Translation Question
 

I have been translating some songs by the Czech poet/singer Karel Kryl. I just discovered that he translated one of his songs into German after he had lived there in exile for about 10 years. Clearly, German was not his native language, but just as clearly I can learn about his intentions--in particular, he was very careful to preserve the rhyme scheme, and rather free in adapting the text. My question is: To what extent should I be influenced by his translation? More generally, when one translates, how should one use multiple language versions by the original author?

In case anyone is interested, the song and my translation are here:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=22681
His German text is here:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showpo...1&postcount=36

Thanks!
Martin

Mods: If this should be in the translation forum, please move it, but since it is getting very little traffic these days, I thought that my question would get more of a response here.

Martin,

I’m tempted to say: follow Kryl’s lead—but it may depend on what you want to do with your translation. Are you only interested in singing it at poetry readings? Or do you want to publish it? Or both? If you have publication in mind, his current publishers and his heirs will need to weigh in, since he only died in 1994; and their points of view won't always be predictable.

What did he do with his German translation?

To your more general question, my opinion is that, once again, the original author’s intentions are most important. Of course, if the author did free verse translations of his/her formal original, you’d obviously have more latitude. At some point, though, a literal translation might be useful in print. Sometimes I think it’d be good if all published translations came with a reliable crib.

Mark

I don't think you can conclude very much, Martin. When a poet translates his own work, the typical questions regarding fidelity to the original author's intentions are not implicated in the same way. Indeed, he is free to take the sorts of liberties that another translator might feel go too far, since he has authoritative access to the original poet's intentions. Also, it's not obvious to me that he would have taken the same approach to translating into English as he would to translating into German. Certainly you can derive clues from looking at multiple versions (e.g., if the original mentions the color of a woman's dress, but the translation omits the color, you can infer that the poet evidently didn't think including the color was an essential detail, and you might feel comfortable leaving it out yourself if you find it convenient to do so), but you're ultimately still translating only the original and not the German translation.

I think the author's translations can be very informative, but you have to be wary of slavishness.

I translated Housman's one Latin poem, and I did rhyme every other line because Housman always rhymed every line--even though I wouldn't usually rhyme elegiac couplets. He had never translated a somber love elegy, though, and I thought full rhyme would be too inconsistent with the tome of the original. I like to think he would have made the same choice, but we'll never know...

maybe go for Kryl's German and give a word of explanation if you're sending out or singing them somewhere...

Thanks Mark, Roger, Michael, and Seree for your thoughts. There must be other examples of poets who have translated their own work from non-English to another non-English language. Do you know any? I'd be curious to see how the cribs compare, and how translators into English have handled the input.