Tag Archives: faux translation

Speaking in Tongues: NaPowWrimo 2020, Day 21

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For the NaPoWriMo prompt today, we were to find a poem written in another language we do not know and to write a poem according to what we thought it meant. Here is my translation of a poem by a poet from the Netherlands. Her original and a true translation follow.

Messages in Bottles

Messages they send out to the world in bottles
(those they think up as they stir their morning cups of chocolate)
—beware their dangers.
These messengers have hands that can slap you awake,
then abandon you as they return to the problems of the privileged rich.These parasites, dosed with their vitamin B, ride roughshod over their hosts.

They linger in their beautiful dreams of percentages,
profit on the hunger of the poor.
They see not your skeletons when they look in the mirror.
They do not see the hearts they have broken.
Once, surrounded by the stricken, they put their fingers in their ears
and pretended they were evangelists to the poor.
Then, their illusions shattered by going door-to-door, they slammed doors shut again.

Their messages in bottles are swift to flow away.
The ocean has no doors to slam in their faces.
And their heads bent in prayer will not open those doors they have closed.
The ballast their bottles carry does no good.
The hunger of the world has no stake in the good books they carry.
The mood of their verses is malevolent. The vows they swear
are words in a wind that has come too late.
                                                                 –Judy Dykstra-Brown, April 21, 2020
Below is the poem in  Dutch, its original language—the language  my grandparents and father grew up speaking. I know about 5 words in it–and the alphabet!

GROUND CONTROL

Meisje van botten en pezen praat een wereld
aan elkaar van ’s avonds drop en chocola
de rijst voor straks bewaren, dagelijks
een handje noten voor het slapen en alleen
geen kaas vanwege mogelijke huidproblemen.

Heeft het over parasieten, vitamine B, genetisch
aangejaagde schommelingen in haar percentages
vet op water. De honger heeft het laatste vlees
van haar skelet gegeten en nu lukt het niet meer
om haar vast te pakken zonder haar te breken.
Onze enveloppen met de stokken, potten pindakaas
en preken neemt ze met een glimlach in ontvangst en
spoelt ze daarna ongeopend door haar lievelings-wc.Meisje van botten en pezen zweeft bij ons vandaanen wij, gebonden door de zwaartekracht, kunnen alleen
nog van beneden naar haar roepen dat ze haar verloren
ballast altijd terug omhoog mag hijsen, dat het nooit
te laat is om het hongeren te staken, een buik te kweken
om moed in te verzamelen, een vrouw van gewicht
te worden en de wind de wind te laten.
                                                         
                                                       —© 2018, Gerda Blees Uit: DwaallichtenUitgever:                                                                                    Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam, 2018.

 

And here is a translation into English of the above poem. I did not read this translation until after I had written mine. Obviously!! But, it is interesting that the idea of hunger did come across, somehow, although my poem is in an expanded world context whereas her poem about anorexia is very personal. I prefer hers!

GROUND CONTROL

Girl of bones and tendons strings together a world
of words: licorice and chocolate in the evening
keep the rice for later, a handful of nuts
every day before going to sleep and no cheese
because her skin might break out in a rash.

She talks about parasites, vitamin B, genetically
driven fluctuations in her ratios of
fat to water. Hunger has eaten the last flesh
off her skeleton and now we can no longer
put our arms round her for she might break.
Our envelopes with the sticks, peanut-butter jars
and preaching she accepts with a smile before
flushing them straight down her favourite toilet.

Girl of bones and tendons floats away from us
and we, bound by gravity, can do no more than
call out to her from below that she can always
hoist her lost ballast back up, that it is
never too late to stop starving herself, grow a belly
for gathering courage, become a woman of
weight and let the wind be the wind.

The prompt for NaPoWriMo 2020 day 21 was to find a poem written in another language that you do not know and to write a poem about what you think it says.

Your Soft Voice Fills the World: NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 30

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I don’t usually credit photographs, but all photographs on my blog are taken by me. The very few exceptions will be noted.


For the last poem of the month for NaPoWriMo, we were asked to find a poem in a language we do not know and to write a “translation” based on what we think it means.  I chose a poem by an Italian 16th century poet.  His name and poem are printed below my poem, which is:

Your Soft Voice Fills the World

Your soft voice fills the world
and causes the fronds to tremble.
Oh Laura, my long love, even the trees laugh
as they spread their green blanket over my vagabond angel.
Sing your song for me
as you ride eastward
so I may hear it wherever I go.
When you speak in the night,
it resounds in the heavens.
If you want to be queen, be queen of my heart.
Our love endures in the mountains,
oh beautiful vagrant of the skies.
Both you and your words live within me.
In the end, they will sustain me like a fine cuisine.


Here is the original poem:

Ecco mormorar l’onde
Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)

Ecco mormorar l’onde,
E tremolar le fronde
A l’aura mattutina, e gli arboscelli,
E sovra i verdi rami i vaghi augelli
Cantar soavemente,
E rider l’Oriente;
Ecco già l’alba appare,
E si specchia nel mare,
E rasserena il cielo,
E le campagne imperla il dolce gelo,
E gli alti monti indora:
O bella e vaga Aurora,
L’aura è tua messaggera, e tu de l’aura
Ch’ogni arso cor ristaura.

Originally, I translated the last two lines as:

The smoke of your words lives within me.
In the end, I will eat them like fine cuisine.

I loved those two images, but they seemed not to go with each other
or with the rest of the poem, so I changed them.

Here is a real translation of the poem:

 

Now the waves murmur
And the boughs and the shrubs tremble
in the morning breeze,
And on the green branches the pleasant birds
Sing softly
And the east smiles;
Now dawn already appears
And mirrors herself in the sea,
And makes the sky serene,
And the gentle frost impearls the fields
And gilds the high mountains:
O beautiful and gracious Aurora,
The breeze is your messenger, and you the breeze’s
Which revives each burnt-out heart.

 

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-thirty-2/