Quoted texts in translation
In a text that appropriates lines from a pre-existing text, what should the translator do of these lines? Should he appropriate their existing translations, like Nabokov explains in his text on his translation of Onegin? And if so, which translation should he/she pick, should there be many? When Jacques Roubaud uses lines from Baudelaire in La ville change hélas que le coeur de l'homme, Keith Waldrop of course retranslates those lines (of course, KW has translated Baudelaire).
The question then is whether, when Nabokov uses existing translation, the translation is made more transparent as such or not. Pierre Joris had discussed a similar dynamic of the encoded text in his comparison of the McHugh/Popov translation of Paul Celan's "Frankfurt" to his own (where McHugh and Popov had made more apparent a reference to Kafka in the use of the word "Dohle.")
One of the French poets I am translating examines closely the phrasé of past French poets as well as Georg Trakl and Paul Celan. Yet, in a reading of those poems, her references are invisible, weaved within the fabric of the text. So when she appropriates those lines, they are ultimately rewritten. As such, perhaps I should rewrite those lines too.
The question then is whether, when Nabokov uses existing translation, the translation is made more transparent as such or not. Pierre Joris had discussed a similar dynamic of the encoded text in his comparison of the McHugh/Popov translation of Paul Celan's "Frankfurt" to his own (where McHugh and Popov had made more apparent a reference to Kafka in the use of the word "Dohle.")
One of the French poets I am translating examines closely the phrasé of past French poets as well as Georg Trakl and Paul Celan. Yet, in a reading of those poems, her references are invisible, weaved within the fabric of the text. So when she appropriates those lines, they are ultimately rewritten. As such, perhaps I should rewrite those lines too.
Comments