Working with French invokes a strange feeling for me. I've spoken, read, and written in it for ten years, and in that time, it was always easy to slip into conventions that wouldn't be accepted in a literary setting. It quickly became just a second language I simply knew. I started dreaming in it, thinking in it, slipping into it when I thought the French word was easier to recall than the English, and I can't exactly remember when that started. So, when I thought of translating English to French for Ed Bok Lee's "Water in Love," I realized I had not actually done that in a while, both on paper and in my head. What I thought would be quite easy ended up being a little more difficult than I had anticipated, and I had to approach it almost how I would when I first started learning. It was thanks to that that I found some joyous nostalgia in revisiting skills I had not used in quite a while. One moment that really made me excited was when in line 18, Lee uses "Worship" to start the line, and I originally had "Adorer" as the French translation because I thought about the broader context of the poem. I personally associated "Adorer" with a strong form of "to adore, to love, to admire", but I was pointed in the direction of "Vénérer," which is a transitive verb that translates to English as "to venerate, to respect." When thinking of "Venerate" as an English word, it is certainly carrying a sense of adoration or worship, but it's not one we automatically think of when there is "to adore" and "to worship," which I went straight to "Adorer." It certainly made me think a lot about meaning and how we both gain and lose meaning across translation, and how subjective it truly is as an art. Where I automatically think of "Adorer," someone else thinks of "Vénérer," but in the end, they may mean the same thing even if they look different. This opportunity was incredibly helpful to think of in terms of poetry and linguistics, and as both a reader and writer.
About the Translator
Shepard Adkins (they/he) is a transgender writer who graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a BA in English Literature and a minor in Justice Studies. He is attending the University of Chicago for a master's in creative writing and classics. They are a Swarthout award winner for poetry and was awarded the Lux Creative Review honor in poetry for their piece "Blue". Currently, he is working on the intersection of translation and identity in Attic Greek tragedies and myth, and the "Other"-ed stereotypes found in 18th -19th century Gothic novels. His debut novel, Veil Us in Gold, comes out June 2023. (updated 2023)
Translations
"Water in Love” by Ed Bok Lee (French)
With grateful acknowledgment to French language reviewers: Peggy Bejarano and Brandon Blue