Andrey Gritsman, born in Moscow and living in the US, works as a physician and writes poetry; he has an essay in EastWest Literary Forum called On Bilingual Poetry and Self-Translation that, while rambling and occasionally unclear, says some interesting things. A few excerpts:
At times, specific feelings and emotional situations are better expressed in a non-native language due to the development of a new sensibility, more natural for a newly acquired tongue. […]
I was asked several times in which language I dream. I was thinking about this and realized that in my dreams people talk, I talk to them, and there is some language. But then I realized that it is not English and it is not Russian, it is a language that I understand but it does not have words or familiar sounds of one of the recognizable languages. And then it occurred to me that this is similar to the famous Pentecostal event in Jerusalem when a crowd of people of different nations heard the same sermon spoken in a “language” understood by them, i.e., in their native tongue. So, I concluded that this probably could be qualified as the language of poetry or a language above other languages. Some see it as a metaphysical substance that a poet puts into a certain language but which existed before him and which is transferred into words, and subsequently, it lives in the poet’s soul and mind. A monologue of the soul, so to speak. […]
The language itself dictates the way a poem is to be created. This is why attempts, by a great poet such as Joseph Brodsky, to place a poem from the original language, a Russian syllabo-tonic poem, into a framework of a totally different language sometimes produce cumbersome results. The number of words in poems in two different languages varies, which is only natural considering the vast differences between Russian and English. Sometimes unexpected images or different idioms enter the plot of the poem, or the language itself pulls apart the plot or adds an additional layer to the poem. However, the most important criterion in translation is recognizing the sound, although a poet-translator should maintain fidelity to the meaning of words, as much as the other language allows.
Tess Gallagher once mentioned that, when reading a translation of a foreign poem, the English language reader would like to see a good poem written in English. This particular philosophy was shared by Boris Pasternak, a great Russian poet and a famous translator of Shakespeare into Russian. […]
Now I will summarize my own experience and method in translating Russian poetry into English. I am talking about self-translation or the creation of parallel poems. First of all, I listen to the sound structure of the poem. The phonic structure, sound, and cadence of a poem come first. An important part is finding some English words or fragments of sentences that are similar in sound to the Russian original and adequate to the psychological profile of the poem under translation. Curiously, these fragments of speech do not always survive in the final version of a translation. It is pertinent to remember the words which the great Russian poet Nikolai Gumilev said to Osip Mandelstam: “What you showed me is a very good poem but when it is completely done, not a single word from the current version will be left in it.”
Then there comes the sound structure – a skeleton for the future translation. Parts of sentences and certain words fill the already existing sound framework. Constructing sentences follows the first phase, an attempt to save as much of the syllabic structure of the original as possible. Then comes the pleasure of working with the vocabulary, selecting the most appropriate and precise words, and fitting them into the sound structure suited for the historical destiny of the poem. Then – the final phase of straightening out the syntax, bending it to match the form of the original text within the grammatically permissible boundaries and manipulating the length of lines.
The method I have described is quite different from the commonly utilized way of literal translation – word-by-word, followed by adjustment and selection of the most appropriate and correct words. My approach, which I call emotional and rhythmical, is closer to the real process of verse creation. At any rate, this is what the reader wants to have, an adequate poem in English or Russian, closer to the original poem. […]
I think it is not incidental that Vladimir Nabokov created separately two great pieces of memoir prose in two languages: Другие Берега (Other Shores) in Russian, and Conclusive Evidence, and later Speak Memory, in English. These are not direct translations, but the consecutive transformation of a memoir narrative in two languages, created in different periods. Interestingly, the same events are freely reflected by two different linguistic devices.
George Steiner wrote that every language renders its own reading of life, that is, reflects life quite differently. I know from my own experience that one’s personality changes somewhat when one uses a different language, so many “translingual” people experience feelings of dual personality. Ilya Kaminsky, a well-known American poet of Russian origin, mentioned that his facial expression changes when he speaks English. In other words, the use of another language imposes a sensibility of a different culture, creating biculturality. […]
In summary, writing poetry in two poetic languages shows that a successful poem appears when it is written in two languages on the same emotional wave, yet created as two original poems in different languages.
I have a couple of books by Tess Gallagher; “A Poem in Translation,” from her first collection Instructions To The Double, is perhaps relevant here (“Your language is foreign and eligible, your circumstances Russian”). You can (hopefully) read it here, followed by a translation into Italian.
Похвала пахлаве
Похвала пахлаве, этой жирной гордячке эгейской,
от зеленых просторов Нью-Джерси до дымного Квинса.
Ее лепят часами полных гречанок проворные руки
согласно законам столетней матриархальной науки.
Здесь, в Нью-Йорке, в любом заведеньи возьмешь этот клин многослойный,
так и тянет куснуть, соблазнительно, но и больно,
так и тянет вонзить что-нибудь в пахлавы сердцевину,
жирно-влажную, крупно-зернистую, когда наполовину
режет нож беспощадный волоокой кассирши-гречанки,
гаремной и томной, из-под длинных ресниц взглянувшей нечаянно
на случайно зашедшего съесть “быстрый ланч” незнакомца,
на гонца в никуда, с нежным, бьющимся сердцем, посланца,
увозящего пакет пахлавы на восток, вдаль от солнца,
бормоча: пахлава, Балаклава, Босфор, Средиземное море,
и гречанке мила похвала пахлаве и акцент незнакомца.
—
I would like to see how he uses his method here, because this poem uses sound combinations not really part of English, i.e. khv, zak, zd, zn (does one cheat and use kw, zag, st, sn?).
DeepL
—
Praise for baklava
Praise for baklava, that fat, proud Aegean,
From the green expanse of New Jersey to smoky Queens.
It is molded for hours by full Greek women’s nimble hands
according to the laws of centuries-old matriarchal science.
Here in New York, in any establishment, you take this multi-layered wedge,
you want to bite, tempting, but also painful,
you’re tempted to poke something into the core of the baklava,
the greasy, moist, coarse-grained, when halfway through
the merciless knife of a wolfish Greek cashier,
harem-like and languid, who from beneath her long lashes glances unintentionally
at a stranger who happened to come in for a “quick lunch”,
a messenger to nowhere, with a tender, beating heart, a messenger
taking a bag of baklava to the east, away from the sun,
muttering: baklava, Balaclava, Bosphorus, Mediterranean,
and the Greek woman is sweetened by the praise of the baklava and the stranger’s accent.
—
Using Gritzman’s method:
Praised be Paklava
Praised be Paklava, that corpulent proud Aegeanic,
From the green province of New Jersey to smoke-dimmed Queens.
Kneaded by pure, proficient hands of Grecian women for hours,
cleaving to principles of primaeval Greek matriarchal powers….
I find this problematic:
First of all, I listen to the sound structure of the poem. The phonic structure, sound, and cadence of a poem come first. An important part is finding some English words or fragments of sentences that are similar in sound to the Russian original and adequate to the psychological profile of the poem under translation. Curiously, these fragments of speech do not always survive in the final version of a translation….
Then there comes the sound structure – a skeleton for the future translation. Parts of sentences and certain words fill the already existing sound framework. Constructing sentences follows the first phase, an attempt to save as much of the syllabic structure of the original as possible. Then comes the pleasure of working with the vocabulary, selecting the most appropriate and precise words, and fitting them into the sound structure suited for the historical destiny of the poem. Then – the final phase of straightening out the syntax, bending it to match the form of the original text within the grammatically permissible boundaries and manipulating the length of lines.
The method I have described is quite different from the commonly utilized way of literal translation – word-by-word, followed by adjustment and selection of the most appropriate and correct words.
I find his characterisation of literal translation somewhat narrow. Maybe that’s what happens with Russian, but translating from Chinese, for instance, virtually forces the translator to take far greater liberties. It’s often hard to translate Chinese directly into English and the translator’s voice inevitably comes through much more strongly.
It seems to me that the difference with “self-translation” is that the poet, being the ultimate arbiter of the intent of the poem, feels licensed to take far greater liberties with the poem than any translator would dare. But the poet’s ability to successfully recast the poem will depend greatly on their facility with the target language. A poet with a poor command of English would mostly produce a fairly risible translation. It is a very narrow group of poets that would even dare, let alone be capable of, recreating their work successfully in a foreign language.
I agree, but to be fair, he doesn’t claim general applicability — he just says this is how he does it.
You are, of course, right. The main thing that annoyed me was his opposing his own method to some mythical method called “literal translation”.
I seem to remember we’ve covered the question of self-translation before.
E.g., 2013. (A site search for more.)
I’m just not convinced that “translation” is a useful descriptive word for what it is that Gritsman says he does. It’s not even paraphrase. It sounds more like “here’s an original English poem I wrote that gives me the same subjective emotional vibe as a specific (rather different in semantic content) Russian poem I previously wrote does.” I actually don’t care at all about the man’s own emotional reactions and vibes, not least because I am not committed to any sort of theory that poets are reliable narrators about their own work. Which English translation of the Aeneid would Virgil prefer if he hypothetically somehow understood English? I don’t know that he’s appropriately qualified to judge that. He’s biased and lacks objectivity in the matter.
I agree that translation and paraphrase are sort of ranges on a continuum with no exact bright line separating them, but … this seems like some third thing that isn’t even really on the same continuum. Maybe my hang up is that both translation and paraphrase are largely about the transmission of semantic content from point A to point B. Now obviously one of the things that distinguishes poetry from prose is that *how* particular semantic content is deployed and communicated (in terms of structure, surprising word choices, sound patterns …) also matters quite a lot. That said, a theory of Russian poetry in which the semantic content is apparently irrelevant is I guess interesting from a literary-scholarship POV, but if it’s about pure sound regardless of semantic content, then maybe just transliterate it and let English readers revel in the pure sound of it without knowing what the heck it means.
Sorry, and “the historical destiny of the poem”? WTAF. Send the man to a re-education camp to get the cod-Marxism (or Vitalism or Swedenborgianism or whatever the heck that is) beaten out of him.
Living between cultures, morning edition. Me: “It’s 17 degrees, but they [forecast] promissed above zero today”
The change of personality when changing language was noticed before Gritsman. Dovlatov wrote about it. And Charles V quip about languages is somewhere nearby. But as Glitsman ably demonstrates himself, it is more complicated then that. Eventually, everyone converges the two sides and the difference between speaking English and peaking Russian becomes no more than difference between registers.
Translating “Похвала пахлаве” by any method probably requires it to be about baklava. The sounds are not that different. At least, that should be the first attempt. Then there should be a stab at alliteration. So maybe “Acclaim to baklava” rather than “praise”
Be cleaving to baklava!
Huh, interesting. I’m usually well aware of the languages the speaking in my dreams is in. There are other details that I don’t bother making up; for example, strangers don’t have any particular face.
I think it’s completely different. If you consistently speak different languages with people who have different cultures, you probably adapt to those cultures, and that changes the more noticeable aspects of your personality.
I’m hardly in that situation, so all that happens is that my English has a greater pitch range than my German; I’m not more cheerful or more vivid or more enthusiastic. But if you switch around between, say, Americans who smile a lot in casual conversation, Russians who never do, and Serbs who laugh as part of greeting you, I can easily imagine such things happening, at least to extroverts.
it is a language that I understand but it does not have words or familiar sounds of one of the recognizable languages
I’ve read somewhere that this sort of thing is because (paraphrasing from memory) the subroutine dealing with speech production is switched off for the night; this is (supposedly) also why if you try to look closely on written text in a dream it tends to look like gibberish.
I know I’ve had dreams (mostly in childhood) where the plot involved some variety of puns and/or anagrams, but to the best of my recollection of the relevant words upon waking up, they did not resemble each other at all, and/or had almost no letters in common.
I do recall having heard definite Russian in a dream; I think I’ve encountered definite English, though (matching my usual experience of it) it was almost always in written rather than spoken form (i.e. offhand I can’t actually recall anyone speaking to me in English in a dream, but e.g. fanfics and/or Discord chats featured frequently).
FWIW AFAICT the next part of Gritsman’s description is probably trying to describe Mentalese…
Not when I do it. When I do it, the part I’m looking at at any given moment is perfectly clear and coherent – except that the next time I look at it (say, a second later), it has changed, or it even changes while I’m still reading it. Reading in a dream is exhausting; inventing the text and keeping it straight for half a page is just too much work.
Maybe that’s why I don’t do it more often.
On very rare occasions, I’ve noticed myself making up what I was about to see and woken up. I’m not sure if that’s happened specifically with reading, though.
When I dream about people who actually exist, they speak the language they speak in the real world, and I know because I often remember scraps of dialogue verbatim. Very infrequently someone will speak the wrong language, but I notice this in the dream when it happens. And since I haven’t really used French for over twenty years yet dream in it on a regular basis, the French people now speak “French” half the time. Sometimes I struggle with vocabulary and sometimes I’m speaking fluently, but many of the words are invented and can be pretty hilarious when I wake up. I also sometimes have work dreams where I’m translating written Italian, which tends to be actual Italian, and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed the text shifting around. But most of the time I’m just trying to come up with a solution for a short phrase (and those solutions are always terrible).