[Chris Childers]

Dragon Tale

A seven-headed dragon kid was fighting with each other.
Mom warned him all to stop, but they ignored her–his own mother!
And though the reason for the fight not one of him could tell,
he bit themselves right off–and they bit off himself as well!
..The moral of this tragedy, this tale that you've just read's:
..Don't quarrel over silly things, and never lose your heads.



Original:

Sárkánymese

Egy hétfejű sárkánykölök csúnyán összevesztek.
Rájuk szólt az anyja, de ő nem maradtak veszteg.
Bár már egy sem emlékeztek, hogy min kapott össze,
végül leharapta egymást, önmagát is közte.
..Ja, hogy hol itt a tanulság? Szájbarágom, tessék:
..Minden fejtúltengés vége teljes fejetlenség.



Line-by-line prose crib:

A seven-headed dragon cub started fighting each other in an ugly way.
His mother scolded them, but he wouldn't leave each other alone,
And though none of them could remember* what he was disagreeing over,
in the end, he bit each other['s heads] off, his own among them.
..Oh, so what's the moral in this? I'll spell it out for you. Here:
..An overabundance of heads always leads to complete headlessness.

*The verb is in the third-person plural.

[Rachel Hadas]

Jozsef Romhanyi's "Dragon Tale" was a delightfully bouncy, vivid, and
witty little performance which seems to bring across the bumptious rhythm
and long lines of the original, which (surprise) I hadn't known.

[Tim Murphy]

Delight: the read's/heads rhyme is a killer close.

[Chris Childers]

I agree with both Tim and Rachel that this is a witty and delightful little poem. My only quibble, based of course entirely on the crib rather than my nonexistent knowledge of Hungarian, focuses on the last line. While the concluding expression, "never lose your heads," is a charming renovation of the cliché, I regret that "an overabundance of heads" isn't really captured in "don't quarrel over silly things." A very minor point, though, as the English reads so well, and is so much fun to boot.

Chris

[Roger Slater]

It's even more "inaccurate" than that, Chris, since the last line (we are told in the literal) means: "An overabundance of heads always leads to complete headlessness." That's a very clever line whose sense is simply not present in the translation as far as I can tell.

Yet I heartily defend the translation, which I love. I think that when translating funny or witty poems, the main thing that the translator has to translate is the funniness and the wit, and sometimes that means changing the joke a bit, provided the joke is pretty much in the same spirit in both the original and the translation. I would argue that a translator should have more "liberty" when translating funny than serious. The literal sense without a laugh is less "accurate," in my opinion, than a less literal translation that provides the laugh.

As near as I can tell, the original doesn't have any sort of equivalent for the read's/heads rhyme, either, but I can't imagine that anyone would fault the translator for that inspiration.

[Chris Childers]

Fair enough, Roger, & point well taken. I was simply noting the cleverness of the original last line, and regretting its loss, even as I enjoy the effect of the translation. This is the sort of thing we're here to discuss, after all!

[Petra Norr]

I did a classic double take when I got to the end of the first line. That’s exactly what the poet and translator intended and it worked like a charm. The whole poem is delightful. The fun never lets up. I have only one wish when it comes to change: the middle lines could be polished a little more, above all to try to ease the way out of the inversion in L3.

[Gregory Dowling]

This is a lot of fun and works very well. The long lines are handled beautifully.

I agree with Roger that maintaining the full sense of the closing "moral" is probably not all important, but it would be good to keep something of the play between plural and singular, and "don't lose your heads" doesn't quite do that. But then the "read's / heads" rhyme is fun.

[Janet Kenny]

This is funny and magical. I don't usually comment on translations from languages which are closed to me but the literal translation makes the grammatical fun clear enough. A little gem.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I would disagree about maintaining the content of the final line moral. I think the change has been too great, and that the translation's moral is not nearly as funny or wise or pithy, resorting as it does to cliche (don't lose your heads) as opposed to morphing cliche in an unexpected way to gain insight as does the original. The translation's moral is too slight light verse for me.

I also don't like the construction of L2 at all, with the pronouns separated by the em-dash (or is it a hyphen? I can't tell). I find it a needlessly distracting and confusing path to get to the rhyme word.

But then I confess I'm not all that fond of the poem to begin with. All it has going for it is that strangely convoluted moral, which is gone in translation.

Nemo