Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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o 64 The stunning connection he conies up with is that both societies are linked by the conjunction within them of rigid codes of manners and of unbridled violence. This form of translation uses the differences between two poetic traditions to bring out a profound and fundamental cultural similarity between the societies which gave rise to them. Thus, the conjunction of two literatures in one set of words (the translated text) sets off stunning new echoes in time between them, rhymes which can both shock and delight. As with most figures essential to the well-being of a society, translators have always been regarded with suspicion. In diplomatic circles scare stories about situations like the mistranslation of "La France demande que..." into the belligerent and inaccurate "France demands that..." testify to the power the traders in linguistic foreign currency are felt to have in our lives. Indeed, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition the very origin of translation is tied up with man's hubris. Genesis recounts the story of the inhabitants of Shinar who decided to build a tower "with its top in the heavens" in order "to make a name for ourselves." This, of course, was the Tower of Babel. God's response to this pride was to "confuse their language, so that they will not understand what they say to one another." Australian aboriginal myths of linguistic origin, by contrast, don't have this idea of multiple languages and sin linked together. If linguistic variety is a punishment from God, then, by extension, translators, attempting to repair the broken bowl of language, can be seen as priests trying to repair the effects of an original linguistic sin. Our ambiguous feelings towards the idea of Esperanto, an universal language, shows how we regard the work of the translator as both deeply virtuous (healing the broken relationships between men of different cultures) and as potentially blasphemous ("those whom God has pulled apart, let no man put together"). I would argue, however, that the translator—who's always struggling to find the mot juste, and fighting with the incompleteness of one language to convey ideas from another—actually knows more about our true condition linguistically than the happy monoglot who would never dream of touching the Danger button in a rocket. In this, bilingualism helps. You know that one language will only take you so far along the route of your experiential journey. You know that at some time during your journey on the word bus the driver's going to call the last stop, and you'll have to walk the rest of the way with your luggage, up the mountain in the growing gloom, towards the one light left on in the farmhouse ahead. We all reach that moment sooner or later, when language will just not take you any further in your experience. But having made frequent changes of vehicle before means that the sight of the bus departing noisily down the hill is nowhere near as shocking or desolating an event as it might be. Indeed, it's even to be welcomed. In this sense, being part of a dying culture is, paradoxically, of great value to a poet, if you're interested in ultimate questions about language and the nature of reality. It was Lenny Bruce who said that comedy's not just a matter of telling jokes, it's about telling the truth. Similarly, poetry isn't about being poetical, it's about telling things as they are. In Wales, we may soon be facing the end of a fertile coal seam of language. Having taken for granted the warmth of prehistoric forests and the patterns of ferns and insects in our buckets, our shovels will soon be hitting against useless shale. Some Welsh poets look to England, with its confident, viable culture—or even to America, which is even more so—with envy. But the truth is that this is always the situation of language in the face of eternity—the prospect of utter annihilation. Cultural success can only serve to disguise this. The challenge in all cases is to sing as true as possible a song out into the dark before that final extinction of shimmering consciousness, before the brightness falls from the air. In this context nationalism seems to me like a distraction for a poet. My poem"Welsh Espionage" is based on the language of spy novels. What amused me was the idea that anybody would send a spy to Wales, where nothing much happens. Nothing is, I now know, of course, a great deal. But at the end of the poem I imagined the death of the last speaker ofWelsh, as a way of asking myself what my responsibility as a poet was in that situation.
O o 66 So this is the man you dreamt I had betrayed. I couldn't have saved him if I'd stayed. He's old as his language. On his bony knees his hands are buckled like wind-blown trees that were straight in his youth. His eyes are dim, brimming with water. If you talk to him he'll mention people whom you never knew, all in their graves. He hasn't a clue who you are, or what it is you want on your duty visits to Talybont. This is how languages die—the tongue forgetting what it knew by heart, the young not understanding what, by rights, they should. And vital intelligence is gone for good. I suppose my heretical conclusion was that languages, like people whose lives are over, should be allowed to go, not kept technically and artificially alive by machine or government policy. It's not the poet's primary job to supervise the life-support machine, but to sing the song of tribute at the funeral. And the great gift is knowing, fully, that no language, however prosperous or imperial, is going to be able to put off the day when the decision has to be made about the life-support machine of each and every one of its speakers. Translators know that the shapes and outlines of experience are far more beautiful and real than the drapes of words which we put over them. Most of us spend our lives admiring the lovely colors and the material of the drapes. Translators know that such weak material crumples to nothing without the eternal forms behind them. I've defined the nature of translation very broadly, arguing that cultures survive because of internal translation by their poets and by sucking in of new air from foreign literatures. I want to take the idea even further and argue that the very nature of our lives depends on how good we are as translators. Joseph Brodsky has written that "Poetry, after all, in itself is a translation." By this, I understand him to mean that verse is a version of nerve-end responses to the world, filtered throughout the logarithm of language into a construct which is an equivalent, in some way, to that original experience. In*Buddhist philosophy, it's only by understanding the true nature of the mind that reality can be seen accurately. The "I"—that is, me as a person—is a fiction produced by the mind, a non-existent entity which leads us to misread ourselves and the world around us. The virtuous life, therefore, is one which perceives and acts most accurately on the nature of reality. The price of mistranslating in this realm isn't a bad grade in midterms, but misery and delusion. Our lives themselves and not just our art, therefore, can be said to depend on being good translators. If I've been able to convey one thing here I hope it's my conviction that translation isn't just a matter of choosing the right words in English to convey, say,Virgil's hexameters or how to make one word cover the twenty Innuit nouns for snow. It permeates the whole range of our dealings with language. Translation doesn't just happen between languages—it's sometimes needed within one. In the U.K. a movement for Plain English has been campaigning to remove the gobbledygook from official documents so that people can participate in the social contracts which bind them. This isn't just a matter of simplifying the vocabulary of these papers; it's part of changing society from one dominated by the latinate complexity of an imperial power, in which people don't need to know how they're governed, into a democracy where all the participants—even the least educated— understand the structures which protect and bind them together. Translation is not just a matter of words. It's far more important. Which brings me to the title of this essay. The Welsh enjoy their words and play with them often. This may not always be in the sphere of high culture. I once heard about a train announcement in Llanelli which was "translated" from official British Rail-speak into West Walain. It went "Ladies and Gentlemen, There's been a change of platform. Ev'ryone over b' ere come over b' there and ev'ryone over b'there, come over b'ere." Not the Queen's English, but nobody missed their train. "Whose coat is that jacket? Whose hat is that cap?" is another South Walian joke. It shows our fascination for the slightly different angles at which we see the world, according to which word we use to
Page 1 and 2: TRANSLATION SECTION TRY COAST TO CO
Page 3 and 4: Editor-in-Chief LORI SODBRLIND Exec
Page 5 and 6: ELIZABETH MACKLIN SAMN STOCKWELL DA
Page 7 and 8: IO her with broken locks on pill ca
Page 9 and 10: o a: ID u. O >- IT 0 in on his face
Page 11 and 12: 18 or his daughter. He said north o
Page 13 and 14: in charge of the lifted-up-spirits
Page 15 and 16: The wife says, "Oh, shut up, won't
Page 17 and 18: then sits down, clutching the baske
Page 19 and 20: 34 They all drink. The wife's head
Page 21 and 22: Liliana Ursu, a native of Bucarest,
Page 23 and 24: De la fereastra Ingerului Fan, iarb
Page 25 and 26: The Key to Mystery Hot is my body a
Page 27 and 28: 5° Everything Kobo Abe ever wrote
Page 29 and 30: T. 54 "How ironic," the man said, l
Page 31 and 32: GWYNETH LEWIS Whose coat is that ja
Page 33: o < s 0 o In his poem, "Strange Mee
Page 37 and 38: ELIZABETH MACKLIN The Secret Note Y
Page 39 and 40: When a woman loves a man, they have
Page 41 and 42: TERESE SVOBODA At the Castle To say
Page 43 and 44: JUDITH BAUMEL Hot One moment it was
Page 45 and 46: JEAN MONAHAN The Concert —Isabell
Page 47 and 48: One of the Last Days As through a d
Page 49 and 50: only to lift their branches for one
Page 51 and 52: 98 always looked at curating as col
Page 53 and 54: 102 structure versus vertical, hars
Page 55 and 56: LINDA BIERDS The Breaking-Aways —
Page 57 and 58: KAY RYAN Weakness and Doubt Failure
Page 60 and 61: DANIEL TOBIN At the Egyptian Exhibi
Page 62 and 63: NATALIE KUSZ After Bedtime At night
Page 64 and 65: Q. Z 3 ID 124 me to visit a squat i
Page 66 and 67: 128 VII. Somehow I knew not to tell
Page 68 and 69: 132 It was an illustrated history o
Page 70 and 71: i36 day might have been some kind o
Page 72 and 73: 3 140 XIV. He must have been there
Page 74 and 75: o z 111 o 144 smiled; she even got
Page 76 and 77: I48 Mostly things are quiet on the
Page 78 and 79: 152 the grass. I imagined him still
Page 80 and 81: 156 other on a mother's shoulder. I
Page 82 and 83: o X < If) 160 us from behind. It wa
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Dykes To Ulatch Out For AS THE RE W
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working on Hula in story form, you
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WINTER COMPETITION MICHELLE MITCHEL
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and she looked at him for hours, an
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Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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