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elearning the language. As often happens with critically endangered languages worldwide, a community’s interest in its neglected and dying language seems to resurge once it is irrevocably lost. Arvanitika Proverbs from Corinth By Shon Arieh-Lerer Mali i ljartë nuku úljatë për t’ i prézmë luljëtë. The high mountain will not bend down for you so that you can pluck its flowers. Kózmi dígjetë edhé bljáka kríkhëtë. The world is on fire and the old woman is combing her hair. Kasidhjári kur zu lesh, e vu ksúlene nde vésh. When a bald man grows hair he carries his cap in his hand. (Literally, “he wears his cap on his ear.”) Milingóna chë dó të báretë bën krykhë. If an ant wants to get lost, it should sprout wings. (Don’t try to be different, it will get you into trouble.) Gljúkha kokálj nuku ka, edhé kokálj chan. The tongue has no bones, but will break bones. Rredh bíshti i ghaidhúrit nde pus! The donkey’s tail is dripping into the well! (After a donkey has fallen into the drinking well and been pulled out, the least of one’s worries should be that dirty water from its tail is still dripping into the well. The proverb suggests that one focus on the real problem at hand.) “Na úljku!” — “Ku’shtë gjúrma” “Here’s the wolf!” — “Where are his tracks” (When a wolf is attacking you, don’t worry about where his tracks are. There are more immediate issues.) v French Women Poets of Nine Centuries The Distaff and the Pen selected and translated by Norman R. Shapiro introductions by Roberta L. Krueger, Catherine Lafarge, and Catherine Perry foreword by Rosanna Warren Unprecedented in scope and depth, this tour de force collection of poetry by French-speaking women contains over 600 poems from 56 different pens, from the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Marie de France through such noted poets of the past century as Lucienne Desnoues, Liliane Wouters, and Albertine Sarrazin. Original texts and translations are presented on facing pages, allowing readers to appreciate the vigor and variety of the French and the fidelity of the English versions. $85.00 hardcover Johns hopkins new TranslaTions from anTiquiTy The Theban Plays Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone Sophocles translated, with notes and an introduction, by Ruth Fainlight and Robert J. Littman “I would recommend the translation without reservations. I expect that students and the general public will find these works newly exciting.” —Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Temple University $18.95 paperback The Odes of Horace translated by Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz introduction by Ronnie Ancona “Kaimowitz captures the speed and cadence of Horace’s often quite long phrases and sentences, keeping their elegance and grandeur—no easy task. This volume provides an excellent way for non–Latin reading scholars, students, and general readers to experience successfully Horace as a lyric poet.” —Ronnie Ancona, Hunter College, City University of New York $25.00 paperback The JOHNS HOPKINS UNIvERSITY PRESS 1-800-537-5487 • www.press.jhu.edu Translation Review 67
TRANSLATING GJERGJ FISHTA’S EPIC MASTERPIECE LAHUTA E MALCIS INTO ENGLISH AS THE HIGHLAND LUTE By Janice Mathie-Heck Both Robert Elsie and I are delighted that our translation of Gjergj Fishta’s Lahuta e Malcis (the Albanian national epic) has emerged into the light of day and that it will receive exposure to a worldwide readership. We worked hard on it, line by line, and are pleased with how The Highland Lute sounds in English. The epic poem contains 15,613 lines. It mirrors Albania’s difficult struggle for freedom and independence, which was finally achieved in 1912. It was important for us to achieve an atmosphere similar to that of other important European epics, such as Beowulf (England), The Kalevala (Finland), and the grand medieval poems of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as The Song of Roland (France), The Nibelungenlied (German), and Poem of the Cid (Spain). Rhythmically, The Highland Lute is very much like the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Hiawatha, parts of which I loved to recite as a young girl. Of course, Fishta wrote in the old Gheg language of northern Albania, which was his natural and native tongue. He was strongly influenced both by the traditional oral epics of his own culture and by the Greek epics, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Latin Aeneid. He also admired the Montenegrin national epic, The Mountain Wreath, by Njegosh (1847). I believe that he was consciously preserving the historical and linguistic dimension of the era in which events described in The Highland Lute took place — that is, in the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th — from 1862 to 1913. He also felt that Gheg was perfect for a literary language. As with English dialects, the Gheg dialect has evolved over the years, and Fishta’s original words are difficult to understand for many Albanian readers today. To illustrate, when one looks at the original text of the English epic Beowulf, it is almost impossible to decipher and was revised recently and very successfully by Seamus Heaney of Ireland, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Our task with translating The Highland Lute into English has been to make the language relevant and understandable for the modern reader while still retaining its colloquial, archaic, majestic, and heroic feel, which gives a strong sense of the past. Quite a challenge! We translated many expressions unique to Gheg and did our best to describe symbols of Albanian mythology and legend, such as oras (female spirits), zanas (protective mountain spirits), draguas (semi-human figures with supernatural powers), shtrigas (witches), lugats (vampires), and kulshedras (seven-headed dragon-like creatures). We kept the octosyllabic rhythm consistent throughout, and we captured the qualities common to all epics: alliteration, assonance, repetition, hyperbole, metaphor, archaic figures of speech, concrete descriptions, color, drama, passion, a range of emotions, intensity, sensuality, lots of action, rhyme where possible, and an exalted, dignified tone. Of course, translation is never a simple matter. One can’t merely switch the exact words of the original language into neatly corresponding words and phrases of the new one. We sometimes had to rearrange the word order and needed to use some old-style phrases and poetic expressions. In this way, we were more faithful to the original Albanian (which uses exact meter, assonance, and rhyme) than a more literal translator would have been. We wanted to preserve the nuances and “meanings between the lines” and retain the flavor of the original. So we attempted to keep the essence, 68 Translation Review
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Albanian Literatu
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Elbasan and spent almost two decade
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on several occasions for the Nobel
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in the translation of Leonard Fox.
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Neither a Wound nor a Song: Poetry
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Minnesota: Graywolf Press 2008) 401
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IK: Writing is generally a multidim
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IK: Translators ought to know both
Page 19 and 20: coming from an isolated Stalinist c
Page 21 and 22: translation of his works. He is qui
Page 23 and 24: Kadare which, on a grander scale, b
Page 25 and 26: ordinary free indirect style, but i
Page 27 and 28: modernization. As students of the l
Page 29 and 30: and deposited in a bank vault in Pa
Page 31 and 32: A R C A D E P U B L I S H I N G P R
Page 33 and 34: the poet Naim Frashëri. His moving
Page 35 and 36: 32 Translation Review
Page 37 and 38: feniks [Phoenix City] in 1970), and
Page 39 and 40: wake of a bad breakup: “You are E
Page 41 and 42: weeks later in Washington, D.C., wo
Page 43 and 44: “O man (owner) of the tower/turre
Page 45 and 46: THE POETIC VISION OF PREÇ ZOGAJ IN
Page 47 and 48: where he graduated in Albanian Lang
Page 49 and 50: down the lines that went through my
Page 51 and 52: philosophy. Being Albanian-born mys
Page 53 and 54: similar social characteristics and
Page 55 and 56: COME NEARER, JOYFUL HOUR OF THE POE
Page 57 and 58: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSLATI
Page 59 and 60: the pain and the dark premonition s
Page 61 and 62: TRANSLATING ALBANIAN FOLK POETRY: A
Page 63 and 64: preserving the metrical rhythm, as
Page 65 and 66: available. I believe that some of t
Page 67 and 68: the ancient scrolls were not, after
Page 69: quarter century, as new worlds have
Page 73 and 74: (take out “so gently,”) 275 In
Page 75 and 76: BOOK REVIEWS Marku, Rudolf. Allahla
Page 77 and 78: of Albania’s communist oriental-b
Page 79 and 80: There is no prophecy, things happen
Page 81 and 82: writing the book, he lives that pas
Page 83 and 84: Those already weeping In graves Are
Page 85: (Wauconda, Illinois, 2004) and Gjer
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