What would be a good place to put an MP3 of my reading it? It comes out lovely when read, and poetry (like the Quran) should be read and said, I think. (But maybe that's cheating - grew up in household where poetry was always and forever repeated, recited, restated respoken and retold.)
I suppose I could figure out how to do a voice post (I get 20 a month, and use none of them), from an mp3.
Otherwise, I have no idea. Hearing it would be nice, but that, of course, won't make up for not knowing how it says what Frost said.
The pain, and joy of translation.
Just so you know, I am going to fight with putting it into my, mediocre, Russian (mediocre in that I don't think I will do the translation, into Russian, the sort of justice I can manage when I bring verse out of Russian), and it's all your fault!
Surely you'll end up with a very good translation... (unless it isn't yours).
Antinous (Ronen Sonnis, blog here: http://antinous.livejournal.com/tag/poetry+(translated) ) is my favorite living poetry translator. He hates me (politics) but might be willing to put up with your attempt. Or improve it. (He translates Russian/English/Hebrew poetry in all directions and his use of words in the two of those that I read makes me want to cry. Or become a publisher.)
I speak English and Hebrew at native level, and putter at equally low levels of quality in Dutch and French, Yiddish and Aramaic. Which means that I could probably find the bathroom and get the salt passed to me (or possibly find the salt and get the bathroom passed to me...). Russian - I curse in Russian. Especially my cats, who find an emphatic Dva Yo MAAAT reason enough to evacuate the office in a tearing hurry.
How, then, can I judge the quality of Russian translations? I knew you'd as. I've read several versions of into-Hebrew translations of Russian material. Sonnis excels beyond any other. (um, did we want to be emailng rahter than commenting back and forth? dena Spimmity at shunra spammity dot net. Remove the two extraneous words.)
I recall (and no, as in ML, I figure a good digression is a worthy thing; this is one of the best in ages. I don't get the same level of commentariat), before I learnt Russian, deciding not to get a side by side of poetry because it had a crappy translation of a Pushkin poem.
How did I know it was crappy? I'd read a couple of good versions of that poem (which colored my later translation of it).
I suspect what I shall do is go to the effort, toss it in an ML Open Thread, and then rework it and publish it here.
The thing with poetry translation is that the more people peck at it, the better it gets.
Some poets broadcast on your wavelength to the point where translating them feels just like writing one of your own. I've had the pleasure of translating a few of those. Sami Shalom Chetrit is my current favorite (published or semi-published).
Others take a lot more craft to convey (Frost, bless him, carries over to Hebrew beautifully, and you can hardly see the bruises on the soul of the translating team nor the tooth shards scattered on the floor. A.A. Milne does, too. Alan Ginzburg and William Carlos Williams.)
Still others just. don't. carry. over. (Hebrew poetry of a certain generation and mood simply lose too much in the translation, being written in the dense allusion-heavy register of a made-up language fueled by the charred embers of two, three, seven, a million earlier layers. English, love it though and as I do, can't do that or anything like it.)
I recall reading an account of someone who was studying Hebrew, and the difference which overwhelmed him at seeing a phrase he knew from the King James (to chase after nothing) in the original (to shepherd the wind).
I think that was when I really got the difference between languages ways of seeing things.
Last week really hurt, I was reminded; painfully, of how my ASL has atrophied.
Allow me to coat this with a further layer of difference and meaning (which will illustrate the problem with translations from Hebrew).
Hebrew nouns and verbs (and to a certain extent, adjectives) are formed using a three word stem (referred to as P/A/L/) which indicates a general sense or field of the word, which is poured into a mold (described as, for example, KaTaL for past simple in the male format and yiKTol for future simple in the male format, and tiKToL) where all of the vowels and some 'service letters' that shape the form are all supplied by the mold and the consonants, by the stem.
For example, the stem Sh.M.T. has to do with dropping stuff. So "shamat" means "he dropped" something and "yishmot" (or yishmat) means he will drop something and "tishmot" means she will. Other forms using the same stem will all have something to do with that dropping-stuff behavior.
I have to say, thought, that if vowel sounds are included, the form changes slightly.
Now, shepherding is R/glottal A/H, where all the words have to do with making friends and walking behind herds. But there is a similar stem, R/A/H/, with a non-glottal A, where all the words have to do with vision and seeing. They sound very similar (identical, for most speakers of modern Hebrew, unless they have an Arabic background, because modern Hebrew barely differentiates the glottal and non-glottal A consonant sounds.). So shepherding sounds a lot like “seeing”.
Wind, meanwhile, is a synonym for spirit (as in, what makes people alive, what God gets to breathe into people to animate them in earlier chapters of the same book).
So shepherding he wind alludes to the sounds of “seeing the spirit” (or chasing after animation, or chasing after divinity, which was looked upon askance - those divinity chasers were usually up to no good. Still aren't, often enough).
I'd heard that before (as well as the similar problems, for similar reasons, which live in Arabic).
I think, for all it's griefs, quirks and semi-sensical oddities (I recall trying to absorb the concept of the plural form of the singular "one", which I've had great headaches to try explaining the idea to English speaker, because they see it as a grouping of unique objects, and that's not it. Is the number one, and it's plural), I'm glad I was attacking Russian, much as I'd like to put Hebrew in roster of things I understand.
I saw a horrid piece of language in use the other night. It was a tote-bag, with the word "Shoah" on it. Before each of the letters was a Hebrew letter. Knowing just enough of the alphabet to see the Sh was where it "ought" to be for the word to properly read (i.e. right to left), but to those who don't know that, the impression was that the letters mapped to the one's they immediately preceded.
Better to have put the one word, over the other, if you ask me. The person who had the bag, didn't see the problem. She spoke Hebrew, and anyone who didn't was just gonna have to accept being confused. She didn't see it that way, she just didn't see (actually) that it could be confusing.
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Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 01:20 am (UTC)Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 01:34 am (UTC)Otherwise, I have no idea. Hearing it would be nice, but that, of course, won't make up for not knowing how it says what Frost said.
The pain, and joy of translation.
Just so you know, I am going to fight with putting it into my, mediocre, Russian (mediocre in that I don't think I will do the translation, into Russian, the sort of justice I can manage when I bring verse out of Russian), and it's all your fault!
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 01:43 am (UTC)Surely you'll end up with a very good translation... (unless it isn't yours).
Antinous (Ronen Sonnis, blog here: http://antinous.livejournal.com/tag/poetry+(translated) ) is my favorite living poetry translator. He hates me (politics) but might be willing to put up with your attempt. Or improve it. (He translates Russian/English/Hebrew poetry in all directions and his use of words in the two of those that I read makes me want to cry. Or become a publisher.)
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 07:19 am (UTC)TK
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 07:30 am (UTC)I speak English and Hebrew at native level, and putter at equally low levels of quality in Dutch and French, Yiddish and Aramaic. Which means that I could probably find the bathroom and get the salt passed to me (or possibly find the salt and get the bathroom passed to me...). Russian - I curse in Russian. Especially my cats, who find an emphatic Dva Yo MAAAT reason enough to evacuate the office in a tearing hurry.
How, then, can I judge the quality of Russian translations? I knew you'd as. I've read several versions of into-Hebrew translations of Russian material. Sonnis excels beyond any other. (um, did we want to be emailng rahter than commenting back and forth? dena Spimmity at shunra spammity dot net. Remove the two extraneous words.)
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 07:39 am (UTC)How did I know it was crappy? I'd read a couple of good versions of that poem (which colored my later translation of it).
I suspect what I shall do is go to the effort, toss it in an ML Open Thread, and then rework it and publish it here.
TK
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 07:58 am (UTC)Some poets broadcast on your wavelength to the point where translating them feels just like writing one of your own. I've had the pleasure of translating a few of those. Sami Shalom Chetrit is my current favorite (published or semi-published).
Others take a lot more craft to convey (Frost, bless him, carries over to Hebrew beautifully, and you can hardly see the bruises on the soul of the translating team nor the tooth shards scattered on the floor. A.A. Milne does, too. Alan Ginzburg and William Carlos Williams.)
Still others just. don't. carry. over. (Hebrew poetry of a certain generation and mood simply lose too much in the translation, being written in the dense allusion-heavy register of a made-up language fueled by the charred embers of two, three, seven, a million earlier layers. English, love it though and as I do, can't do that or anything like it.)
Re: And here's the same poem in Hebrew
Date: 2008-02-14 08:06 am (UTC)I think that was when I really got the difference between languages ways of seeing things.
Last week really hurt, I was reminded; painfully, of how my ASL has atrophied.
TK
Shepherding wind
Date: 2008-02-14 03:56 pm (UTC)Hebrew nouns and verbs (and to a certain extent, adjectives) are formed using a three word stem (referred to as P/A/L/) which indicates a general sense or field of the word, which is poured into a mold (described as, for example, KaTaL for past simple in the male format and yiKTol for future simple in the male format, and tiKToL) where all of the vowels and some 'service letters' that shape the form are all supplied by the mold and the consonants, by the stem.
For example, the stem Sh.M.T. has to do with dropping stuff. So "shamat" means "he dropped" something and "yishmot" (or yishmat) means he will drop something and "tishmot" means she will. Other forms using the same stem will all have something to do with that dropping-stuff behavior.
I have to say, thought, that if vowel sounds are included, the form changes slightly.
Now, shepherding is R/glottal A/H, where all the words have to do with making friends and walking behind herds. But there is a similar stem, R/A/H/, with a non-glottal A, where all the words have to do with vision and seeing. They sound very similar (identical, for most speakers of modern Hebrew, unless they have an Arabic background, because modern Hebrew barely differentiates the glottal and non-glottal A consonant sounds.). So shepherding sounds a lot like “seeing”.
Wind, meanwhile, is a synonym for spirit (as in, what makes people alive, what God gets to breathe into people to animate them in earlier chapters of the same book).
So shepherding he wind alludes to the sounds of “seeing the spirit” (or chasing after animation, or chasing after divinity, which was looked upon askance - those divinity chasers were usually up to no good. Still aren't, often enough).
The King James folks didn’t stand a chance…
Re: Shepherding wind
Date: 2008-02-14 05:44 pm (UTC)I think, for all it's griefs, quirks and semi-sensical oddities (I recall trying to absorb the concept of the plural form of the singular "one", which I've had great headaches to try explaining the idea to English speaker, because they see it as a grouping of unique objects, and that's not it. Is the number one, and it's plural), I'm glad I was attacking Russian, much as I'd like to put Hebrew in roster of things I understand.
I saw a horrid piece of language in use the other night. It was a tote-bag, with the word "Shoah" on it. Before each of the letters was a Hebrew letter. Knowing just enough of the alphabet to see the Sh was where it "ought" to be for the word to properly read (i.e. right to left), but to those who don't know that, the impression was that the letters mapped to the one's they immediately preceded.
Better to have put the one word, over the other, if you ask me. The person who had the bag, didn't see the problem. She spoke Hebrew, and anyone who didn't was just gonna have to accept being confused. She didn't see it that way, she just didn't see (actually) that it could be confusing.
Sadly, she's studying teaching.
TK