Translations

Translation Tuesday: “Mr. Crane Takes a Wife” by Elek Benedek

June 16, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Mark Baczoni

A Hungarian fairy tale in verse, translated by Mark Baczoni

     There was and there was not, over sevenfold seven lands beyond the Sea of Far Away, there was once a great bed of reeds, and on the edges of these reeds were two little houses, one on either side. In one lived a Crane, alone, and in the other a Wild Duck, alone; alone and frightfully forlorn.

* 

One day the Crane thought and thought,

and thinking to himself of what he ought

to do, he croaked aloud:

“Oh! How sad my life! How sorrowful with strife,

for I have no one: father, mother, or a wife.

It isn’t worth a tinker’s cuss,

just to go on living thus.

Life’s so dull and never merry, that’s it!

It’s time for me to go and marry.”

 

The Crane did not delay,

but preened himself to fine array,

and gathered all his pluck

to go and see the Wild Duck.

He landed in a trice and knocked three times

– or maybe twice – upon her door.

 

“Are you home, dear Duck?”

“I am indeed, O Mr. Crane!”

“Well then, will you come and be my wife?”

“I never heard such rot in all my life!

Mr. Crane, I’ve seen you fly,

you’re not that strong;

your wing’s too short and your leg’s too long.

What crossed your mind when here you came?

If I married you, I’d die of shame!

There’s a window, there’s the door,

pray don’t pester any more!”

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Sketch” by Zerina Zahirović

June 9, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Mirza Puric

Translated by our editor-at-large Mirza Purić

She died quietly, she died the death of those who love stubbornly, angrily, jealously, secretly, and

elephantishly. At a neighbour’s urge, she treated rheumatoid arthritis with crude oil. The therapy resulted in second-degree burns. On the inside of my eyelids I sketch her knees – two magical orbs of glass – and I rub them with devil’s claw unguent. Prayer and displeasure spill softly in the room in which we are alone and furtive, for

where, why, and for whom does the devil

make unguent from his claw? She died quietly, to render loud some mornings that had tumbled down and stuck into me like hedgehogs. I sketch those mornings as a

 

crooked bicycle tyre. I push the bicycle uphill into the whitish dawn, I hurry to spill before her the smell of the lead from the newspaper, the smell of the pastry which is a crumbled sketch of her face on the inside of my eyelids. The way I close the distance between us is like the way her eyebrows come together in a frown, she pushes hard sugar cubes into my mouth, and I buzz in the garden for hours and I sip the sap of a liquorice. I sketch her as READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Awaiter” by Duanwad Pimwana

June 2, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Mui Poopoksakul

We coexisted in close proximity on this planet. Even so, we led a solitary existence... What right did a person have to demand something of others?

I never had any luck, perhaps because I never thought of it, and it probably didn’t think of me. Yet something now lay at my feet. That it had to show up there was no mere contingency. I could have easily stepped over it or veered to the side. Somebody whisking about in the vicinity would have picked it up; he probably would have grinned and chalked it up to his lucky day. But I hadn’t moved aside, and as long as I stood in place and glanced calmly at it down by my feet, others could only steal a wistful glimpse. Some might have regretted walking a tad too fast; if they had been slower, they could have become its possessor. Some might have reasoned, siding with themselves, that they spotted it even before I did, but they were a step too slow. Regardless, I picked up the money, without concluding as of yet whether it was my luck or not.

That evening at the tail end of the monsoon season, I happened to walk by a crowded bus stop even though it was not on my way home and I had no purpose for taking that route. The money lay fallen behind a bus. When I bent down to pick it up, the hot air from the exhaust pipe spurted onto my face as I unfurled myself back to standing. A pair of eyes darted at me. Its owner walked toward me with a face painted with an uncertain smile. I knew his intentions immediately. While I myself was unsure of my status in relation to the money at that instant, one thing of which I was absolutely certain was: the man approaching was not the owner of the money—but he wanted to be.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Poems by Boris Vian

May 26, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Jeremy Page

Translated by Jeremy Page

THE SPIDERS 

To Odette Bost

 

Into the houses where children die

Go some very old people.

They sit down in the antechamber

Their sticks between their black knees.

They listen, nod their heads.

 

Every time the child coughs

Their hands clutch their hearts

And make big yellow spiders

And the cough, rising through the furnishings,

Is shredded, listless as a pale butterfly.

 

They have vague smiles

And the child’s cough stops

And the big yellow spiders

Rest, shaking,

On the polished boxwood handles

Of the sticks, between their hard knees.

 

And then, when the child is dead

They get up, and go elsewhere…

READ MORE…

From the Archives: “Resistance Is Futile” by Walter Siti

May 21, 2015  |  in Essays, Translations  |  by Patty Nash

In this ongoing series, a look at fiction from our January 2015 issue translated by Antony Shugaar

What is “autofiction?”

I don’t know. I really don’t. “Autofiction” belongs to the category of words I’ll habitually skim over in lieu of context clues. (Also in this category: “antifiction,” “matron literature,” “ergodic literature”—any ideas?). Critics toss around categories such as these so flippantly, practically taunting their readers to look them up on Wikipedia, but unless I get the sense that the term is particularly operative, I am likely to continue reading.

I came across “autofiction” more recently: after reading the incredible excerpt from Walter Siti’s Resistance is Futile from our latest issue (translated from the Italian by longtime blog contributor/superstar translator Antony Shugaar). In his translator’s note, Shugaar says that Siti’s “approach is called autofiction” and that “Siti seems to swing it over his head recklessly like a heavy gold chain.”

I’m intrigued. But first and foremost, I’m intrigued by the excerpt itself, because Resistence is Futile is incredible. Written in increasingly circular retrospect, the story’s more a taut deferral of linearly cruel memory than anything resembling realist fiction, but that’s not to say it isn’t visceral, gutting, utterly material, and wrenching, as it recounts the youth of an unfortunately corpulent young boy, Tommaso.

The boy’s fat—that’s because he was a slow eater as an infant—and worse still, even that’s because the mother may or may not have “somehow been jinxed, conceived under a bad star” after she “got it stuck in her head that the child had been generated the very night that her husband came home drunk (and as far as that went, nothing out of the ordinary), cursing and washing the blood off himself.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Poems by Anna Margolin

May 19, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Maia Evrona

Translated from the Yiddish by Maia Evrona

Mother Earth

 

Mother earth, much trodden, sun-washed,

dark slave and mistress

I am, beloved.

From me, the humble and the sullen,

you burst forth—a powerful stem.

And like the eternal stars, and as the flame from the sun,

I circle in long and blind silence

through your roots, through your branches

and half in vigil, and half in slumber,

I search, through you, for the high sky. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Four Poems by Abraham Sutzkever

April 21, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Maia Evrona

Translated from the Yiddish by Maia Evrona

An Acorn Gives Birth to a Tree, the Tree Gives Birth to a Fiddle

 

An acorn gives birth to tree, the tree gives birth to a fiddle

and you give birth to my star, so the night will be true.

You give birth to it far from here, its light belongs to me and to you,

you give birth to it where no leaf fades, nor anyone’s smile.

 

We haven’t been of this world for a score of silences now,

a heroic cosmos will not allow our joint death.

The earthly, the real, is real as earth and valid

and death no longer has any power over our breath.

 

His kingdom does not extend to the green Tree of Life,

what is past has not passed, time is not yet ripe.

Escaped from the clamor, our silence is love,

new images stream from the weeping eye of the soul.

 

The paired twitch of two silences in one

approaches perfection on a rung of its own.

This wonder-without-a-name tells of its deeds,

the language of atoms has a folksong’s simplicity.

*****

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Seafarer,” from the Book of Exodus

April 14, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Spenser Santos

Translated from the Old English by Spenser Santos

The Seafarer 

 

May I utter truth for myself,

to say of trials, how in the times of toil

I often withstood wearisome times,

bitter breastcare, how I have bided,

come to know on a ship, abode of much care,

the terrible seawave’s rolling often held me there,

anxious nightwatch at the boat’s prow,

when it pitched against cliffs. Pinched by cold

were my feet, frostbound

with cold fetters, there the sighs of care

were hot around the heart; hunger tore from within

the mereweary mood. That the man,

to whom the most pleasant on earth befalls, knows not

how I, wretched and sorrowful, on the ice-cold sea

dwelled in winter in the paths of an exile,

bereft of beloved kinsmen and

hung with icicles; hail flew in showers.

There I heard naught but the sea to roar,

the frigid wave. Sometimes the swan’s song

did I take for entertainment, the gannet’s cry

and curlew’s sound for men’s laughter,

the seagull’s singing for mead.

Storms there beat the stony cliffs, where

the tern, the icy-feathered one, answers him,

very often the eagle screamed round about,

the dewy-feathered one; not any protecting kinsmen

could comfort the wretched spirit. READ MORE…

Four Poems by Tóroddur Poulsen

March 24, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Randi Ward

Translated by Randi Ward

Under Black Sails

 

questioning why the fog’s green

is my goodnight to the godless

and my good evening

to a hasty summer

of trains that don’t run on time

and rain that always wants to be first

with the freshest of the fresh

so the dance can bloom

on the great sloom’s deck

as it heads straight into a glare of cold

where the comatose lie

awaiting passage home to the dull life

the superficial love

because they don’t think

there’s anything else

when a person can’t be

like a garbage truck in paradise

that’s forgotten its way

to the incinerator

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Poems by Pilar Fraile Amador

March 17, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Elizabeth Davis and Pilar Fraile Amador

Translated by Elizabeth Davis

from YOUTH

 

The way the snow falls

 

and covers the plain

 

that’s how I grew up

at the hearts of your eyes.

 ***  READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Enchanted Fiddle” by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth

March 10, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Maria Tatar

Translated by Maria Tatar in Penguin's "The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales"

A woman had a son named Jacob, and he was the source of much pain and sorrow. Her irritation with him grew until one day she cried out: “I’ve had it! It’s time for you to leave home and find a master, even if it’s the devil himself!”

Jacob heard these words and felt so bad that he left home and decided to find an apprenticeship. As he was walking along, he met a man who asked him where he was heading. The boy replied: “My mother ordered me to find work, even if it’s with the devil himself.”

“Well, then you are quite welcome to come with me,” the stranger said, and the two started walking together. READ MORE…

Poems by Icelandic Poet Gerður Kristný

March 9, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Gerður Kristný and Spenser Santos

Translated by Spenser Santos

Öxnadalur

 

Fog drowns the dale

so the ridgepeaks

no longer show

 

From Hraunslake

gasps carry in

crackling silence

 *

Summereve in Gotland

 

Pier

stretches its tail

out in silvery waves

 

The sun strokes

a lightbow

over seaplain

 

Heavens

get to play

dusksong

 *

India

 

Man

goes to sleep

on a traffic island

 

Newsprint his down

 

Little room

for sleepwalking

 

in the seashallows

shines ironskin

of coldeyed sharks

***

Gerður Kristný’s poetry has charmed readers the world over. They have won her, among other honors, the Icelandic Literary Prize and nominations for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Her most recent book of poetry, Drápa, tells the unsettling story of the night the mircus comes to town.

Spenser Santos is an MFA candidate in literary translation and Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Iowa. He translates from Spanish, Old English, and Icelandic. His translation thesis is a translation of the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch translation of the Book of Exodus. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Winona State University, where he majored in English, Spanish, and Writing.

Translation Tuesday: “The Mouse” by Regina Ullmann

February 17, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Kurt Beals

An excerpt from The Country Road, translated by Kurt Beals

Death was prepared in the form of a trap. But before its time finally came, the mouse would have to gnaw through the wall that led into my bed-chamber. It would have to gnaw through a long and narrow passage, and gnaw through my sleep.

Sometimes I pounded on the bed with my fist, frightening myself with the way that its thunder rolled over everything imaginable in the night. And I thought I could sense that the mouse felt this fear, too. But before this wave of fright could roll gently into peace, that same quiet gnawing could be heard again from afar. It was so quiet that it was audible only to someone alone and left to himself in a house by a moonlit field on the edge of a forest. He guards himself like his own hunting dog, and even when he is asleep he will hear any approaching danger. He is like fog, when it is dark, the fog that seems to live in its own light. He is like the rain, far and wide, high and distant, in the heavens and on earth. How could he fail to notice the gnawing of a mouse, when that activity returns again to itself. He feels it in his blood. So once again I lit my candle, the bane of all four-footed intruders. But the candle didn’t spread its angel wings as it had in other nights, arching them over the dark abyss of fear, becoming a spirit of the shadows, the better to offer its light . . . Instead it suddenly betrayed me to my enemy, becoming a sort of gnawing creature itself, there in its candlestick. It ate away at my sleep, and the mouse did not fear it.

READ MORE…

Marcel Schwob’s “Mimes” – Mime XXI

February 5, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Kit Schluter

Book of Monelle translator Kit Schluter brings to English the haunting final installment of Marcel Schwob’s “Mimes”!

Read all previous posts in Asymptote’s “Mimes” translation project here.

Mime XXI. The awaited shade

The little guardian of the Temple of Persephone has laid out honey cakes sprinkled with poppy seeds in the baskets. For a long time now she has known that the goddess never so much as tastes them, for she watches from behind the pilasters. The Good Goddess remains unmoved and sups beneath the earth. And if she were to eat of our foods, she would rather bread rubbed with garlic and vinegar; for the bees of Hades produce a honey flavored of myrrh and the women who walk in the violet meadows there-below rattle black poppies without end. Thus the bread of the shades is dipped in honey that smells of embalmment and the seeds scattered upon it come with a desire for sleep. And thus why Homer said that the dead, governed by Odysseus’ broadsword, came by the ruck to drink the black blood of sheep in a square trench dug into the soil. And only this once did the dead partake of blood, in order to regain their life: customarily they repast on funereal honey and dark poppies, and the liquid that flows through their veins is the very water of the Lethe. The shades dine on sleep and drink of oblivion.

READ MORE…