[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!

[Tim Murphy]

The translator is succeeding, in part, because of the choices he/she made, to render this in rhyming fourteeners. Look closely at the original, and you'll see the translation is squirming into the snugger straight jacket. It really is a tour de force.

[Roger Slater]

Chris, I think I was actually agreeing with you but adding my two-cents that a translator has more "liberty" when the original is funny, since funny is the most important thing that has to be translated. It becomes subjective, of course, whether the translator's liberties in terms of the literal sense are excessive, but none of us here is naive enough to think that translation is a process that can be evaluated with complete objectivity.

This particular translation takes a tremendous liberty, however much you and I approve of the result. I suspect that the original poem can be quoted pretty much whenever someone wants to say, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," or as a put-down of committees, etc. The translation, however, could not be quoted in the same context at all. Both the original and the translation close with a moral, but the morals are different. To the extent that the poem hinges on its moral, the original and the translation could not be more different.

My view is that the moral is less important than the entire paradoxical concept of the singular/plural multi-headed creature(s) biting each other's heads off. The moral is just there to provide humorous closure, I think, and its exact meaning is less important.

[David Rosenthal]

I like this a lot. It is certainly daring to take on something so dense and funny, and to produce something so dense and funny as a result is a brilliant feat. The pronoun play alone is so much fun, and so well done, it is hard to complain about anything. But, I have to admit that, while I think Bob's point has merit, I wish the moral could come across in the translation. I think one of the benefits of translation is being able to pull into the host language new phrases. How great it would be for us to have a pithy, metered English line with the content of the prose crib's final line. Also, while I think the read's/heads bit is funny, it bothers me a bit as well.

David R.

[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.