Translations as the Anti-ship of Theseus



I don't really know what translation is. It carries one thing to another place that is perhaps the same place after all. Reminds you of it. Or it carries it across a river from one bank to the other; sister places, brothers beside the river. Translation is a tricky mirror. Someone's tongue in another's mouth. 

Here are two texts about translation. The second presents E. Pauline Johnson's The Bird's Lullaby and my "translation" of it. It's a translation by reordering the words, keeping the sound, the tonality, the elements of its world. A kind of antiship of Theseus. The universe is made of the infinite juggling of finite atoms. 

The first is about translation within English. What is it that the world is possibly or impossibly Englishable? 

Let me end with a quote by the just passed Lyn Hejinian:

 Without what can a person function as the sea functions without me?


    *

I am writing this in English because I want to be subversive. It wants to be subversive. Ok, now some parataxis. That means an owl. My insides owl. What is night? It is English. The subject object, the noun verb, the crickets' buzz, the velvet thickness of air. Thick as adjectives between adverbs' fingers. We adverb night when we adjective swim through English air and owls are a premonition of our weaknessless. Subversive because it is a translation from the original English. The original English: paratactic because one velvet thing after another and no one knew what it meant, cut from soil then brought a great distance and lifted into a circle of standing sentences. Arrive at the right time and it aligns with sun. Speaking the known to owl, from knurl to slurry, speaking English to night what isn't Englishable. English like us, grown around a wound.


*

The Birds' Lullaby
E. Pauline Johnson

i
sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping
  with shadowy garments, the wilderness through;
all day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping,
  so echo the anthems we warbled to you;
        while we swing, swing,
        and your branches sing,
    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.
ii
sing to us, cedars; the night-wind is sighing,
  is wooing, is pleading, to hear you reply;
and here in your arms we are restfully lying,
  and longing to dream to your soft lullaby;
        while we swing, swing,
        and your branches sing,
    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.
iii
sing to us, cedars; your voice is so lowly,
  your breathing so fragrant, your branches so strong;
our little nest-cradles are swaying so slowly,
  while zephyrs are breathing their slumberous song.
        and we swing, swing,
        while your branches sing,
    and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

We While is Sing (Bird Lullaby)

we while is sing
the while to song
sleeping
while we their arms 
to warbled day 
we drowse pleading 
while so strong
and little your birds
our you to all the now would have us
echo wooing through you 
the hear lullaby
zephyrs swaying into wilderness is voice
we here swing we 
dreamy swing
is branches slowly cedars 
so breathing swing
shadowy and your garments,  
branches twilight 
drowse your nest-cradles is
to sing to lowly 
to lullaby sing 
to whispering swing 
to dream i, we, and creeping be
to night-wind dreamy lying are
your whispering we longing 
so drowse your cedars we 
your sing
we your and your and anthems  
to restfully sighing 
are you dreamy swing  
to reply and us to carolled branches 
soft and us slumberous 
us branches and sing
us dreamy sing 
are so with breathing fragrant 
us your whispering
your dreamy sing so 
dreamy cedars your sing to sing

 


Comments