Assignment 3 : Impediments in Translating a Poem : 22415 - Paper 208 : Comparative Literature & Translation Studies

• Name : Nirav Lalitbhai Amreliya

• Batch : M.A. Sem. 4 (2021-2023)

• Enrollment N/o. : 4069206420210002

• Roll N/o. : 18

• Subject Code & Paper N/o. : 22415 - Paper 208 : Comparative Literature & Translation Studies

• Email Address : niramreliyaunofficial@gmail.com

• Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English – Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University – Bhavnagar – 364001

• Date of Submission : 30th March, 2023

Impediments in Translating a Poem

Introduction : Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929 - 1993) has discussed the difficulties and the milestones that fall in the way of translating poem from one in its aboriginal language to other in its foreign language, here is the Tamil Poem is discussed. 'On Translating a Tamil Poem' is the chapter coming under the book titled as 'The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan' (1999). Translating prose is easier than translating a poem because translation of poem not only includes the translation of what is written, but along with that it tries - which rarely succeeds in doing so - to translate the meaning indirectly put in the poem, the rhythm as it should be in a mode of singing, metrical aspect which is impossible, phonological aspects which is hardest of all to translate, and the grammatical structures from both the languages one is original language and another is the host language into which the translation is to be done lay the problems while translating a poem which includes metres, syntax, lexicon, semantics, and phonology of both the selected languages, all these factors are also affected by their respective cultures as well which also affects the translation to a more or less degree. Let us discuss the problems and difficulties of translating poem from one language to the another one. 

Phonological Difficulties : 

While translating a poem only on the ground of phonology or by listening to the sounds generated while reciting the poem and then on the basis of spoken words if the translation is done, then there will be totally problematic outcome. Ramanujan exemplifies this dilemma with example of an English nursery rhyme and its phonological translation into French language : 

Humpty Dumpty 

Sat on a wall 

Humpty Dumpty 

Had a great fall 

And all the king's horses 

And all the king's men 

Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty 

Together again. 

If translated into French language on basis of phonetics : 

Un petit d'un petit

S'etonne aux Halles

Un petit d'un petit

Ah! degres te fallent

Indolent qui ne sort cesse

Indolent qui ne se mene

Qu'importe un petit d'un petit

Tout Gai de Reguennes. 

Going in accordance with the aforementioned example, we can say that translation becomes devoid of meaning when done merely on the basis of sound and its transcription. Ramanujan states : 

'Any unit we pick is defined by its 

relations to other units. So it is impossible to translate the phonology of 

one language into that of another - even in a related, culturally neighbouring language. We can map one system on to another, but never reproduce it. A poem is identical only with itself - if that. If we try and even partially succeed in mimicking the sounds, we may lose everything else, the syntax, the meanings.' 

The mimicking of sound will not do to lead us to any meaningful translation, but will leave us with a sort of Dadaist poem, if done so. Sounds are the units of uttered clusters of words that may be spoken different quite other than the way they are written, for instance 'but' sounds /bʌt/ whereas 'put' sounds /pʊt/, 'psychopathy' has its initial 'p' silent and sounds /sʌɪˈkɒpəθi/, etc. are such examples of exceptional use of spoken and written script. Syllables play important role in phonological translation of poem as well as prose. 

Metrical Difficulties : 

Metre being second unit of translation has to be the task retained by translators as impossible one to tackle out due to its cultural diversity and strict connection with the grammar of the language with which it is connected and share the part of emergence. Metres are culturally emerged and have their own value in terms of the grammatical structure they follow while they are employed by writers or speakers which also makes it distinct in terms of grammatical and linguistical regime. Metres do not just differ from language to language, but they are also differently transmute the Bhavas as Bharatmuni would call it or the sentiments in accordance with the tone, mode, and emotion they are sung and written. They differ also on ground of patterns as each metre is written in its specified particular pattern so that it can provide the desired effect on the listener, reader, and audience. Patterns are the base for the formation of metres. The patterns of metres are decided by the number of syllables, stressed and unstressed, enjambment, pause, continuation, high and low pitch, breathing pattern, voice modulation, involvement of Saptsura (seven harmonic units of sound), Raagas, determined number of syllables, specified numbers of words, and the entirety of harmony and so on and so forth with which the formation of metre is done. Ramanujan thinks metre to be the impossible task in translating a poem, he states : 

'Sometimes it is said that we should translate metrical systems. Metre 

is a second-order organisation of the sound system of a language, and 

partakes of all the above problems and some more. At readings someone in the audience always asks, 'Did you translate the metre?' as if it is possible to do so. Tamil metre depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants, and on closed and open syllables defined by such vowels and consonants....There is nothing comparable in English to this way of counting feet and combinations. Even if we take familiar devices like rhyme, they do not have the same values in different languages. English has a long tradition of end-rhymes but Tamil has a long tradition of second syllable consonant-rhymes.' 

The anxiety of translating metre in poem is obvious due to various impossibilities concerning the meaning and effect of the translation done if metre is also translated in poem. 

In order to illustrate the difficulty of translating metre, Ramanujan gives an example of a Tamil poem : 

'For instance, in the first word kf the above poem, annãy, the first syllable is heavy because it is closed (an-), the second is heavy because it has a long vowel (-nãy).' 

Further we can give example from English poems as well such as we have William Wordsworth's poem 'The Table's Turned' wherein he involves Iambic Pentametre with ABAB : 

'One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man - 

Of moral evil and of good

Than all the sages can.' 

This creed of metres is intricately interesting as on which the immense possibilities of experimentation in field of translation are laid so much so that some translators have also done so in their translations, particularly of poems. 

Lexical Difficulties : 

As far as the diction is concerned in translating a poem, a translator faces the problem of selecting appropriate word for the language being translated into the language of translation, this happens rarely, mostly the nearly-meaningful words are chosen for the production of desired effect into translation. 

Written expression sprung from Bhavas (sentiments) consists of words, words consists of meaning have "culture specific" meanings, for this reason selection word in translation has a greater degree of difficulties; for instance, the Urdu word 'वाइज़' (vāiz) means 'a religious preacher' and has the phonetical sameness to the English word 'Wise' (/wʌɪz/) meaning 'clever or sagacious' which differs from the Urdu word 'वाइज़' (vāiz) in terms of meaning if phonetically translated. Ramanujan states : 

'The most obvious parts of language cited frequently for their utter 

untranslatability are the lexicon and the semantics of words. For lexicons 

are culture-specific. Terms for fauna, flora, caste distinctions, kinship 

systems, body parts, even the words that denote numbers, are culturally 

loaded. Words are enmeshed in other words - in collocations, in what 

can go with what ('a blue moon, a red letter day, a white elephant, purple 

prose'). Words participate in sets, in contrasts, in mutual recallings. 

'Red' is part of a paradigm of colours like green. yellow, etc., with which 

it contrasts. It is also part of a paradigm of near-terms or hyponyms, 

'scarlet, crimson. pink, rosy,' etc. These collocations and paradigms 

make for metonymies and metaphors, multiple contextual meanings.' 

Lexical difficulty also becomes on of the obstacles in translating a poem. 

Semantic Difficulties : 

Semantics of words are the meanings of the words. There are two basic types of semantics : (i) Logical Semantics (ii) Lexical Semantics. Our concern here is Lexical Semantics. In order to identify the meaning of any given word, we have to locate it in its semantic field, for instance, the word 'novel' can be located in literary field as well as in daily use it means 'something new or of its own kind happened never before.' In translating poem, the focus is laid upon the intrinsic relationship between lexicon and semantics. Phonological way to understand it is : 

• Lexicon -> Grapheme -> Denotative -> Word

• Semantic -> Phoneme -> Connotative -> Meaning 

Context is what sets the word into particular semantic field, thus context is crucial in understanding the meaning of words. To illustrate, the word 'Mouse' has two connotations depending upon the context it is used in, if it is used with the setting of technical area, it means 'the device used to move cursor on the monitor' whereas if used within the setting of an animal talk, it means 'a small rodent,' this is how the same word having phonological and lexical similarity differs in generating meaning when the context changes, and that is why the necessity of understanding context while translating poem especially having cultural connection makes it difficult to proceed further in the translating process without recognizing the contextual diversities of given poem and its constituting words. 

Ramanujan identifies : 

'Add to this the entire poetic tradition, its rhetoric, the ordering of different genres with different functions in the culture, which, by its system of differences, distinguishes this particular poem, 'What She Said' from all others.' 

Then we can say that culture plays important role in translation process as the meanings of words are rooted in its cultural use by the people belonging to that particular culture. 

Syntactic Difficulties : 

Translation faces another difficulty in realm of syntax. Syntax is a grammatical structure of sentence. So structural aspect is also important as other aspects in translating poem. Sentence belonging to one particular language can only generate apposite meaning if written and spoken with respect to the grammar of that particular language and language-groups. 

Ramanujan states : 

'Yet 'anything goes' will not do. The translation must not only represent, but re-present the original. One walks the tightrope between the To-language and the From-language, in a double loyalty. A translator is an 'artist on oath'. Sometimes one may succeed only in re-presenting a poem, not in closely representing it.' 

He exemplifies it as well : 

'When we attend to syntax, we see that Tamil syntax is mostly left-branching. English syntax is, by and large, rightward. Even a date like 'the 19th of June, 1988,' when translated into Tamil, would look like '1988, June, 19.' A phrase like 

      A          B        C        D          E 

The man who came from Michigan 

would be 'Michigan-from come-[past tense]-who man': 

      E             D          C    B         A 

micigan-ilirundu vand-a manidan. 

The Tamil sentence is the mirror image of the English one: what is A B 

C D E in the one would be (by and large) E D C B A in Tamil. This would 

also be true of many other Indian languages. Postpositions instead of 

prepositions, adjectival clauses before nominal phrases, verbs at the end 

rather than in the middle of sentences-these characterise Tamil, and not 

only Tamil. (Turkish, Japanese, and Welsh are also left-branching languages).' 

Sequence of words in syntactical manner brings the meaning into one language, but also is broken down when translated into another language. 

Conclusion : The entire creed of Translation of poem ultimately aims to one but the other objective and that is to provide the foreign audience with the experience of Bhavas or sentiments infused in the translated poem by the poet with all its technical credo. Tackling over all the afore-discussed technical difficulties which are hindrances to the ultimate effect of Bhavas or sentiments, one can by and large rich up to just the banks of the river through the boat of Translation and can never have a deep dive experience into the ocean of the original poem, if it is metaphorized.

• (Word Count : 2030) 

Works Cited : 

Ramanujan, A.K., et al. The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Oxford University Press, 2013.