Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

languages, every language is potentially capable of beingtranslated into every other language. What translationreveals is the essential unity of all languages. It allowsone language to so completely possess another languagethat both are changed in the process. Languages need oneanother for their survival. For all languages ultimatelyaspire to the one true language in which the distancebetween the word and the object is abolished, so that theword becomes the object. The Chilean poet VicenteHuidobro (1893–1948) put it well in “Ars Poetica”:Por qué cantáis la rosa, ¡oh Poetas!Hacedla florecer en el poema. 7Oh Poets, why sing of roses!Let them flower in your poems. 8This is the miracle that a translator no less than a poetdevoutly wishes for: the word as mantra (< Skt man, tothink + trai, to save; mananat trayate ity mantrah, bywhose thinking one is saved, that is mantra), divine revelationthat was not written down and read but only spokenand heard.Poetic language is by nature polysemic. Words resonatewith echoes and associations gathered in the courseof their travels in a language — echoes and associationsimprinted upon them by generations of poets. Suchwords simply resist translation, leaving the translatorwith some difficult choices:1. Using a word that lacks the resonance of theoriginal.2. Replacing it with an entirely new word thatbears no resemblance to the original.3. Omitting the word altogether.All three choices are unsatisfactory, but they are oftenmade. In translating a poem, a translator must aim attranslating nothing less than an entire tradition in whichthat poem lives and breathes with all the vitality andunexpectedness of the spoken language.“Translating India” is only one side of the coin. Theother side is of course “Untranslatable India.” In everyculture, gray areas exist that are untranslatable. Somerealities of everyday life in one culture simply have nocorrespondences in another culture. These realities fallthrough the cracks in translation. It is their intransigenceto translation that often makes the translator throw up hispen in despair. Allow me to offer an illustration fromTamil that speaks to this problem, the underside that ishidden from the sight of the language of translation andis therefore not carried across. It exists unobtrusively andinseparably in the original. There is an unresolved tensionbetween the language of translation (English) andthe cultural elements hidden in the Tamil poem, “Men inLove,” by Pereyin Muruvalar from the Kuruntokai (AnAnthology of Short Poems, 2nd c. BCE–3rd c. CE). Notall the elements in Tamil can be carried across successfullyinto English.mavena matalu murpa puvenukkuvimuki lerukkan kanniyun cutupamaruki narkkavum patupapiritu makupa kamankal koline. 9When love rises to fever pitchmen will trot on palmyra stems for horses,wear the unopened buds of the erukkamround their heads like a chaplet of flowers,endure the bad mouth of the street,even give up their lives.In the Tamil poem, culturally resonant motifs such as“matalurtal” and “erukkam” (Calotropis gigantea) resistbeing Englished. “Matalurtal” refers to the sociallyaccepted practice of a man riding on a horse made of thestems of palmyra leaves to declare his love for a woman.The erukkam (Skt. arka) or yercum belongs to a genus oftropical fiber-producing plants of the milkweed family. Itgrows in the wild, and its flowers give out a foul smell.In the Satarudriya sacrifice, the erukkam plant is rituallyoffered as food to Siva. Again, a dancing Siva wears agarland of erukkam flowers when he destroys the threeworlds. Erukkam is also associated with the cremationground. To the Tamils, it symbolizes illness and disgrace.I have translated “matalurtal” as “trot[ting] on palmyrastems for horses” and left “erukkam” untranslated.“Matalurtal” and “erukkam” refuse to speak in a voiceother than Tamil. Because they cannot be successfullyEnglished, they have to be annotated. Only then cansomething of the resonance of the original Tamil beexperienced.The tension between the two languages is a real challengeto a translator. It can spur him or her to be creative,to rewrite the poem from scratch in a second languagethat is for the most part a mirror image of the poem inthe first language. Translations are miracles of apopoesis.Instead of being caged in one language for eternity, thepoem when translated soars, a free bird, under anothersky. No one language can pin it down and appropriate itas its own. Translation is thus the ultimate test of apoem’s immortality. If it survives translation, it will liveTranslation Review 61