2/18 Reading Response - Meredith

In reading Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation, I was very interested in his assertion on page 71: “If we don’t [believe the poem’s claims], we should let the poem alone and not translate it; we’ll only ruin it if we go ahead.”

My initial reaction to this is to refute this idea. If I am interested enough in, and impressed enough by, a text so that I want to translate it, then surely I won’t give up just because I don’t completely agree with the ideas that the text is putting forward. In her essay, Levine discusses the ability to be “unfaithful” to the translation and still add to the deeper meaning that the author intended. If I can sidestep a contextual issue that I come across when translating and add my own spin or belief to it, then I am in conversation with the author, not ruining their work.

However, after continuing to think about the reading, Bly’s insistence on being in alignment with the author interested me when paired with his description of the second step of translating, which is moving beyond the literal meaning and delving into a deeper exploration of the text. To be able to forgo your own cultural associations as a translator, and fully explore the contrary ideas expressed in a text, allows for a delivery of fresh and exciting concepts to the (in our case) English canon. A translator who, as Bly says, believes that “the most sorrowful or repentant will catch the earth” would have trouble realizing the full English potential of a non-native cultural idea of joy being the winning trait.

On another note, I just genuinely enjoyed reading Bly’s essay, and I think the eight steps will be very helpful when thinking about our own final translation projects for this semester. Levine, on the other hand, was difficult to get through—while I understood the point she was trying to make about language and playfulness, it is most definitely not for me. Her writing seemed simultaneously saccharine, clownish, and overly dense, which I believe detracted from the interesting points that lay buried beneath a mountain of puns.