I'll try adding some element of foreign poetry here. The poem below is written by Åse-Marie Nesse, a contemporary Norwegian poetess who works as a professor of literature and a translator. This translation from Norwegian to English was undertaken by my friend Kristine, who works as a free-lance journalist in London, and can be found at her homepage .

Sect

We're a secret sect of the earth
when we meet we know each other
We don't wear gilliflowers in our buttonholes
no uniforms and no shining marks

We just draw with a finger in the sand
something inbetween a flying fish and a star
It is very easy and it never goes wrong
only uninitiateds believe it to be a snail

Our speech is neither yes yes nor no no
only maybe or maybe not
Our hands have brave opinions
if we are misunderstood we start to dance

We do unsystematic tapping
microphones and echo sounders in many minds
Our archives are hidden in unearthly files
spies will find every door open

Solan: "Our hands have brave opinions" is a wonderful line, and there are others nearly as good. The lack of punctuation adds a layer of strangeness that I don't fully connect to the theme, not yet, at least. I'm curious about the preposition "inbetween," which I believe I've seen in another translation from your language. It's just slightly non-colloquial to my ear; does it convey a meaning in addition to the ordinary "between"? It is unusual enough to draw attention, at least for me.
RPW

You ask a difficult question, Richard. I passed it on to the Norwegian language council, where I noticed the first recipient had passed it on to another one again. Anyway, here goes:

Many Norwegian preposition can be modified by prepending an "i-" ("in-"). There are no rock hard rules for when this can and can not be done, and any instance of i+preposition may also be written with the mere preposision itself, and vice versa. But there are some rules of thumb that are in effect, at least statistically:

1. The "i-"-prepended form indicates an emphasis.

2. The "i-"-prepended form is used if the nouns it is supposed to describe relations for come first in the sentence. The preposition is used alone if it comes before the nons.

I believe (1) explains (2) to a certain extent, but that is just amateur theorizing on my part.

In the poem above, the use of "inbetween" is probably meant to differentiate it from the use of "mellom" which would mean a mere between-ness of position or sharing.

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Svein Olav

.. another life

Dear Solan,

Thanks for adding some foreign flavor to the board. I like much of this, particularly "our hands have brave opinions" (the sound of it--though a part of me wants to be suspicious of it as glib surrealism), and the lovely last line. Maybe you could tell us a little about the original--is it free verse, for instance? Some of the translation strikes me as slightly awkward, unless it is meant to carry across some eccentricities of the original. (In English, for instance, you would say "the unitiated" instead of "uninitiateds". Also am not clear what "sounders" means, or what part of speech it is here? Could you give us a little background about the poet?

Your brief explanation of the "in" prefix is fascinating. Prepositions are so idiomatic (that's the word linguists use when they mean "We haven't been able to formulate the rules") that they're probably among the last things that one learns to use fluently in a new language. The "inbetween" here raises the issue of how much of the original language gets melded into the translation -- little matters of syntax, maybe, or connotation.
I hope to be publishing an interview soon with John Ridland, who has translated an epic folk poem from Hungarian into English, "John the Valiant." Perhaps he will have some views on this.
RPW

http://www.aftenposten.no/objekter/bilder/t89475.jpg Alicia,

Åse-Marrie Nesse was a professor of German literature, and translated several German works into Norwegian, including an acclaimed translation of Goethe's Faust I+II. She has also translated Neruda and Paz. In addition, of course, to her own prize-winning literary productions. She has been knighted in Norway for her literary achievements, and has also received the German Bundesverdienstkreuz for same.

She died last autumn, from cancer, and had before that written and published two poetry collections with inspiration in her own fight against the disease.

The Norwegian original to the poem above is metrical, but het met.

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Richard,

the issue of how much of the original language gets melded into the translation - is indeed an interesting question. I just heard Borges state in This Craft of Verse how both translations that carry a language's idiosyncracies are good, while translations that focus on carrying meaning across are good as well. One example of a succesful transport - according to Borges - is King James style Biblical translation of the Hebrew way of stating superlative: "The X of X". For instance, the "beauty of beauties" simply means the beautiest. But "beauty of beauties" has a very nice poetic ring to it.

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited April 07, 2002).]

Solan:
Translation is fraught, and biblical translation even more so. For me, the problem leads sooner or later to the question of whether the specific language in which we think influences the way we view the world. Part of me wants to say it does not, because to say it does invites the speculation that some languages are inherently better, that is, more likely to bring the speaker into a workable relation with the world, and that it turn suggests the possiblity of superior and inferior cultures -- a line of thought that over the past few thousand years hasn't led to anyplace I want to go. But I can't help suspecting that people can be genuinely handicapped by their limited vocabularies and constrained syntactical resources. I don't mean limited in passing tests and getting jobs; I mean limited in what they can think. If you can't use subordinate clauses, can you sustain the subtle relationships between ideas that a series of subordinate clauses expresses? If you don't know a word or a workable synonym, can you hold on to what it represents? Maybe every language develops its own resources for thinking what needs to be thought in that culture, but still, the shape of the container might change the shape of the contents. So substituting one set of containers for another results in fundamentally different contents...
Sorry to drag this thread so far afield.
RPW

Interesting views, Richard. Popper shared the view that some languages are better suited for rational thought than others, and consciously chose English over his native German. You can make anything sound profound in German, whereas English is much simpler and clearer, so that you can't get away with as much. Says Popper.

But difference does not mean overall superiority for one. All currently living species have shown their ability by staying in existence. Is the lion or the gnu the fittest? I don't mean in a fighting pit, but in the real world - in the toality.

So I think it is a strength for world culture to have different languages that have proved their fitness in different ways. The totality of languages form an ecology.

(I have a lot of views on this)


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Svein Olav

.. another life