Multiple im/person/aliz/ations: Four Attempts to 'get under the skin' of Poets

Authors

  • Tom Priestly University of Alberta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21992/T9G044

Keywords:

Anna Akhmatova, Francè Prešeren, Janko Messner, Kajetan Kovič

Abstract

I have been actively translating for about twenty years. Looking back, I now realize that it made translation easier when I tried to ‘become’ the original writer: I was more successful when I asked myself, “what would they have written if they had had my knowledge of English?” and, for poetry, when faced with the clash between the demands of form and content, “which way would they bend?’ Rather than attempt any theorizing, I propose to relate my efforts to get under the skin of a number of poets, for example: one, surviving the siege of Leningrad; another, pioneering multiple poetic genres in early 19th-century Central Europe; a third who (successfully? I am not sure) aimed to capture the horror of a Nazi atrocity in Vienna; a fourth who became the most popular author of Slovene poetry for children by temporarily shedding his own adulthood. Also, I will add my recent attempts to capture, in Slovene, the style of children in war-torn Northern Uganda who are writing to the sponsors who are paying their school fees in a charming but not always clear fractured English (which they are just learning): is it possible, is it expedient to pretend to be such a child in order to transfer their thoughts into Slovene? It certainly helps to have been a teacher. Teachers are, I believe, better teachers if they can act the roles of others, and translators can perhaps be better translators if they can ‘become’ other people. Anyway, it makes for a more interesting life.

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Author Biography

Tom Priestly, University of Alberta

Tom Priestly was Professor of Russian and Slavic Linguistics at the University of Alberta. His main research is in Slovene, particularly the sociolinguistics of the Slovenophone minority in Austria; but he taught a variety of courses, including (for over 20 years) the Russian-English translation course. He began translating from Slovene into English in the 1980s and has been the translator or co-translator of seven books of poetry and other items, including songs for a children’s CD. He has just published sixty poems in a Slovene Academy anthology, and is working on the poetry of Cvetka Lipuπ.

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Published

2011-02-05