Translating a Kitchen Curtain.

I’m a sucker for discussions of translation that delve into the details, and Julia Sanches, translator of Eva Baltasar’s Permafrost, provides a good one:

Marguerite Duras as translated by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan writes that “translation is not a matter of the literal exactitude of a text, but perhaps we must go even further: and say that it is more of a musical approach, rigorously personal and even, if necessary, deviant.” I learned one day over lunch with Eva Baltasar’s editor that her only condition during edits was that the word in question be replaced with one that was similarly stressed or unstressed, as the case may be. What mattered was how each word affected the music of the sentence, what this music conveyed, and how the music delivered up the image to the reader. An example:

Catalan: Jo em sentia cada dia més empetitida, reduïda, a una cortineta de cuina al seu costat.
My translation: I felt smaller and smaller by the day, next to her nothing but a frilly kitchen curtain.

Let’s look at the words in detail, or rather in musical detail. Hopefully my highlights have helped to make clear what’s at play in this sentence. It may be odd to speak of a sentence being moved in a certain direction—we read from left to right in English, so what other direction could it possibly go?—and yet there is a definite sense here of being ushered forward by the end rhymes (ee-ah, ee-ah, ee-dah, ee-dah) of the first clause as they flow into the head rhymes of the second (coo, coo, coo), and come to a sudden and dry stop: costat.

The image is a bit odd, or at least odd enough that it puzzled the English editor. One thing she wanted to know was: What is a kitchen curtain? Though the simile seemed obvious to me—“it’s one of those ridiculously tiny curtains that are sheer and mostly decorative,” I wrote in the comments—one thing I have learned from translating is that when an image is obvious to the translator but opaque to everyone else, there is often something missing. The fact that the editor had been puzzled by the image also raised several questions for me, all of which took me back to the dedication and helped inform the rest of my draft: Is it possible that the image owed its existence entirely to the musicality of the (Catalan) words? Had that felicitous, musical connection between the words cortineta and cuina not existed, would the author have arrived at this image at all? If so, what should I prioritize? Does the image take precedence over the music, or do I do my my best to maintain both? To what do I owe my contentious fidelity?

[…] I’d like to zoom in on a small Durassian deviation: the word frilly. It may surprise you to find out there are no frills on the Catalan kitchen curtain. What “frilly” seeks to capture instead is a close reading of the simile, and especially a close reading of the diminutive, cortineta. As any Romance speaker knows intuitively, the diminutive inserts a variety of nuances into a word, ranging from smallness to tenderness, and to depreciation, not all of which can be captured by “little,” or “small,” or “wee.” The Catalan not only makes (a very natural) use of the diminutive, but also doubles down on the sense of demotion with the words “empetitida” and “reduïda.” I have tried to reflect this in the English version by creating a sense of progressive reduction in “smaller and smaller” and finally in the “nothing but” in order to give the reader the feeling—much like the sentence’s abrupt end with the word “costat”—that this is as small as our protagonist is able to feel in relation to the other character.

I think “frilly” is a brilliant addition, giving the necessary image to those unfamiliar with such curtains (I was surprised at the editor’s question, since I immediately knew what Sanches had in mind). And for the benefit of those with no Catalan, I should point out that unstressed o is /u/, so cortineta, cuina, and costat all start with the same syllable. Thanks, Trevor!

Comments

  1. Stu Clayton says

    No sensible person would hang “frilly” curtains in a kitchen. They would be hell to keep fairly clean. Not even Walmart caters to such ignorance as would be.

    The usual American expression seems to be “ruffled”, BTW. The tops of the curtains are ruffled where the rod goes through. Frills adorn bottoms.

  2. There are lots of things no sensible person would do that in fact are done by large numbers of people. I’m sure you can think of examples. Even just limiting it to kitchens, there was a dark time in American history when people put wall-to-wall carpeting in them.

  3. Stu Clayton says

    Carpeting in kitchens ? I remember fluffy afghan-dog-hair-like carpeting in bathrooms here in Germany, many decades ago. They must have gotten grotty as all-get-out. What to do when granny or the dog gets the trots ?

  4. Trond Engen says

    Even just limiting it to kitchens, there was a dark time in American history when people put wall-to-wall carpeting in them.

    My sister went to høyskole in that anglo-americanized oil-fueled enclave of Norway called Stavanger in the mid-nineties. Her flat had early seventies wall-to-wall carpets in all rooms.

    It’s my cherished prejudice that in the dark lands of Britain, the custom is still upheld. Not just in the kitchen, but in the bathrooms too.

  5. Trond Engen says

    (Yes, it was a flat, but the rent was like a student’s bedsit. It may have had to do with spotted carpets and the vague smell of mold.)

  6. My apartment bathroom a few years ago had wallpaper, even though it contained a shower.

  7. Giacomo Ponzetto says

    I hesitate to say this because Julia Sanches’s Catalan has every reason to be better than mine, but I’m skeptical of her reading of a cortineta as tiny and mostly decorative.

    Although the word not only looks like, but surely originally was a diminutive, it’s now largely lexicalized. It certainly is in its meanings of a camera shutter, and a commercial bumper in broadcasting. I suspect it is in its textile meaning too.

    In particular, I’d venture that a cortina keeps out the light and a cortineta lets the light in but shields from direct sunlight and prying eyes. E.g., here’s an online store with separate product pages for cortines and cortinetes following this distinction.

    Sanches agrees the original cortineta is not frilly. After all, she may even agree it need not actually be small nor decorative. But then, isn’t she skating on thin ice?

    I suspect In Catalan (as in Spanish and Italian, though I could be led astray by cross-language confusion) cortineta suggests smallness not by an image but only by a rhyme — the way “you picture John of Gaunt as a rather emaciated grandee.”

    Again, she knows better than I, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable with distorting the image to try and replace the rhyme that English lacks. Our gracious host himself seems to derive a vivid image of a frilly curtain lacking common sense. In other words, an thoroughly un-Catalan curtain!

  8. American “frilly kitchen curtain”, at least in my imagination, are half-length (or smaller) affairs. Like this. They are definitely not full-sized cortinetes shown by Giacomo Ponzetto. It would help also to know the meaning of these words. I poked around a bit and it seems that “I” from this line felt insignificant compared to “her” womanhood. So “frilly kitchen curtain” seems ok even if it is a different material item in the original.

  9. marie-lucie says

    Assuming that there is a lot of similarity in the popular domestic arrangements of the various Romance-speaking cultures, I had an immediate image of the “frilly kitchen curtain” which did not actually involve frills. Instead I could visualize a curtain consisting of a sort of rough, handmade lacework, often tracing a recognizable design, the likes of which still occur in thousands of lower-level French kitchens, hiding the interior from prying eyes during the day (at night, wooden or metal shutters provide a much better protection. (Frills are more likely to line the edges of much thinner curtains, some of which can also be found in French kitchens but also in other rooms.)

    About the music of the sentence:

    I saw Hamlet many years ago (probably aged 12 or so), prerformed in French by a French company. Before the performance, the main actor addressed the audience and said he had made some changes in the usual translation in order to improve it. As I remember it, he mentioned that the usual, literal translation of “the mousetrap” is “la souricière” (a derivative of “souris” ‘mouse’), but he had used “le piège à rat” which was much stronger, not only because “piège” can refer to a concrete object or a deliberate setup to destroy a person (but so does “trap”), but also because of the “ra” occurring in both languages. (Actually, French “rat” is stressed within its phrase, while English “trap” is not, weakening the impact of its meaning).

    Another example involving translation:

    Some years ago my partner and I had a friend whose family had fled Hungary during the troubles of 1956, when he was very small. He was the stepson of a Hungarian writer of some renown. His mother had had a rather tumultuous life before she married the writer, and both of them had also had a lot of difficulties until they left the country with the child. One day our friend brought us a book about his parents, a just-published translation of a Hungarian original, which had been nominated for a translation prize. I read the book, which was very interesting because of the personalities and the period, and which ended with the death of the writer after a long illness. The very last sentence was about the new widow: “And she wept for the first time since her life had become so lamentable.” I felt let down! For me, this final sentence killed whatever literary merit the book had, and certainly any hope of the book getting a prize for translation. Regardless of the original word order, I would have ended with “she wept”.

  10. I’m with Giacomo Ponzetto on this. Googling cortineta transparent would lead you to the relevant Catalan Wiki page:

    Un estor o cortineta transparent és una mena de cortina de tela fina que permet, en el cas dels estor i certs tipus de cortinetes transparents, el pas de la llum de forma somorta, existint també uns altres tipus de cortinetes transparents que no impedeixen totalment veure-hi a través d’elles. Es confeccionen amb teixits translúcids o transparents segons el cas, sent els més habituals els de fil i els de lli.

    It’s not that I know Catalan but this passage looks pretty clear to me overall (somorta is “faint,” “subdued,” “dull”). Apparently, estor is a cognate of strew. Visillo is the Spanish equivalent. “Sheer,” yes, but not “mostly decorative.” The narrator felt half-transparent next to her girlfriend.

  11. Athel Cornish-Bowden says

    the likes of which still occur in thousands of lower-level French kitchens, hiding the interior from prying eyes during the day

    Not just lower-level: we’re on the third floor (fourth floor for Americans) and our kitchen looks out on a garden surrounded by similar apartments of the same co-propriété. If we don’t want people on the other side of the garden to see what we’re up to in our kitchen (nothing very exciting, as a rule) then we need net curtains.

    The very last sentence was about the new widow: “And she wept for the first time since her life had become so lamentable.” I felt let down! For me, this final sentence killed whatever literary merit the book had, and certainly any hope of the book getting a prize for translation. Regardless of the original word order, I would have ended with “she wept”.

    I agree. As written, the rhythm is hopeless. Maybe a bit better if there were a comma after “wept”, but better still in your version.

  12. Athel Cornish-Bowden says

    Un estor o cortineta transparent és una mena de cortina de tela fina que permet, en el cas dels estor i certs tipus de cortinetes transparents, el pas de la llum de forma somorta, existint també uns altres tipus de cortinetes transparents que no impedeixen totalment veure-hi a través d’elles. Es confeccionen amb teixits translúcids o transparents segons el cas, sent els més habituals els de fil i els de lli.

    Interesting. Normally I would say that I can’t read Catalan, but the meaning of this passage is easy to work out, without much effort. Words like mena and llum that I couldn’t cope with in isolation are easy to understand in context. A paragraph without an amb in it would hardly be Catalan (though I have an idea that amb also exists in Aranese).

  13. PlasticPaddy says

    What I get from the original passage is : featureless, utilitarian, just hanging in the background. So I would leave out the frilly. But the translator had the benefit of having knowledge of the whole book and perhaps of other works by the same author or authors that may have influenced her choice of images.

  14. Jen in Edinburgh says

    “And she wept for the first time since her life had become so lamentable.”

    The other problem is that it’s a bit ambiguous – I read it first as something like ‘she wept for what had become of her life’, which I was going to suggest, but if ‘since’ is ‘after’ rather than ‘because’, then I think you’re right.

    ‘Lamentable’ is odd – presumably a literal ‘such as to cause lamentation’ is intended, but that’s not what the word immediately suggests to me.

  15. PlasticPaddy says

    In English, people’s lives are sad, desolate, full of / filled with grief etc., and only their deaths are lamentable (sometimes, especially in the case of young pop idols, these are the same people).

  16. Athel Cornish-Bowden says

    A paragraph without an amb in it would hardly be Catalan (though I have an idea that amb also exists in Aranese).

    My “idea” appears to be wrong, as Aranese has damb where Catalan has amb. See https://www.conselharan.org/reconeishenca-der-institut-destudis-aranesi-coma-academia-e-autoritat-linguistica-der-occitan-aranes-en-aran/ or https://tinyurl.com/mnb69xpx

    The giveaway word for identifying Aranese is eth — convenient for people who mistype the in English. Our Catalan friends have a house in Canejan (almost in France, but not quite), so I’ve probably heard Aranese, and I’ve certainly seen it written.

  17. The giveaway word for identifying Aranese is eth

    From Wikipedia:

    ille > eth /et(ʃ)/ (sing. masc. definite article)

  18. John Emerson says

    Then “the” = “eth” = “het” (in Dutch). Evidence for the Babel theory of language confusion.

  19. Rodger C says

    I suggest “And, for the first time [etc.], she wept.” PS what’s the original?

  20. David L. Gold says

    Aranese eth ‘the’ (masculine singular) is not the giveaway word for Aranese because non-Aranese Gascon has the same usage (identical in spelling, pronunciation, meaning, gender, and number) to the Aranese word).

    A better candidate may be Aranese es /es/ ‘the’ (plural, whether feminine or masculine). Non-Aranese Gascon has, if I am not mistaken, only eths ~ eras ‘the’ (plural, whether feminine or masculine).

  21. Again from Wikipedia:

    Specific Aranese characteristics:

       Deaspiration of Gascon /h/ > Aranese ∅ (except in Bausen and Canejan, where it remains [h])
         ▪ Gascon huec /hwek/ (fire) > Aranese huec /wek/
       Gascon –AS pronounced and written –ES:
         ▪ Gascon hemnas > hemnes /ˈennes/ (women)
         ▪ Gascon parlas > parles /ˈpaɾles/ (you speak)
       Plurals of nouns ending in –A become –ES: era pèiraes pèires (the stones)
       Intervocalic /b/ written U and pronounced [w]:
         ▪ Gascon: cantava /kanˈtaba/ > Aranese cantaua /kanˈtawa/ (he/she was singing)
       Reduction of plural definite articles:
         ▪ Gascon: eths, eras > Aranese es /es/

  22. I like Sanches’ translation quite a bit, and arguments about the exact nature of a cortineta seem beside the point to me when it comes to that specific sentence. Because I agree with her that the sound is almost unquestionably the main reason why the author chose that word; the sound is why it makes sense even though the metaphor itself is difficult to pin down. That’s what translating poetry is all about, in my view, and the same challenges turn up all the time in many kinds of prose. Frilly creates a repetition of the l, a repetition of the i, and a final string of three trochees. The prosody is completely different from the original in the specific tools employed, but the end result is very similar in terms of the music she describes so well – the accelerating flow with an abrupt, emphatic ending. What’s more, as she says, the connotation of frivolity echoes the original diminutive (which remains a diminutive in sound and “aura” even if a cortineta is no longer semantically small). Personally, I think it’s an outstanding solution.

    Of course one might say she has no way of knowing (unless she asked) that the author considered the sound to be at least as important as the meaning. Technically that may be true, but reading minds is part of the job, and with practice a translator hones that instinct – over the course of a given text, from seeing what other choices that author has made, and in general, from seeing how writers tend to reply when queried. With both poetry and stylistically distinctive prose, it’s not at all uncommon to spend ages puzzling over a word, pouring over pictures of curtains, wandering through Catalan tatting sites and people’s descriptions of their grandma’s kitchen, and then write to the author asking “What was the image you were aiming for: something more like this, or more like this?” only to be told, “Um, I’m not sure… I was really thinking more about the sound.” So after a while, when you come across a sentence with glaring internal rhymes AND alliterations AND metrical effects, you realize that underestimating the importance of the sound-sense would be as wrongheaded as turning the curtain into a sideboard and moving it into the parlor.

    (Also, if you want to be truly terrified by unhygienic decor, try googling “lace toilet seat cover”.)

  23. Athel Cornish-Bowden says

    (Also, if you want to be truly terrified by unhygienic decor, try googling “lace toilet seat cover”.)

    Yes. This one is so tasteful and beautiful that I’ll probably order one right away:

    https://www.bath-supplies.store/shower-curtains/2pcs-set-velvet-lace-toilet-seat-cover-set-winter-warm-magic-sticker-pu-waterproof-seat-case-closestool-protective-cover/

    https://tinyurl.com/y95y9wu4

    Only 10.84€, too.

  24. The horror! The horror!

  25. Of course one might say she has no way of knowing (unless she asked) that the author considered the sound to be at least as important as the meaning.

    It says right in the article:

    I learned one day over lunch with Eva Baltasar’s editor that her only condition during edits was that the word in question be replaced with one that was similarly stressed or unstressed, as the case may be. What mattered was how each word affected the music of the sentence, what this music conveyed, and how the music delivered up the image to the reader.

  26. I’d try “flimsy” instead of “frilly.”

    As Mandelshtam said, all words rhyme with each other in Italian. As Elizabeth Bishop claimed, “assonance in innate” in certain Romance languages (in Brazilian Portuguese, narrowly speaking) so even free verse (and prose by poets, I would add – Eva Baltasar is an accomplished one) “can rarely avoid melodiousness, even when the sense might seem to want to do so.”

  27. John Emerson j says

    In a large kitchen frilly curtains away from the stove would be as reasonable as they would be anywhere, and I’m sure I’ve seen them many times in the small town Midwest.

  28. Stu Clayton says

    Only 10.84€, too

    The purple one is too girly. I’ve ordered the fluorescent red one pictured on the far right. At night I won’t have to pick my way through the gloom any more. Goodbye dumps by starlight !

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