Further on Translation

I have been working and reworking on some translations from Lope de Vega's "Rimas", and it has made me think about the nature of translating something like a sonnet in slightly more structured terms than I have previously; or possibly just in slightly different terms than I have previously, given the previous posts on this blog about this topic.

In short, I want to suggest that while there is definitely value in translating formal poetry like a sonnet into a) the most euphonious translation regardless of meter and rhyme in the new language, b) a poetic translation that nevertheless takes liberties with both rhyme and meter in order to once again deliver a more aesthetically pleasing result, or c) an extremely literal translation, I will always plump for d) a sonnet translated as a sonnet.

Now of course some of this is my personal commitment to the sonnet form, with all its ridiculousnesses. But I want to suggest that the meter and rhyme are just as fundamental to the sonnet as the words themselves.

After all as I suggested repeatedly here, a sonnet is not a sonnet without that structure; it is still obviously a poem, if it wants to be, and it can even be a formal poem without the specific metrical and rhythmic and rhyming structures of the 14 line metered rhyming sonnet, but I believe that in responding to the form and participating in the form and being a sonnet there is still distinct value to retaining those formal elements.

As such of course one must accept some degree of alteration to other elements of the poem. The question is which? After all just as I have said that the sonnet has formal elements that should be respected, each poem obviously has all the other elements such as language and specific word choice and theme and metaphor and wordplay etc. Why respect the sonnet form over those?

Well of course the first answer is that as much as possible we should retain all of it. I think translations are at their best when they can participate in multiple layers of what the original was doing, and so keeping the rhyme and meter while also keeping the meaning and the subtext and so on is the ideal. But I am sympathetic to the idea that the poem should and does have some wiggle room. The repositioning of a term; the insertion or deletion of a small phrase that seems to have unity with the rest of the poem, but is either not going to fit into the new language or is required to make up the rhyme or meter; the use of synonyms that do not specifically meet cognates for instance; these and other related techniques that attempt to maintain what the translator feels are the essential core elements of the sonnet while assisting in producing the formal elements of the sonnet are, I think, justified.

Practically, this usually means a very rough translation, followed by an attempt at a smoother more metrical and rhythmic and rhyming translation, followed by an awful lot of tinkering.

But I believe that doing so is helpful to maintain the sonnet-ness of the poem, and to help a new reader in a new language understand that this poem too was participating in that deep tradition.