kasper salonen wrote:
> "are you one of those x" sounds a little hostile, Ken. sorry you disapprove
> of my opinion so.
>   

Come now, Kasper, my approval or disapproval of anything is worth 
precisely shit.  If you take it seriously, my goodness, what HAVE I done 
and what crock have I tried to sell you?  Frea allmectig, the semester 
is over, I need to recover before the summer session begins on the 
18th....  It isn't that I don't take myself (too) seriously, it's that 
I'm appalled when anyone takes *my* opinion even halfway seriously.

> I was talking about David Bowie, but I dislike his singing voice in general.
> again, simply my opinion.
>   

And here I tend to agree.  But that's *my* opinion which we happen by 
accident to share.  I am only now being ramped up to any "non-classical" 
music post-1970 (before that The Stones were God), and nobody anymore 
seems to put Bowie on their short list.  Suzanne Vega, Richard 
Shindell?--yes.  Bowie?  Why?  As far as I can tell, Bowie is The Man 
Who Fell Out of His Career while nobody bothered to watch.

Of course I could be wrong, and if so, see above what I said about the 
value of my opinion of anything.

> I don't insist on everything in the original language; I aim to be a
> translator after all. all I insist on is quality, and in translations the
> retaining of tone & attitude & power of image - and occasionally, or
> generally, structure too, though I'm much more lax on that point. I realise
> that in order to translate anything into another language means to
> (re)interpret and 'rewrite', but unless one wants to go nutso with a
> postmodern parody of sorts, there are certain things that must be included.
>   

A relief, and I'm not being tongue-in-cheek or cutesy.  I grew up (if 
you can call what I did "growing up") on the *simply adorable* 
renditions of Da Ponte libretti for Mozart operas as committed by Ruth 
and Thomas Martin.  Oh, they are singable because the vowels fall in all 
the right places, but once upon a time I learned just enough Italian 
vocabulary to figure out that the Martins were a bit beyond acceptable 
adaptation, and were sacrificing meaning to what happens in a voice 
studio.  Vida Harford and Eric Blackall translated Berg's *Wozzeck* for 
the first (March 1959) New York productions, and while I don't know how 
accurately they rendered (that word again) German, listening to those 
English words on the radio on Saturday, March 14, 1959, actually changed 
my life because I was baptized in the opera font that afternoon, thereby 
saving me from a lifetime of listening to Groucho Marx singing "Lydia 
The Tattoo'd Lady" and Elvis Presley singing anything.  The German 
original (I believe Berg cut Buechner's play without an intermediary) 
came more easily once I knew the basis of the forever-vicious action 
onstage.  In sum, having heard the power of opera through language, I 
was lost and could thereafter adapt myself to opera in languages I 
didn't begin to get for years thereafter.  I am still a lonely adherent 
of opera in the national host language so long as the translation is (1) 
reasonably faithful to the original libretto (again, define thy terms) 
and (2) sung by people who can enunciate their own language.  Most 
American singers cannot do this.  I don't quite regard translation as a 
"gateway drug" as it was for me; I regard it as necessary to transmit a 
musical culture.

Note how ham-handedly I've gotten away from literary language itself; I 
believe I should be congratulated.

> the ghost of the source text is always behind each translation. it's not
> that the ghost is necessarily 'better' as a rule, but what attracts & awes &
> interests in the original language is not translateable, because it's a
> matter of the soul of a language, and how that's expressed in art.
> translations can, are often are, wonderful renditions. my ambition is to
> translate the finnish poet Arto Melleri into english one day, and re-express
> his sentiments & imagery in a different 'language-soul'.
>   

I went through a "purist" phase 30+ years ago where I would not read 
anything written in a foreign language because (1) I don't read them 
since I flunked German twice and got through French by the skin of) and 
(2) I was led to believe that all translation was a misinterpretation.  
What's the phrase?--Translate, Betray?  Well yes.  But what betrayal do 
you prefer?  I would rather be able to read Träkl or Rilke or Akhmatova 
or Neruda in someone's translation rather than pretend I know 
literatures other than my own or waste years shoving a language I'll 
never understand into my head to capture subtleties and nuances I simply 
am not equipped to retain. I depend on the wisdom of others to inform my 
selections, and that makes me a bit nervous. Rilke has more translations 
that there are stars in the sky, but my first exposure to the Duino 
Elegies was via Leishman--who looks to be dry and literal--and, while 
Snow and Poulin are wonderful and challenging reads, I still prefer 
Leishman and the fascination of what's difficult.  My attitude also has 
been fertilized (ahem) by my exposures to Robert Bly as the raisonneur 
for Neruda and other Spanish-language poets: not so much his 
translations as for the by-name public frontal mockeries of Ben Belitt 
or anyone who had the temerity to translate anyone when We All Know that 
Bly did it better.

Back to trying to get DreamWeaver to work.

ken

-- 
Ken Wolman	http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/	http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
---------------------------------
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray