Poetry in translation/reading in other languages

Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
For something to do I'm trying to translate a short poem by Pablo Neruda. If I post the poem here and a preliminary literal translation, plus a brief commentary, could you lot help me turn it into a good poem in English? It might be an interesting exercise.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Here's the original

PIEDRAS ANTÁRTICAS
ALLÍ termina todo
y no termina:
allí comienza todo:
se despiden los ríos en el hielo,
el aire se ha casado con la nieve,
no hay calles ni caballos
y el único edificio
lo construyó la piedra.
Nadie habita el castillo
ni las almas perdidas
que frío y viento frío
amedrentaron:
es sola allí la soledad del mundo,
y por eso la piedra
se hizo música,
elevó sus delgadas estaturas,
se levantó para gritar o cantar,
pero se quedó muda.
Sólo el viento,
el látigo
del Polo Sur que silba,
sólo el vacío blanco
y un sonido de pájaro de lluvia
sobre el castillo de la soledad.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
An here's what I wrote down on my phone earlier, a literal translation

Everything ends there
And it does not end:
Everything begins there:
The rivers say good-bye in the ice
The air has married the snow,
There are no streets or horses
And the only building
Was constructed by the stone.
Nobody lives in the castle
Not even the lost souls
That cold and cold wind
Affright:
Only the solitude of the world,
And that's why the stone
Made itself music,
Elevated its slender statures,
Arose to shout or sing,
But remained mute.
Only the wind,
The whip
Of the south pole that whistles,
Only the white void
And the bird-sound of the rain
On the castle of solitude.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Which is obviously really shit as a poem as it stands, but could be good if tweaked by someone with a real poetic sensibility
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
"The rivers say good-bye in the ice"

..is awful - means more that the river becomes ice (says goodbye to being water and turns into ice)
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Here's how I'd probably gloss it:

The Antarctic is a place where everything ends and everything begins.
Rivers turn to ice and the water in the air freezes into snow.
No humans live there, and there are no human constructions, only the stones, cliffs and other geological rock formations.
It is a cold, windy, inhospitable place.
Because it is so lonely, the stone rose up into cliffs in an attempt to make music, shout or sing, some kind of voice.
But the stone remains mute and the only sounds are the cold wind whistling around the blank void, and the rain pattering upon the Antarctic cliffs.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
They really do look like castles.

I think there's this idea in the poet's mind that the geology of this harsh, cold, inhuman landscape somehow tried to express itself (communicating, making music, singing perhaps) by forming these shapes, but ultimately that's only a human projection - the stones remain mute, inhuman, inhospitable, completely alien to us.
 
V

version

Well-known member
The Times recently published a profile of Fitzcarraldo Editions and one of the things highlighted was that they've capitalised on a huge blind spot in anglophone publishing when it comes to translations,

One of Fitzcarraldo’s earliest successes was Alexievich’s Second-hand Time, which Testard acquired at his first Frankfurt Book Fair. Despite being a bestseller in Russia, and having considerable success in Europe, no other English-language publishers were interested. This was the beginning of a pattern that would ensure Testard’s success: owing to a lack of interest from big British and American publishers, a rookie like him was able to acquire authors who already had considerable international reputations. Fosse, his next big acquisition, is Norway’s darling (he has a residence in the grounds of the royal palace in Oslo); Ernaux has been a bestseller in France for decades. “I realised some years ago that I wouldn’t have been able to build this list in any other western European country because all our authors are published by the best publishers in France, Germany, Spain, Italy,” he says. “The stroke of luck I’ve had is that anglophone publishing is risk averse and tends to look inwards.” His success wasn’t really about striking hidden literary gold — it was more that all the other English prospectors weren’t even digging.
Click to expand...
 
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