Last week I regaled you with the story of the famous Dutch writer who had been chosen to translate Amanda Gorman's poem, "The Hill We Climb," but who then withdrew after a critic insisted that the translation should be done by a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black.”
Today brings word that the same thing has happened with the Catalan translation:
A Catalan translator has been removed from a job translating the poem by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman that she presented at President Biden’s inauguration because, as a White man, he did not fit the “profile,” AFP reported.
....“They told me that I am not suitable to translate it,” Obiols told AFP. “They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably Black.”
Well, that should be no trouble. All they need is a professional English-Catalan translator who is Black, female, under 30, and active in social justice movements. The northeast corner of Spain is probably swarming with people who meet these requirements.
At this rate, Gorman's poem is either (a) never going to be translated because it's too damn much trouble for minimal revenue, or (b) it will be translated widely but badly because the pool of qualified translators has been cut down to almost nothing. Progress!
Here is the corrrect approach. A real effort should be made to find someone to translate who fits the profile. It is symbolicially a good idea, it is consistent with the equal opportunity idea, and perhaps it inspires the next Gorman. If this person doesn't exist then they can loosen the criteria. Old white guys like me get tons of opportunties to do all kinds of things. I say let's cultivate the next generation of Gorman's!
Today we are all Bootstraps Arthur Smith, who rose from son of FedEx CEO Fred Smith to become coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
It's "symbolically" a good idea? WTF?
150 years ago we had white people saying "blacks can never understand the nuances of white language and culture"
Today we have woke people saying "whites can never understand the nuances of black language and culture"
And I'm supposed to cheer this as a great advance?
Why do we assume that the best "profile" to translate Ms. Gorman's work into another language/culture is someone who looks exactly like Gorman? An Irish(wo)man writing in an English world, for example, might, in fact, be just the person to understand her work.
For symmetry, shouldn't there be requirements for those wanting to read the poetry? Sort of a worthiness assessment? Who knows what sort of unlimited access mischief might arise.
I fear I am growing less patient with the improvements being imposed by zealotry.
Betcha he’s making it up.
That said, while Ms Gorman is a very impressive person, she’s not much of a poet.
...She's not the one making these ridiculous assertions blocking translators.
What does 'unapologetically black' mean?
Who is it in contrast with, and who are the apologetic blacks?
Isn't that a new way of saying that no Uncle Toms should apply?
What is it that gives some faceless internet complainer hobbyists the right to say who that is?
I’m not an authority on apologetic Black people or anything, but Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas immediately come to mind. They seem totally desperate to be welcome by white society in everything they say or do.
Welcomed by wingnut society isn't the same thing.
There was some black guy who invaded the capitol.
Isn't the goal of a "melting pot" for everyone to strive to join the majority of society, allowing it to grow with each new contribution? The alternative would seem to be the same ethnic struggles that have plagued every other country in human history.
Somewhere along the way here I think we lost the plot.
At what price? Generations of Americans lost their cultural traditions and knowledge of their ancestors history in the rush to melt everyone together in a homogeneous mess that was really join the WASP team or be an "other". Maybe we'd be a more balanced country if no one group dominated like the WASPs do.
Is that the demonization we need?
We can't change the past, why act like we can?
Again, I think you've lost the plot. The "WASP team" majority is itself an amalgamation of many other minority teams from our past, including Irish and Italians Catholics , Jews, many others. Now just called "white culture", though it's really just "American culture", since to your dismay many non-whites are now part of the team. Yea, everyone still has heritage and religious differences, but there's a larger culture that binds them.
It doesn't take a PhD in world history to know that a country with multiple competing ethnic groups is doomed to collapse. If this becomes a zero sum game, what possible incentive does the majority have to give an inch to any minority group?
The "homogeneous mess" is the magic that makes America work at all, and if you don't want borders closed to new immigrants and more fascists like Trump elected we better re-discover that fast.
Trump a fascist nonsense cracks me up. A Zionist yes, fascist nope.
The WASPs really don't own the country these days, or at least, if they do, they've been pretty generous with it 🙂
As for people losing their cultural traditions, I don't see it. Americans lose *some* of their cultural traditions, certainly, but the traditions I've lost I'm glad to have lost. I'm half Turkish, and so my cultural tradition includes hating anyone who's Greek. Yet one of my closest friends is a Greek immigrant.
Fundamentally I don't believe that cultural appropriation is a bad thing. Instead, it provides part of the glue that makes us a single multi-ethnic country.
Nah. Every separate culture should be allowed to thrive and **be accepted**, as long as no one else is hurt. . Not congeal into one giant mess.
Again, this is some modern fantasy that completely disregards the human nature and tribalism that has torn countries apart since the dawn of man.
The American “melting pot” experiment was always predicated on the idea that immigrants would come here and be given the chance to *assimilate*. If we’re now tossing that idea out, I think you can expect this experiment will go south pretty fast.
.....or maybe they just view the world differently than you?
Suggesting successful people act the way they do because they "seem desperate to be welcome in white society" is a seriously bad take.
Good old Clarence Thomas. Got into Yale on affirmative action. Many people might be grateful for the opportunity to get a few rungs up the ladder, but Clancy declared his Yale law degree worthless because it didn't land him that job in an east coast silk stocking law firm. Still bitter that he had to settle for a seat on the Supreme Court. One cannot but contrast his attitude (and his legal skills) with the former occupant of his seat, Thurgood Marshall.
See also Ryan, Paul, receipt of Social Security Survivors Benefits.
Do they want a translation of Ms Gorman's words, or do they want a rewriting of them by someone else? For the former all that matters is for the person to be a proficient translator in the languages in question, for the latter what they want is someone who isn't just able to translate properly, but who is also a poet with similar life experiences to give it their own spin.
Really, for any books that you've read which were originally written in a different language, for how many do you remember (or cared) about who did the translation?
Translation is tricky since the map from words to reality is different for every language. If you are very literal in translation, you come up with stilted nonsense in the target language. If you try to pick up the sense and nuance, you end up writing your interpretation in the target language.
This probably counts double for poetry.
As pointed out below, puns and wordplay are nigh-impossible ... if you want to keep a pun in there, you'll have to invent a new phrase.
Anyhow, that said, I'd go with Gorman's approval for whoever. It's not her that's objecting.
@TheWesson
Exactly. Poetry is metaphor and wordplay and as such does not lend itself to translation. The translator should be a poet, and the translation can't be literal. That said, I heard Gorman's recitation at the inauguration, and I think her work would be easier to translate than the best English language poetry.
"If you are very literal in translation, you come up with stilted nonsense in the target language."
I agree, and a translator that does so literally would be a bad one. The key about translations is to convey the same message, not necessarily the same words, and to do that effectively the translator needs to understand not just the original, but more importantly, be knowledgeable and culturally immersed in the target language.
Here it seems that they are going about it the other way around, where they want the translator to mirror the profile and experiences of the writer first even if that may not be the best fit for the target audience.
"Anyhow, that said, I'd go with Gorman's approval for whoever. It's not her that's objecting."
I agree too, but here is where things get messy. Apparently the Dutch translator had been selected by Ms Gorman and then someone else decided to pull the contract from her. It's not ideal but at least she was informed before she started her work on it.
On this case, the Catalonian translator was also approved by Ms Gorman and had already completed his work and then as a result of the Dutch case, was told by Ms Gorman representatives that they'd prefer to go with someone else who better reflects her personally.
But Jimmy James was a Macho Business Donkey Wrestler!
If you've ever read two translations of a particular work done by different translators, you will quickly see that there is a lot of discretion in translation. A good translation requires that the translator have a similar "artistic sense" to the author. I don't agree that means that only a black person can translate a black person's work. Artistic sense is not race specific.
If you read Murakami's 1Q84, the difference in translators is pretty obvious, and many readers do have a real preference. (The book is so long they split it between the two main translators of his books into English.)
What will most likely happen is that people will just turn to Google Translate and live with a very substandard translation.
Kevin, just to add to the ridiculousness, that Dutch translator had been *chosen by Gorman*. I mean... crrrrikey, *Ms. Gorman chose the translator, and even that wasn't good enough*. I suspect that when the real story comes out, it'll be something completely unrelated to wokeness and identity. That somewhere, there's a grift happening. And just to be clear, I don't mean Ms. Gorman is involved -- rather, that somewhere in the bureaucracy of publishing, somebody is trying to wet their beak, on this translation contract.
I wondered if Amanda Gorman had any thoughts, or say, about the choice of translators. That answers the question.
Whatever is going on, it's not helping the cause. It's becoming an easily mockable example of ultra-wokeness (even if something else is at play).
"I wondered if Amanda Gorman had any thoughts, or say, about the choice of translators. That answers the question."
Both of them had been approved by her, and in the case of the Catalonian one, the translation had already been delivered to the publishers when they switched their minds as a follow-up of the Dutch case.
I really doubt that the fee is that large.
Not to imply that it will ultimately be a large sum of money but really just to clarify: A translator is in general legally considered a co-author of the work and is therefore entitled to a portion of any royalties paid out. For popular works this can result in a pretty substantial income stream over many years.
Regnery moving into Dutch publishing to translate Theo van Gogh into the originalist German.
I kinda translated the poem into Japanese. It was near impossible. Not 'cause I'm an old, Jewish man with passable Japanese. 'Cause no one easily carry over the word-play "the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice." into Japanese.
No one. It's impossible.
Even through the meaning is pretty clear in any language.
We the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.
Amanda Gorman is an American Black woman descended from slaves, along with many other things -- an Angeleno, a Catholic, and so on. No translator is going to be all that she is, and there's really no reason a good translator needs to be any of what she is.
If there are challenges for foreign translators, the biggest may be that they are not American. The poem is a patriotic poem, and many of its allusions (some which work, some not so much) are meaningful to an American audience in ways that may not so meaningful to others. The race, gender, age of the foreign translator may not be that important.
Poetry and patriotism is a tricky mix. Often the poem can be effective for patriotic purposes more than the patriotic message is effective for poetic purposes. That's true for Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus," and for Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem as well. Her moment at the inauguration was brilliant. The poem on the page is not quite that.
When Robert Frost read at JFK's inaugural, he had trouble reading the poem he had composed for the occasion because of the bright, glaring sun. Instead, he recited a poem he had written decades before from memory. The consensus was that the old poem was a better poem anyway.
It’s not often that I praise the local media here in Denver, but I was impressed that someone here noticed that what Gorman was doing was not just “poetry “ , but a kinder gentler version of “slam poetry” and interviewed some of the local slam poets who liked what Gorman was doing with her gestures, which is as much about the performance as the words (Denver and my hometown of Albuquerque are big into slam poetry, which is a competition. Except the actual slam poets would be a lot more animated In their performances than Gorman was.)
Gorman got the job, in part, cause the Bidens wanted something new and different. She wasn’t Frost at the JFK inaugural or Angelou at Clinton’s, but I really enjoyed Gorman’s performance and I have no doubts about preordering her next book . And as cool as it would be for Entertainment Tonight to interview Louise Gluck about winning the Nobel, I think the target audience requires ET to interview Gorman instead, and it did. Anything bringing positive attention to poetry (declared dead by many a publication) is ok with me.
And remember her age. She has, what?, 50 years to get near the Frost-Angelou-Gluck level. And she might do it if the modeling career doesn’t take up all her time. )And her poise. She performed at a presidential inauguration like it’s something she does every week.)
And oh! To get back to mr. drum’s post: I’ve said before that the controversy seems to be at an exceptional level of stoopid. All you need is a good translator, not a Gorman doppelganger.
Should have gotten Charlie Kelly & Dee Reynolds to do some Def Poetry.
I wonder if wearing blackface would have helped. (/s)
Pablo Negro energia.
This is beyond stupid. If only a 20-something black woman from a single mom family steeped in American black culture and with an elite education can translate it - I suppose only that group should be allowed to read it, since the rest of us would not understand it all.
As the rejected Catalan translator said: I guess it’s time to toss out all those Shakespeare translations that were not done by 16th Century Englishmen.
I must add that Translating is a separate and distinct and important ART.
Not everybody can do it...it is Hard, hard work....and most importantly, a bad translation is BAD.
God, I hate using caps...but I know this area somewhat and I think that it is Ms. Gorman's duty as a person and as an Artist to explicitly bring these important considerations to the fore.
Best Wishes, Traveller
I... don't care about the problem or the poem. If she has made the choice then fine. Life will go on either way
Don't remember Elizabeth Bishop having this much trouble getting her work translated.
Had a book that gave five translations across time for each one of famous old Chinese poems. It was amazing to see those ancient poets go from Victorian floweriness to sparse modernism.
There's quite a discussion in the Netherlands, also between white and not so white people. The Dutch translator, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, who identifies as them, actually responded with a poem after stepping down:
Everything inhabitable
Never lost that resistance, that primal jostling with sorrow and joy,
or given in to pulpit preaching, to the Word that says what is
right or wrong, never been too lazy to stand up, to face
up to all the bullies and fight pigeonholing with your fists
raised, against those riots of not-knowing inside your head,
tempering impotence with the red rag in your eyes, and
always announcing your own way with rock-solid pride,
watching someone reduced to pulp and seeing the last
drop of dignity trickling away, you are against craniometry,
against bondservice, against all of humankind’s boxing in.
Never lost that resistance, that seed of wrestling free, your
origin is dressed in mourning attire, your origin was fortunate,
it had an escape route, not that your experience is aligned,
not that you always see that the grass on the other side may be
withered and less green – the point is to be able to put yourself
in another’s shoes, to see the sea of sorrow behind another
person’s eyes, the rampant wrath of all wraths, you
want to say that maybe you don’t understand everything,
that of course you don’t always hit the right chord, but that
you do feel it, yes, you feel it, even if the difference is a gap.
Never lost that resistance and yet able to grasp when it
isn’t your place, when you must kneel for a poem because
another person can make it more inhabitable; not out of
unwillingness, not out of dismay, but because you know
there is so much inequality, people still discriminated against,
what you want is fraternity, you want one fist, and maybe your
hand isn’t yet powerful enough, or maybe you should first take the hand
of another in reconciliation, you actively need to feel the hope that
you are doing something to improve the world, though you mustn’t
forget this: stand up again after kneeling and straighten together our backs.
(translated by Michelle Hutchinson)
Kevin has been a lot more conservative since he left MJ. I infer that his prior editors would not have published this post.
Don't know that Kevin has changed is views, but he has become more outspoken about them. Being retired and facing end of life health issues can do that to a person (ask me how I know).
My impression is that this is a post that Kevin would have written at MJ. I don’t think that mocking this kind of thing is something that he refrained from doing at MJ. Offhand, I can think of a number of times when Kevin’s been critical of “performative woke” culture. And this does seem eminently mockable.
Conservative? I'm not so sure that Kevin has turned Conservative...more biting maybe, but regardless....he does get and command my attention more.
Let us let Kevin be Kevin....he has changed from CalPundit to MJ to here over at Jabberwocking....as each of us moves through the thickness of time...we change (I Think, or I Propose). Best Wishes, Traveller
this is very stupid, but come on, Kevin, is it worth a blog post? who the hell cares what a random Barcelona publishing company chooses it's translators? what value do you think this post has to readers? i truly hope you haven't hopped on the right-wing "cancel culture is destroying our freedumbs!" band wagon.
The right wing hate being white and want to be ancient hebs instead. How is that for not woke. Cancel culture is dumb and needs destroyed.
Big Mormon Lost Tribe of Israel in Missouri energy.
Not every post has to be life or death.
no, but this is kevin's second post on this issue and does seem to be aligning with the very stupid rightwing "evil woke libruls are destroying our freedumbs" narrative.
Social Nationalism is coming wokeites. You'll be up the wall quickly.
If you’re going to translate a poem, you want a poet as translator. Fluency in the language is critically important, since poetry often relies on multiple meanings of certain words and terms. Those two requirements are difficult enough. Further restricting the translation to someone who is the same race as the original poet is not only unnecessary but demeans the original work: Amanda Gorman is a poet, not a “black” poet.
I can’t be the only white person who was powerfully moved by Gorman’s reading on Inauguration Day.
It saddens me that Europeans who don’t speak English are being denied the opportunity to read a poetic translation in their own language.
I identify as a cynical curmudgeon, so I assumed there was a young, black, Dutch translator looking for work behind this whole controversy.
Call Me By Your Suriname.
Ms Gorman needs to learn the target language, problem solved. Except maybe she won't have the experience of growing up with that language and all that it cultural accretion that would entail. Oh boy, maybe she'll have to convert religions, monetary systems...etc etc etc.
Good thing this attitude wasn't applied to the Hamilton play.
I've read a lot of poetry in my time. Also lots of translations. Getting a good translator for poetry is not easy. I was mildly interested in Amanda Gorman's poetry, but it sounded pretty simpy out loud at the inauguration. She waved her hands around and gave a poised rendition, but this is not Shakespeare sonnets or Keats or Frost or Langston Hughes or Gwendolyn Brooks. Still, I wish her the best. The publishers should lighten up. Her star may fade before they figure out who is allowed to translate her poetry into Dutch (!) or Catalan (!) or French or German or Hindi or whatever. In English it is very straightforward, easy to understand hearing it performed aloud. You could say that about Billy Collins, but his poems always have some bigger point to make, even if it's just a funny idea. I wonder if Collins is hard to translate?
100 years ago the idea of a black person being the translator of an important white person's writings would be declared unacceptable. Only a white could do it properly. Decades passed, and then a civil rights movement occurred in the 1960s, and we found the beautiful idea of striving for a colorblind society. But then in the early 21st century that idea was canceled, and everything became about one's race again. Wokeness arrived.
And then the brainwashing began, and the heretics were monitored, and parents met in secret groups out of concern for the woke training forced on their kids ...
https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Organic_Social