Alison raises questions about reading in translation but the problem in
replying is that there has been so much written about these questions.

When I was young, Stanley Burntshaw (?) edited a Penguin book called The Poem
Itself, in which there was a dual text presentation of several European poets
whose work at that stage I didn't know -- Ungaretti, I especially remember,
Unamuno too.  I had nothing but schoolboy French but managed to decipher
enough of the French, Italian, Spanish and, I think, German, to get through
the poems and appreciate them in some way in the original.  It acted as a very
useful introduction to modern European literature in the original for me.

Especially, I could catch the sound changes and get something of the music
(intonation, etc.)  Since then, I have preferred to read such poetry as I can
in the original language with dual-text presentation if necessary.

If I do translation myself, I prefer it to be printed with the French
alongside, and my main concern (apart from felicity of word-choice, accuracy,
etc.) is to reflect the form and music of the original. I've done examinations
of good translations and believe that they tend to capture not only the music
but also what I call the voicing patterns -- that is the rhythmic patterns
created by those moments in a poetic line when the larynx sounds and those
moments when it does not (either because the consonants are "voiceless --
don't use the larynx, such as "t", "k", etc. or because there's some tiny
pause).  As I've never had a research grant to study such things, my "proofs"
of this statement about voicing patterns are very thin, though I've published
such proofs as I could.  I do, however, firmly believe that the role of
voicing patterns is much underestimated in poetry, whereas it isn't in
singing.

What's my point?  Not sure.  But if you can do Rimbaud at all in the French,
why not do so?  I don't see the point in not doing so.  It gets easier and
easier.  When I had aforesaid schoolboy French, I struggled through Flaubert's
Salammbo refusing to use a dictionary.  I understood about 20 per cent and the
rest of the book took place as if an exotic story glimpsed behind a silver
bead curtain.  I've never wanted to spoil the magic of that first reading.
And doing it made all the French connective expressions start to become
instinctually recognisable, greatly speeding up non-dictionary readings of
subsequent books in French.

The virtues of reading a text in its own language is that the thought is
moulded by its expression: it has a different "courtesy", and a different
aggression.  To put it into English may -- if the translator is very good --
capture something of this and of the sonic effects. But it will change the
essential manners of the text.

Best

Doug


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