Lost in Translation

I saw this film together with my son in London – and though I was well entertained I have forgotten the whole story. But the title fascinates me, because it is such a wonderful description of what can happens by translation.

And I am NOT speaking of the hilarious grotesque translations by Google or other ‘computer translation’ machines (when son was younger we gave in a long part of “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” – the machine translated it into a sort of English-muddle – funny! – then we let it be translated back by the machine to a sort of – er – German? Viking language? – hilarious!! – and then we put it into the ‘translator’ again – after that you could not identify a single word!

I am not able to read Swedish, so I let the Google translator ‘translate’ one blog for me – it is almost unreadable! (I will give you a piece of that nonsense on a rainy day - to amuse you).

That’s why I translate my own texts myself – knowing well that I stumble through your vocabulary and grammar like a fool – and no translator in his/her right mind will translate into another language than his mother tongue. I only do it here quite unprofessionally because I hope you will wipe the tears of laughter away and understand what I wanted to say – at least and hopefully better than Google would babble it for me.

But this time I want to show you something else.

Susan from’Prufrock’s Dilemma’ showed us the wonderful poems of Wislawa Szymborska – and off went Yours Truly to buy a German book of Szymborska’s poems.

When I read them, I was shocked. The melody, the poetic tenderness, even a bit of the content of Czeslaw Milosz’ great translation seemed to be gone or distorted in the German translation. Lost in translation.

I will do something now that I hope will not be misunderstood.

I translate the German version of a poem one by one – to show you how a BAD translation can destroy a poem. A bad translator even might use a correct German word for a Polish word - but a good translator must be able to be a poet himself, not a robot.

I want to be very clear about that: my translation is only there to show you how bad the official German translation is!

First Czeslaw Milosz's wonderful translation: 

(...)

In a drop of ink there are quite a few 

hunters squinting one eye, 

ready to rush down a vertical pen, 

to encicle the deer, to take aim. 

They forget that this is not life here. 

Other laws rule here, in black and white. 

An instant will last as I desire 

(...)

The German translator wrote: 

(...)

Der Tropfen Tinte hat einen ziemlichen Vorrat 

an Jägern mit Späheraugen, 

bereit, die steile Feder hinabzustürzen, 

in Anschlag zu gehen, das Reh zu stellen. 

Sie vergessen, hier gibt es kein Leben. 

Hier herrschen andre Gesetze, schwarz auf weiß. 

Hier dauert jeder Moment so lange, wie ich es will, 

(...)

  which is, one to one, translated back: 

(...)

The drop of ink has (!!, not even holds!!) a fairly stock

Of hunters with scouts’ eyes,

Ready to come rushing down the steeply pen,

To go into weapon at the ready, to catch the deer,

They forget: here is no life. (literally!!)

Here other laws rule, in black and white,

Here each moment lasts as long as I want, 

(...) 

Q.e.d.