I’ve always thought of translation as something reserved for highly-proficient linguists. However, I recently tried my hand at translating from a language I don’t speak. How? A free translating app. There are many of them on the Internet. But you might say what’s the point of that? Let me explain.
After reading Isabel Allende’s The Long Petal, I became interested in the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and obtained a translation that showed the Spanish and English side by side. As I read the English, I wondered whether the translator had taken liberties that altered what Lorca was trying to express. Using a translating app, I selected a few poems and went word by word, line by line, comparing the app’s version to the translator’s. A feature of these apps includes a list of multiple meanings possible for a word, so I could see how the translator had favored one meaning over another. Also, paying close attention to the Spanish (which I don’t speak, but I had French once upon a time and Romance languages can be similar), I saw where the translator had changed punctuation and lineation in places and occasionally substituted an English phrase the translator thought better conveyed the meaning. Taking all that into account, and in a couple of instances looking up other translations of the same poem, I came up with my own translations.
Why was this a beneficial writing experience? It was very much like editing one’s own poetry. I tried to get into Lorca’s head and feel it the way he felt it, appreciate why he structured his poems the way he did, observing where he used repetition and to what effect, and pondered what words would best express in English what he felt and saw. In most cases, my translations were not very different that the translator’s, but where there was a difference, I had specific reasons.
For me, this exercise stimulated the same processes that kick in when one is writing or editing one’s own poetry, but it’s a little different when you’re trying to speak through the voice of someone else. It will hone the skills you use in creating your own work. Next time, I plan to do it with a Russian poet, maybe Pushkin.
