Translation brings to mind a specific image: transporting meaning from one text to another, across a language divide. This sounds simple in theory, but becomes much less straightforward in practice. Is the translator to... [ view full abstract ]
Translation brings to mind a specific image: transporting meaning from one text to another, across a language divide.
This sounds simple in theory, but becomes much less straightforward in practice. Is the translator to privilege meaning or form? Should cultural nuances of the original text be brought to a readership that largely won't understand it? Conversely, should the translation alter the original to make it more digestible for the target audience?
I wish to address many of these questions--specifically, through a project that I completed for my translation theory class. The professor asked us to create a "bold translation," meaning something that challenges conventional thought as to what constitutes a "translation."
I decided on a homophonic translation of Miyazawa Kenji's poem titled "Amenimo makezu" ("Unfazed by Rain")--from Japanese into Latin, and then into English. This involved two steps: first, I examined every Japanese syllable and substituted it for a correspondent Latin syllable. Then, I rendered the meaning of the Latin words into English. As one can imagine, my final product had a completely different meaning than the original Japanese.
This process of "translation"--or perhaps, distortion--was enlightening. It was both incredible and absurdist to see a World War I-era poem about perseverance become something else entirely: a nihilistic vision of love, despair, and nothingness in Latin. Yet the two were united, by sound.
This was an exercise in making sense of chaos, and I hope to present this experience so as to convey the power of exploring translation.
