Translations

Translation Tuesday: “Clarice” by Marília Arnaud

May 2, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Ilze Duarte

During the day, the Girl would look at the chicken for a long time, sitting on the doorstep, her chin resting on one hand, smitten.

This Translation Tuesday, we present a child’s eye view of the habits of a beloved pet hen. Marília Arnaud’s girl is filled with the intense curiosity that true love engenders; watching her Clarice for hours on end, she is alert to every detail, her wonder unending. Compassion abounds in this story, which has been translated by Ilze Duarte with all concomitant warmth and care.

“Why don’t we eat chicken feet?”

“Don’t you know who pecked at the straw where Jesus was born?”

No animal should be cursed, innocent as it was of its own existence, the Girl mused in her own, peculiar musing way, while Esmeralda treated the chicken’s wounded foot.

Clarice, as the Girl decided to call the chicken, arrived on a Saturday. Esmeralda had bought her at the street market, and Mother didn’t seem to mind, maybe because chickens were animals of little noise and presentation. She would always move about in the green, sun-bathed rectangle behind the laundry area in the back of the house, pecking at worms in the dirt here and there in her silly way, shaking off the rest of the world with her indifference.

Clarice was a chicken of much elegance in her reddish-brownish color. Her comb, a bit paler and drooping to one side, gave her a playful look. She would hop on her spring-coil feet when the Girl came near her. Teek, teek, teek… Clarice would scratch the warm dirt and swallow corn kernels as the Girl threw them on the ground for her. Then, she would wet her beak under the dripping faucet and close her eyes in a trembling of the greatest pleasure.

The Girl soon found a place for Clarice. The unoccupied kennel at the edge of the backyard, set up with a pole and everything because Esmeralda said chickens only liked to sleep perched up. The Girl herself would sweep and wash the little henhouse every other day so that Clarice could spend her nights in comfort.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Michael Benítez Ortiz

April 25, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Jackson Reed

The rainbow: / a broken parachute of dreams.

This Translation Tuesday, we present “Shipwreck” and “Landscape” by Colombian editor, music journalist, and one-time candy vendor Michael Benítez Ortiz. Writing the oh-so-ordinary at a tilt, Ortiz imbues the commonest of surroundings with a new, often despairing perspective. Translated with fidelity by Jackson Reed, the following works serve as an introduction to the idiosyncratic work of this emergent poet. Read on!

Shipwreck

The sky is the sea standing on its head
where my paper planes
drown.

 

Landscape

The night:
a mass grave of stars.

The rivers:
tears of pregnant women.

Tree branches:
dismembered children’s arms.

The rain:
condensed blood in the sky’s refrigerator.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: [Not the truth] by Riccardo Benzina

April 18, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Marco Malena

I never told you. / Now I let the trap speak / for me.

For Translation Tuesday, Italian poet Riccardo Benzina shows us the psychic toll of lies upon the liar in this haggard confessional. His lines, slowed nearly to a slurring by ragged breaks and repetitions, and translated with care by Marco Malena, evoke the sort of exhaustion that only prolonged deception can cause. “Worn out is the idea,” indeed.

Not the truth. That’s why I’m telling you
I’d like to rest.
Worn out is the idea.

Yes I’d like to, I’d like to
if I can because
later on the doldrums will turn into a giant strut, almost
an entire world and I will be
entirely taken, you will be
entirely taken, we will be taken.

I’d like to rest my self as well, my self
you leave in the closet every time
burning a merciless cross
on the wall of your chest. The distance
unsewn, a desperate kiss on the windows.

I never told you.

Now I let the trap speak
for me. You’ll see
that I’ve read and not replied, that you don’t receive, you haven’t
received anything. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Hagiwara Sakutaro

April 11, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by John Newton Webb

A wretched thieving dog / is howling at the decaying wharf’s moon.

This Translation Tuesday, we deliver distinctive poetry from Hagiwara Sakutaro. In simple, colloquial free verse, sensitively preserved by translator John Newton Webb, Death of a frog and Sad moonlight capture the ominous tonality and unsettling imagery that pervade this singular writer’s repertoire. Tread forward for an introduction to Sakutaro’s dark world then turn back for an insightful special feature from the Spring 2014 issue.

Death of a frog

A frog was killed,
the children circled round and raised their hands,
all of them together,
they raised their adorable,
blood-caked hands,
the moon came out;
a person is standing on the top of a hill.
Under his hat, a face. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Earth Mounds” by Ahmed Amran

April 4, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Diana Senechal

He wanted nothing else, just to live in respect and dignity.

This Translation Tuesday, we present a quiet and devastating tale of abuse, escape and dreaming, told with care and gentle detail by Ahmed Amran. Yemeni-born but a naturalized citizen of Hungary, Amran writes in Hungarian and here draws inspiration from its vast and “dazzling” plains—the story of Earth Mounds hinges on his protagonist’s first glimpse of a steppeland that stretches to the horizon. Its very endlessness holds the promise of a future; he need only grab it.

We were still kids, all of us short. While of our age group, he was smaller in bearing. He barely spoke. He would rather observe our games than join in. He was fearful, almost terrified, of ending up in the sort of squabble that would spill over into a fight. Yet once in a fight, he slowly turned into a wounded lion. Then he would strike hard, unstoppably, sobbing as he fought, and when he sensed his victory, he would pull his most grievous punches. Then he would break into a run. Later we found out his refuge. On the edge of the village, on the other side of the fearsome graveyard, several low earth mounds lay. He would run there, climb up them, and roll down.

I remember when we noticed his growth spurt. Under his pitch-dark hair, the brown of his forehead had darkened. We hardly ever saw him on the village’s narrow streets. Instead, he would turn up in the deep, steep valleys engirdling the village. Later we heard about how his stepmother used to torment him. She would accuse him of stealing; almost every day she would find some excuse to kick him out of his father’s house. His father, to stay on his young wife’s good side, berated and beat his son. The boy had no strength left to cry. Out of sheer exhaustion he would often fall asleep during a beating. But sometimes he found refuge in the house of a hobbling old woman, where he could rest his worn body.

From the proximity of our old house we saw and heard them every evening. As if he enjoyed it, his father would raise his voice while throwing stones after his fleeing son. His young wife, like a hawk swooping down, would snatch up any of her little children who were playing nearby. A sly smile, visible only to those familiar with her wicked nature, etched itself in the corners of her mouth.

READ MORE…

Principle of Decision: Translation from Chinese

March 29, 2023  |  in Principle of Decision, Translations  |  by Dave Haysom, Liuyu Ivy Chen, Mike Fu, Na Zhong, and Xiao Yue Shan

This column is an exercise in transparency, an effort to lift the curtain and show the undercurrents of the translator’s mind.

The second edition of Principle of Decision—our column that highlights the decision-making processes of translators by asking several contributors to offer their own versions of the same passage—demonstrates translation’s capacity to reveal shades of meaning in the source text. Here, Xiao Yue Shan poses to the translators a passage from Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao.

轻而又轻的一天。时隔多年，那轻而又轻的一天生机犹在。如果你推却一切责任，对他人的痛苦视而不见，去拥抱巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、寂静的自我，你就能短暂地占有那种轻而又轻。

qīng ér yòu qīng        de yī tiān            
轻而又轻                     的一天。
A light and light         day.

shí gé duō nián
时隔多年
After many years,

nà qīng ér yòu qīng de yī tiān     
那轻而又轻的一天
that light and light day

shēng jī yóu zài
生机犹在。
still exists.

rú guǒ nǐ tuī què                 
如果你推却
If you push aside

yī qiē zé rèn
一切责任，
all responsibilities,

duì tā rén de tòng kǔ         
对他人的痛苦
to the pain of others

shì ér bù jiàn
视而不见，
turn a blind eye,

qù yōng bào          
去拥抱
go to embrace

jù dà de míng liàng, míng liàng de jì jìng
巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、
the enormous and bright, bright silence,

jì jìng de zì wǒ
寂静的自我，
the self of silence

nǐ jiù néng duǎn zàn dì zhān yǒu   
你就能短暂地占有
you can also briefly possess

nà zhǒng qīng ér yòu qīng
那种轻而又轻。
that kind of light and light.

This passage is taken from the Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao’s debut novel, 流溪 Liu xi, published in 2020. Its narrative takes place throughout Lingnan, a region on China’s southeast coast, weaving through dense urbanities and viridescent ruralities, the subtropical heat and myriad languages, to tell the story of a young woman whose daily life, from its very earliest days, is inextricable from violence, metamorphosis, and fantasy. A tribute to high Nabokovian style, Liu xi is a stunning, inimitable example of what is possible in the Chinese language—the music it pronounces, the visions it conjures, the delicacy and intricacy that can be excavated from its logograms.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Zinc” by Róger Lindo

March 28, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Matthew Byrne

The rodent will be captivated, as I will, by the hailstones lashing against the roof.

Salvadoran poet Róger Lindo tr. Matthew Byrne sets a tempestuous scene: a night storm both ethereal and mundane that compels all, from the dormouse to the soldier, to collective awe. This Translation Tuesday, we invite you to bear witness to ‘the nocturnal splendor’.

“Zinc”

I have only hubris and kindness.

–G. Ungaretti

Beastly storm.
A dormouse peers out halfway.
The rodent will be captivated, as I will,
by the hailstones
lashing against the roof.
The city mnemonist is here,
a soldier yearning,
drawing near, intrigued by
the nocturnal splendor.
I’ve been a solitary worker bee
in the afternoon,
but I’ve also sung
plowing the soil.
When the rain eases off,
we’re alone with the crickets.

Translated from the Spanish by Matthew Byrne.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Summer” by Cvetka Lipuš

March 21, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Tom Priestly

the simple happiness of holidays is worn / beneath it is tanned skin

This Translation Tuesday, Cvetka Lipuš places us lovingly amidst summers speculated, imagined, and half-remembered. It’s a delicious place to be, an infinity of summers in loose procession, their light and heat restorative, the best of them able to forestall the worst horrors. Because solar heat slows time and addles the brain, Lipuš asks her questions lollingly, sun-drunk, swaddled in the season’s “simple happiness”.

How many times was the sun at its zenith
how many summers went by
who keeps count of them
ears of corn are tallied
a column of grain rising to meet the universe
are only one’s own counted or also others
am I to begin with the dog days when Achilles
sets sail for Troy in the heat
he glistens with his brass
or with those when the smell of coltsfoot in the ravine
drowns the school at the bottom of hot timelessness
shall I compile a list of my favorites
are others also included
maybe the summer when the landscape
was changed they stopped bringing fear home
the war left behind its front
maybe the summer when time comes off its hinges
the simple happiness of holidays is worn
beneath it is tanned skin

Translated from the Slovenian by Tom Priestly

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “23 Cents” by Appadurai Muttulingam

March 14, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Thila Varghese

May your day begin well! Let it turn out to be even better with the resolution of my 23 cents credit issue.

This Translation Tuesday, Sri Lankan author and Toronto resident Appadurai Muttulingam recounts one person’s mischief at the expense of the impassive Canadian bureaucracy. When the narrator, in search of a human connection and the money he is rightfully owed, is rebuffed by automated mails and call center robots, a solution presents itself in the form of voicemails: whimsical, garrulous ones sent directly into the heart of the system, intended to flush out human beings hidden behind the machinery. Will the issue be resolved? Read on to find out.

Canadian $0.23. Its currency value amounts to 15 Sri Lankan rupees, 8 Indian rupees, 333 Italian liras and 20 Japanese yen in their respective denominations. That is not what is important. The Canadian government owes me these 23 cents. For many years, the government has been confused about how to return this amount to me, and I also don’t know how to get it back. Canada, a member of the world’s important group of countries known as the G8, has been cheating me for 23 cents.

This is how the problem started. For cooking my food and running the furnace, the Canadian government’s natural gas company supplied the gas, which saved me from hunger and cold. I am grateful for that.

Every month, they would send me a statement of account. Along with it, other monthly bills would arrive as well. I would review the bills on a Saturday morning and write the cheques to settle the accounts. These cheques would then be placed in window envelopes and mailed with appropriate stamps pasted on them.

At one time, the natural gas company sent me a bill for the amount of $199.77. For the sake of convenience and also because the amount in my account was in zeros at the time, I sent them a cheque for $200.00, meaning that I had remitted 23 cents more.

That’s how the blunder I made started.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Snowman’s Son” by Aleksandr Kabanov

March 7, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Marina Eskina

I also am a snowman’s son, despoiled of hearing and sight

This Translation Tuesday, we deliver unflinching poetry from Ukraine that sheds cold light on the child victims of the Russian invasion. On translating Aleksandr Kabanov’s pioneering, at-times enigmatic style, translator Marina Eskina writes: “I chose ‘The Snowman’s Son’ for its expressiveness, force, and, last but not least, because it is more translatable. It includes Biblical references with some overtones from the Russian classical poet Aleksandr Pushkin’s famous poem ‘The Prophet’ which in turn is an allusion to the scene from the Book of Isaiah. My goal as a translator was to preserve these references and allusions without ruining author’s stylistics. Such close reading and search for meanings brought me closer to deciphering Kabanov’s metaphorical universe.” 

The Snowman’s Son

The snow of war that flies askew
ignoring all the rules,
it fiercely pierces us through and through
but partly stays the course.

Snow rested the seventh useless wing
on earth’s frozen spine,
the other luckier six it brought
underground to his son.

There, underground, the rink of ice
glitters and melts with the laughs
of kids killed casually by war:
let’s mold them a dad of snow.

But death is eerily cunning,
it swaps the crown for a pail—
amidst the hasty castling—
a carrot for the cross and nails.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Return” by Cristalina Parra

February 28, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Julián David Bañuelos

my mother’s eyes in the morning and my father / ringing the doorbell, atop his bike, without shoes...

This Translation Tuesday, we bring you poetry from Chilean poeta Cristalina Parra’s debut collection Tambaleos. Translated from the Spanish by Julián David Bañuelos, “Return” is a tidal wave of nostalgia–overwhelming and sweet. 

Return

while swapping my papers, my mountains for the
desert gulf, i think about the reflections of clouds
cloaking the Santiago Mountain or the sun–
rise measuring the length of your face, slowly
cracks the day, there, the winds cross
the valley, the leaves sing and the clouds dance, I
hear the music you sent and the music we listened
to while running from the pigs, i think of all
the shellfish in this cold ocean and how the squids,
before death, try for the shore, i see,
my mother’s eyes in the morning and my father ringing
the doorbell, atop his bike, without shoes, his olive
skin, i think about the pup attempting their first
steps and the whiskey i threw back with my cousin
while playing Charlie Garcia’s keyboard and
chatting about the void we both understood, I think of the sunrise
for the first time in three years.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Painting of a Dream” by Sakthi Jothi

February 21, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Thila Varghese

I am drawing an image of me that remains embedded in an undissolved dream of mine.

This Translation Tuesday, we feature the poetic reflections of Sakthi Jothi, translated from the Tamil by Thila Varghese. With painterly verse, Sakthi Jothi extracts a perfect image from the intensities of an “undissolved dream.” Feelings are captured in the lines, and colour and tools are sought to map their depths—but success may come at a price.

The Painting of a Dream

I am drawing
an image of me
that remains embedded
in an undissolved dream of mine.
I tried to put together a figure
by extending the lines in the summer
and contracting them in the winter,
stretching the lines farther
and erasing some of them as unwanted.
I painted it with colours
specific to each season.

It was only
during the times
passed in searching
for brushes and colours
to paint with precision
all the details,
such as the loneliness
that is undissolved by anything at all, READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Incidents of Everyday Elephants” by Gianna Rovere

February 14, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Regan Mies

Sus tells us at dinner that elephants have always been her favorite animal. Elegant is the wrong word. Maybe exceptional, extraordinary.

This Translation Tuesday, we are privy to Swiss writer Gianna Rovere’s intimate musings on her encounters with elephants in a year— from overheard conversations on the train to a trip to Ikea. In direct prose, deftly translated from the German by Regan Mies, Rovere imbues her daily life with whimsy through the simple act of noticing in “Incidents of Everyday Elephants.”

November 12, 2020: Toys

I’ve always thought elephants made sense on children’s products and as toys because they have such a practical shape for small hands: a slender trunk for a child’s tight grip; an arched spine to be stroked; and four sturdy legs that stand solid and firm. Lovely, round shapes. I recently met a friend again for the first time in a while, and we got to talking about it all. Toys, elephants. He had cancer. Chemotherapy, hair all fallen out, weighed a hundred kilograms. He’d just become infertile. My friend’s doctor gave him a special offer, so now his sperm’s waiting for his cue from a nitrogen tank in Bern, in case the infertility stays. And what have I been doing? Looking for elephants in everyday life. Do you know, then, why they’re so often pictured on kids’ products? my friend asked. He said, My father’s worked in marketing for quite some time now and told me once, during a visit to the zoo, that elephants have positive connotations all over the world. So that’s why. Sure, dogs might be cute here, but in Asia, they’re dirty.

February 4, 2021: Relocation

I’m transporting an Ikea bag brimming with elephants. I’ve strapped it down onto two moving boxes, each of which I’ve tied tightly to a bike trailer. Forty-six elephants; small and large, made of porcelain, wood, or wax. I pull the trailer unhurriedly behind me. Halfway across the crosswalk at Albisriederplatz, I get a call. I hold the phone between my cheek and shoulder, and the elephants tip slowly left. At the last second, I catch their fall with my free hand. A car honks. Apologetic, I raise my hand, and the elephants spill down onto the asphalt. It sounds like broken glass.

February 23, 2021: New Message

Today, I was once again offered an elephant via telegram. A saltshaker.

February 28, 2021: Level

On the train to Luzern, a well-dressed man asks his son, who’s playing on a tablet:

“So’ve you managed to do it yet, with the little elephant like that?” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Three essays from “The Heart of a Dog” by Hiromi Itō

February 7, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Jeffrey Angles

One day, Také stopped, too tired to go any further.

This Translation Tuesday, we’re thrilled to bring you three personal essays from pre-eminent Japanese author and poet Hiromi Itō, about her aging, beloved German Shepherd, Také. Unflinching in their portrayal of Také’s life, from her irrepressible youth to her gradual physical decline, Itō’s essays contemplate the often brutal inevitabilities of mortality in a quiet, understated prose, translated here by Jeffrey Angles with the aid of students in his translation seminar.

Canine Instincts

If I don’t write this quickly, I feel like I’ll be leaving Také behind, and I could hardly bear the thought of that.

Také is a German Shepherd who has reached the ripe, old age of thirteen. Meanwhile, I’m a fifty-six year-old human being. If I were a dog, I’d have kicked the bucket ages ago. Fifteen years ago, I came to Southern California with my two daughters, and we’ve been here ever since. A year and a half after our move, Také joined us. In other words, she’s been with our family for most of our time in California.

Today, I took Také on a walk to the park near our home like usual. Each time, she always wants to take the same path she’s walked her entire life. The route never varies, and once we start, she won’t be satisfied unless we go the whole way. That’s why I began to drive us back and forth—to decrease the burden on her tired, old body as much as possible.

Today, after we took our walk and returned to the car, I found my keys were missing. I must’ve dropped them somewhere. When I turned back to look, Také made a stubborn expression and refused to budge. READ MORE…