is another frame by which our knowledge is ordered.

so:

Hey! It Looks like
you got a couple ways in there

and a face, me
no face,

Show me how you do it
and I'll come too.


becomes:

hey hey, my it looks like spilt milk
you got served a couple of ways to make
money in there like swimwear
and all that could have been
face in torso creature, mega millions

no face spirited away

showtime me and my drink
how you remind me
do it yourself
and I’ll be your crying shoulder
come too soon
that sunny day you give your heart away





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And while we're on the subject of translation, here a little 'translation' in response to a Basho frogpond translation that Geof Huth sent me:


Frog: Why is this guy always watching me. Gives me the creeps. Better hide in this pond.


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TWILIGHGHT ECHO


greyeye