I know you’ve always wanted to read a translation of H.P. Lovecraft into Basque… No? Well, how about a Basque translation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about “the barbarous Vascones”? The story is “The Very Old Folk” (1927), and it’s here at après moi, le déluge, the Basque version (translated by “our friend Odei”) followed by the original. Enjoy… or rather tremble in eldritch horror!
Update (2018). The original link is dead; fortunately, Lazar kindly provided an archived one, which I have substituted. And for further security, here is the beginning of the text in both languages:
Pulp literatura: Antzinako jendea
H. P. Lovecraft-en ipuina, euskaraz argitaratugabea
1927ko azaroaren 3an, ostegunean, “Melmoth-i” (Donald Wandrei-ri) idatzitako gutunekoa
Ilunabar gartsu batean gertatu zen Pompaelum probintzi-hiri txikian, Pirinioen oinetan, Hispania Citeriorren. Urtea errepublika garaiko azkenetakoa bide zen, zeren probintzia oraindik senatu-prokonsul batek gobernatzen baitzuen eta ez Augustusen legatu pretorioak; eguna azaroko kalenden aurretiko lehena zen. Mendiak arrosa eta gorri jaikitzen ziren hiritik iparraldera, eta bitartean, eguzkia, hilzorian, mistiko eta gorri distiratzen zen hautseztatutako foruko igeltsuaren eta harri zakarrezko eraikin berrien gainean eta ekialdera zenbait distantziatara zegoen zirkuaren oholtzaren gainean. Hiritar talde batzuk –bekoki garbiko kolono erromatarrak eta adats kizkurreko erromatartutako bertakoak, denak berdin artilezko toga merkeez jantzita, eta, han-hemenka, kaskodun legionariak eta auzoko bizardun baskoi gutxi batzuk, beren janzki zakarrekin– firin-faran zebiltzan zolatutako kale bakanetan eta foruan, zenbait egonezin adierazgaitz eta zehazgabe batek mugituta.
The Very Old Folk
by H. P. Lovecraft
From a letter written to “Melmoth” (Donald Wandrei) on Thursday, November 3, 1927
It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must have been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a senatorial proconsul instead of a prætorian legate of Augustus, and the day was the first before the Kalends of November. The hills rose scarlet and gold to the north of the little town, and the westering sun shone ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and plaster buildings of the dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus some distance to the east. Groups of citizens – broad-browed Roman colonists and coarse-haired Romanised natives, together with obvious hybrids of the two strains, alike clad in cheap woollen togas – and sprinklings of helmeted legionaries and coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the circumambient Vascones – all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by some vague and ill-defined uneasiness.
Silmarillion is amazing!
In this case the amazing euskaldun is Hartza!
I must confess that after reading “Basque lovecraft” I expected a much more tantric comment on the translation… Alas, thanks a lot hat.
What else could anyone expect from English speaking Basques (‘euskaldunak’) haunting Brussels??? Eldricht horrors, eerie posts and little else.
Oh, well, you never know:
http://www.gatuzain.com/kama%20sutra%20lien.htm
Yes, there is a “Euskal Kama Sutra” (Basque Kama Sutra”). Without any doubt with a lot of pre-indoeuropean… let’s say modus operandi.
Thanks, Hartza! I’ll never read it, alas.
Hartza, perhaps you could translate the Basque dialect passages from Don Quixote into Basque. Now that would be a challenge! (I believe that Rabelais and John Skelton also feature little snippets of supposed Basque.)
Into Basque or into English? Well, why not? I have recently re-discovered in my library (think about Gormenghast, but all of it books & trinkets) a good article on that particular passage by Rabelais (who in fact did wrote it in actual Basque!). And I also have some editions of the Quixote there… Anyway, if I recall correctly, the ‘Basque’ used by Cervantes was anything but real (*). I have to check that again (damned Alzheimer!).
Promised then: You will read soon about those topics in après moi.
Cheers!
(*) There is a very good article (in Spanish) on the humoristic use of pretended Basque in the Spanish comedies of XVI-XVII centuries at: http://www.cuadernoscervantes.com/art_43_vizcainos.html
I did check Skelton, and there was no Basque, alas.
“No Basque, Alas” would make a great title.
Here’s the original flyting between the Don and the Basque:
Though the narrator calls this bad Spanish and worse Basque, it is obvious that what we have here is pidgin Castilian and nothing more. Shelton (1612, only seven years after the original) hardly seems to notice the difference:
So we see that the T of insult is fully alive for Shelton, but he’s starting to lose control of the verb morphology: thou leave, thou were, thou cast. Here’s J. M. Cohen’s 1950 translation, from the original Penguin edition, which I cut my teeth on fifty years ago (Cohen has a lot of time for Shelton, as most translators do, despite his multitudinous errors):
In Tobias Smollett’s 1755-61 translation, the Basque speaks Mummerset:
Smollett gets the verb morphology right, perhaps because he had a better editor. He also has a footnote: “The literal meaning of the Spanish is, Thou shalt soon see who is to carry the cat to the water; or rather, in the corrupted Biscayan phrase, The water how soon thou wilt see, that thou carriest to the cat.” Apparently this was a proverb of the day.
And lastly here is Google Translate:
Alas, the link I posted is dead. Why, oh why, didn’t I copy at least a modicum of the text?
Too soon old and too late smart, that’s why.
We live in magical times.
Wow, thanks! I’ll fix the link in the post and add a quote.