The dark side of literary translation | Ilya Odegov | TEDxAlmaty

Ilya Odegov is a writer and a literary translator who has translated works of R. Frost, R. Kipling, F.G. Lorca, Abai, Gunnar Ekelöf as well as works of other writers and poets into Russian. In this talk, he tells us about what things translators need to pay attention to and how drastically the meaning of a poem changes with inaccurate, free translation.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hello everyone.

My name is Ilya Odegov.

I am a writer, a literary translator,

and a reader, of course, a keen reader.

I started reading at age three,

and over the years, obviously,

I've found my favourite authors.

And what is interesting,
only about 20% of these authors

wrote or write in my native language,

in Russian.

The other 80% write
in all languages of the world.

Tolkien and Selinger,

Kobo Abe and Murakami,

Kafka and Pavish -

all these people wrote
in their own language,

but we read them in translation.

We read them, often without realizing
the titanic work that is behind it all.

Often we don't even bother
looking inside the cover,

at the title page,

to see the translator's name.

Yet, the world we are holding in our hands
depends on this person.

Our perception of a book
depends on the translator.

So, today I would like
to talk about literary translation.

I remember how, when a child,

I realized for the first time

that my favourite books
had been written in other languages,

and I wanted badly to peak

at the other side,
at the other side of the moon,

to see what was there.

I started my research and soon found out

that Peppi Longstocking
was "Pippi" and not "Peppi",

that Russian translators
had named her "Peppi"

to make it sound better in Russian.

Or that Junior from "Junior and Karlson"

in the original Swedish was "Lillebror",

meaning "little brother",

so, translating the book title literally,

we'll have "Little Brother and Karlson".

There have been many similar discoveries,

and every discovery has made
my world a little more complex,

a little more complete.

It's like you've been saying
"galstuk" [neck tie] your whole life,

and then at some point you discover

that the German "Hals"
translates to "neck",

and "Tuch" to "cloth",

so, "galstuk" is not just
a set of letters,

but "neck cloth".

A word starts to make sense,
and it's great.

The thing I liked the most when a kid

was when the original was printed
alongside the Russian translation.

I remember in Lewis Carroll's
"Alice Through the Looking Glass",

a poem called "Jabberwocky".

The translated version was:

"Varkalalos. Hleevkeeye shorkee
Pyryalees po naveh,

Ee hryukotalee zyelyukee,
Kak mjumzeekee v moveh.

And next to it was the original:

"Twas bryllyg, and y_e slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in y_e wabe:

All mimsy were y_e borogoves;
And y_e mome raths outgrabe."

Of course, it's a nonsense verse.

Although, I question
this translation a lot,

as a child, I found it so cool

to be able to see the original
and the translated versions together.

So, the first piece of advice
I want to give you is:

if you have the opportunity,

always compare the translation
with the original.

Even if you don't know the language,

don't understand the meaning,

at least you will be able to read,
to see, what the letters look like,

feel the rhythm, feel the phonetics,
the melody of the language,

that was put into the piece
by the author himself.

Some time passed, I grew up,

I dedicated myself to literature,

started to write books,
attend festivals, get awards,

and I continued to study
foreign languages.

At some point,
a thought came into my head:

"Why not combine these two activities

and start doing literary
translations yourself?"

I started with poems because I thought
that for one thing, a poem,

it can be a short and easy to work with,

and for another thing,
a poem is not just text in a column,

it can say a lot succinctly

with rhyme, rhythm, and metre,

and metaphors and cultural allusions,

wordplay, and so on.

So, despite its size, it has
a lot of entertaining work to offer.

I used to translate Robert Frost,
Blake, Kipling, from English;

Lorca from Spanish;

Abai, Magzhan Zhumabayev,

Ybyrai Altynsarin,
Kuandyk Shangitbayev, from Kazakh;

Gunnar Ekelöf from Swedish, and so on.

And each time I came to
this or that author,

familiarizing myself with available
translations of his poems,

I soon realized that very often
those translations were pretty free,

already to be found, rather inaccurate,

while I always wanted to avoid this,

because it always seemed to me

that I was a mere translator,
just an intermediary conduit,

taking from one language
and delivering into another.

What right did I have
to mess with an author's thoughts,

even if I don't like
a certain technique used by the author,

even if it’s not accurate in my opinion,

not entirely appropriate?

But do I have a right to make it better,

better in my opinion?

I think that I don't.

I tried to make translations
as accurate as possible,

as concise as possible,

conveying exactly what the author
had put into them.

And this turned out to be a lot.

If we are talking
about meaning, for instance,

I will give you some examples
of inaccuracies in translation.

There is a poem by Robert Frost,

one of his most famous ones,

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

This is a poem about a man
who is riding a horse;

he's been on his way for a long time,

and his home is still far away.

There is a lake on one side of him
and a forest on the other.

It's late evening, almost night,
the sky above him is enormous.

Suddenly, he stops his horse,

and he feels terribly tiny

in this huge, dark world
cowered with snow.

And he calls his horse, his companion,

"my little horse".

This translates directly into Russian -
so really just meaning "his horse".

In half of the translations I've read,
and I've seen about 10,

in half of the translations,
the translator writes "my steed".

You'll agree they are
exactly the same animal,

but the way we think about it
differs greatly.

A steed is like that of Peter the Great
in the poem "Poltava":

"Someone brings his horse.

His steed is ardent and resolved,

Atremble as his nostrils sense

The battle flames. Through martial dust

He flies, his eyes attentive, sly,

And proudly bears his mighty burden."

This is a steed.

But here we have "my little horse"
and a huge world around me.

The difference is colossal.

Abai, for example, wrote a wonderful poem

which I translated.

Its first lines are:

(Reads first two lines in Kazakh)

This is what these lines sound like
in a classic Soviet translation

that can be found in many textbooks:

(Reads first two lines
of Soviet Russian translation)

Not only is the original rhythm lost,
but also the meaning.

The original poem is not about shadows,
but about only one shadow.

And there's nothing there that is merging;

it's about a shadow getting longer

and hiding everything further away.

And if you look
at the context of the poem,

you will realize that it's about
getting older, age;

and it isn't the shadow
of a tree or a mountain;

it's the shadow of the author himself,
basically, of an old man.

The shadow lengthening
is him becoming older,

old memories become hidden,
people forgotten,

people he's met, in childhood perhaps.

He no longer remembers all this,
the shadow is too long.

So, basically, by changing
the first two lines of the poem,

we change its main metaphor
and the original meaning completely.

We, in fact, read
these poems, these translations,

we're brought up on them,

and we think that they are exactly
what an author wanted to convey.

That's why my next piece
of advice to you is:

Don't blame the author
when you read a translation.

It's highly likely
that the translation is bad.

Look for others, compare them,

and when you find
a good translator, stay with him,

because good translators
are few and far between.

When they're to be found,
watch out for them,

remember their names,

check if they are working on a new one,

let them be guiding stars for you.

That was about meaning,
but there's also form,

there's rhythm, metre.

For Kazakh poetry, for example,

a traditionally adopted verse structure

is where the first, second,
and fourth lines

have the same length and rhyme,

while the third line is different
in length and doesn't rhyme.

If we look at the poems
of Magzhan Zhumabayev,

we find he used to experiment
with this traditional form,

ultimately creating
his own totally new forms,

non-standard, innovative ones;

trying to introduce new patterns,

destroying the old, conventional one.

Here is one of his poems,

"Eski qala" [Old Town]:

(Reads poem in Kazakh)

And here's how I translate it,

trying to conserve the same rhythm,

which is not easy to do.

Can you hear it's non-traditional?

(Reads his Russian translation)

Do you hear how unusual the rhythm is?

(Applause)

That's how you can change
a rhythm like that.

What do some other translators do?

How can you change something

that, basically, underlines
a poem or a work of literature?

It's an important aspect
that requires attention,

but not the only one.

Meaning and form are important,

but there are some other aspects of poetry

that call for careful attention

and often a firm decision
by the translator.

I'll give you an example
from modern poetry,

an example with cultural allusions.

Aigerim Tazhi, a contemporary poet,

is one of the most famous
outside our country,

her poems having been translated
into a number of languages,

into English by the former president

of the American Literary
Translators Association, Jim Kates.

These poems and translations
have already won a number of awards.

And I remember once,

when, in one of Aigerim's poems,

there was the phrase "koshcheyeva zhizn",

and Jim was not sure
how to translate it into English.

You could say "Koschei’s life",

but English speakers
wouldn't understand it.

It's possible to include a reference,
a footnote, and explain

that Koschei is a mythological creature.

But it's in the middle of the poem:

you need to stop, look, read the note,

return to the text ... and you're lost.

Finally, after much reflection,
the decision was made

to find an equivalent in the mythology
of the English-speaking world

closest to Koschei.

"Ghoul’s life" was chosen.

A ghoul is some kind of creature
that looks like Koschei.

But every time things like this arise,

the translator has to make
an important decision.

You cannot give a precise translation;

you have to find a way around.

Phonetics is also important.

In many poems,

poets use some kinds of
special phonetic technique.

For example, I have been translating
the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf.

Very often he uses an emphasis
on sounds in his poems:

"drömde", "öden", "ödet", "dödar".

You hear a recurrent "d".

There was a phrase in one of his poems:

"Leva farligt! Dess mer
förtjänte du återfödsel."

Do you hear how it sounds?

If you look more closely,

you'll notice that the sound "f"
repeats three times:

"Leva farligt! Dess mer
förtjänte du återfödsel."

Translating it into Russian,

I was trying to conserve the metre,
the rhyme, and the meaning,

and to play with phonetics,

to play with sounds as the author did,

because it's my duty as a translator,

my obligation, to follow
what an author does.

My translation was:

"Zheevee opasno! Pyeryerozhdyene
eteem zasluzheesh."

Instead of "f", I used "zh" three times,

the same way Gunnar Ekelöf
had played with phonetics.

There are hundreds and thousands
of similar examples,

and, for sure, as good
as a translation is,

it's impossible to make it
exactly the same as the original.

But we can try very hard.

We can try to make a translation
as transparent as possible,

so that when we read a poem

translated from Kazakh into Russian,

we can hear Kazakh phonetics
through the Russian,

so that we hear the sound
of the Kazakh language,

its melody,

as well as, the meaning
and form of it, of course,

so we can hear one language
through the other.

I think that this is that
to which we must always strive.

Of course, it's difficult,

that's why such translations are rare.

But I want to believe

that the importance and the value
of literary translation in Russia

will be recognized,

and, who knows, maybe one of you here

will be impressed and inspired by my talk,

and dedicates him- or herself
to this profession.

Thank you.

(Applause)