In Translation
I'm working on a University course that involves studying the works of "Homer" and other sources from antiquity. The quotation marks are not accidental of course and the Homer that we know today, or from our schooldays has been through many filters. I read quite a lot of European literature in translation and this also worries me a little bit - whose voice are we listening to?
I'm guessing that poetry with it's nuances of language and cultural is the most difficult to represent in translation. I suppose you must grasp the meaning and then make it available in another form.
When poetry is set to music, god knows what the complications are if it is also translated. The following song starts Schumann's Dichterliebe. Schumann surely the composer most in tune with the form as art.
The lyrical phrasing of the opening lines of both short verses would surely be destroyed in any other language.
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Yes - I am member of a French choral and we are doing German Lieder right now - it's 'first of all' not in a German anybody in his/her right mind understands easily - and secondly How do you explain it's meaning to people who don't know any German at all.... which left us with translations of simply feeling the SENSE of the text and it then turns out to be much more managable... I even like them, when written in French or English and I don't like them in German.... bizarre? Maybe!
# Posted By Kiki
| 11/2/10 10:58 AM
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