Freedom and Constraints: Cultural Substitution in Free Verse Translation
Translation could be regarded as a type of painting. Everything starts with a swift sketch that records what comes immediately to mind and forms a frame of the source text. The frame alongside the outlines is rimmed with doubts and flaws, and yet they reflect the whole picture. The sketch is essential in that it determines the direction and scope of revision. Revision, proceeding on an intermittent basis, is a defamiliarization process in which I complete one round, leave the translation for a few days, return to it with a refreshed brain, and start another round as if I have never read it before. To make the translated text seem strange again precludes me from growing too familiar with the “finished” state to remain sensitive to semantic nuances and potentially ill-fitted arrangements.
Some would say that translating free verse poems seems to be easier than translating metrical verses, since it seems far less painstaking to follow a spontaneous flow of powerful emotions without worrying about rhyme schemes or stress patterns. One moment I did feel liberated from rigid prosodic delimiters, but the next moment I felt somewhat distracted with ever expanding possibilities, alternatives, and choices. Maybe too much syntactic and lexical freedom is a boon and a bane at once. It takes longer to seek, to concentrate, to organize, to compare, and to capture a proper word or phrase in the target language. It is a marathon on a tightrope. Is it easier to translate free verse poems? My answer is no. Constraints, in free verses are latent and self-imposed, but, as Stravinsky said in his Poetics of Music, they could remove spiritual shackles and ignite more creative sparks. Constraints let one sail safely on the vast sea of wording freedom without sinking into it. Some typical constraints and conundrums in my translation are discussed as follows.
On “French Postales” by Alberto Ríos
There are no articles in Chinese. In the translated text, the word “the” is either represented by the noun phrase it modifies or replaced by demonstrative adjectives, such as “这” (this), “这些” (these), “那” (that), and “那些” (those), according to the types of reference the definite article “the” makes. The noun phrase “French postcards” first appears in line 8 and then in line 16 of the poem “French Postales”. There is no “the” placed before the first “French postcards”, but there is one in line 16. The definite article “the” is added to the latter because the narrator is referring to the “postcards” that he has mentioned earlier in line 8. I apply the same Chinese noun phrase “法 国明信片” (which literally means “French postcards”) to the two phrases, “French postcards” and “the French postcards.” The original differentiation (with or without “the”) is lost, and the definite article “the” is omitted in Chinese, because the noun phrase “法国明信片” itself could function like a definite article referring to something the narrator and the readers have supposedly known beforehand. Adding an adjective to the noun phrase here would only generate a sense of redundancy.
The genitive structure “A of B” does not exist in Chinese. Phrases in this genitive form are usually translated into Chinese in reverse order with the noun phrase after the “of” being placed at the beginning and the NP before the “of” being moved to the end. Meanwhile, the definite article “the”s that modify the noun phrases in the “of” genitive structure are omitted in the translation. For example, The Lord of the Rings, Colors of the Wind, and The Sound of Music, are officially translated as 《指环王》 (Ring King), 《风之色彩》 (Wind’s Colors),《音乐之声》 (Music’s Sound). The genitive structure “the darkness of his coat” in line 33 is transfigured into the “apostrophe + s” form and translated as “他外套的黑暗” (his coat’s darkness). In line 34, the phrase “the darkness” appears again. I substitute “the” with the demonstrative adjective “这” (this) and render the phrase as “这黑暗” (this darkness). This time the definite article “the” is not deleted because, firstly, “the” in line 34 refers to something that is close to the narrator and the readers in terms of distance and time; secondly, “the darkness” is a clear recall of the “darkness” mentioned in the previous line; thirdly, “the” here adds an emphasis in tone and rhythm to the twice-mentioned “darkness.”
On “Oriental” by Jenny Yang Cropp
In the poem “Oriental”, enjambment occurs almost in every line. Within each line, one sentence is preceded by a part of the previous sentence and/or followed by a part of the next sentence as if the lines are welded and chained to one another, without solid breaks, without closure, which evokes an enduring sense of resistance and resilience. The translated text preserves all the original enjambment and rearranges the syntactic structures of some of the enjambed sentences. Besides, the placement of prepositional phrases marks one prominent syntactic distinction between English and Chinese. In English, prepositional phrases usually appear at the end of a sentence while in Chinese, they naturally and habitually come before the verb phrase of a sentence. For instance, the sentence bridging line 4 and 5, “You look white in real life,” is translated as “现实中你看起来是白人” (In real life you look white). The sentence in line 10, “she’s picked me from a line-up,” is translated as “她已从一堆人里把我挑了出来” (She’s, from a line-up, picked me out).
On “Self-Portrait as Minotaur” by Jacqueline Balderrama
The voracious monster depicted in line 14 of the poem “Self-Portrait as Minotaur” is reminiscent of the ferocious beast “Tāo Tiè” (饕餮) in ancient Chinese mythology. Legend has it that Tao Tie is so ravenous that when it eats its food, it also eats its own body to the extent that there is only its head left at the end. The word “Tāo Tiè” has been used symbolically in the Chinese idiom “Tāo Tiè Zhī Tú” (饕餮之徒) to describe a person who has an insatiable desire for food and drink. The phrase “the always eating” in line 14 is thereby figuratively translated as “贪 食饕餮” (as ravenous as the monster Tāo Tiè) so as to accentuate the gluttonous quality that is based on a parallel between Minotaur and Tāo Tiè. In the last stanza, the sibilance created by the constant “s” sounds from the words “stand”, “still”, “sway”, “side”, and “spinning” vividly echoes the dreamy soundscape of the phrase “rustling orange trees” in the first stanza. The circular motion of the “spinning” head is hence delicately continued by the circular motion of the “s” sounds flowing from the last stanza back to the first which generates an introspective mental loop that strengthens the structural integrity of the poem. The loss of “s” sounds in translation implies that while the verbal and visual messages are carefully and coherently conveyed to the target language, the sonic beauty of the source language might be inevitably compromised in one way or another.
The ultimate goal of translation is, however, neither to replicate, nor to elevate, but to complement and complete the meaning and form of the source text. As Walter Benjamin wrote, a translation should “lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of signification” and be recognizable alongside the original as interactive and mutually inclusive fragments of “a greater language.” The source language and the translated languages could be seen as petals in the same rose. And the gist of painting the rose well is to delve into the fine details of the petals without ever losing sight of the flower as a whole.
About the Translator:
Zhongxing Zeng is a Ph.D. (Literature) student in the English Department at Arizona State University. His research interests include William Blake, English Romanticism, and English-Chinese Literary Translation. He is also a singer-songwriter with publications of original music on NetEase Music, Apple Music, and Spotify under the artist name 曾寅. (updated 2022)
Translations:
"French Postales" by Alberto Ríos (Chinese)
"Oriental" by Jenny Yang Cropp (Chinese)
"Self-Portrait as Minotaur" by Jacqueline Balderrama (Chinese)
With grateful acknowledgment to translation reviewers: Xiaoqiao Ling & Huaiyu Chen