Translated poetry challenges meaning

Translating poetry is both an art and a debate. Opinions differ on what precisely a word means to begin with, and better yet, what word in the English tongue most effectively approximates the original word's meaning. As ModFest founder Adene Wilson '69 explained, "You have to understand the culture of the language you're working from, so that you understand the subtleties of the moods and sentences."

Students delivered their various interpretations of poems in this year's "Readings: Translation as an Art." The interdepartmental readings were performed on Wednesday, Jan. 25 at 5 p.m. as part of Vassar's annual ModFest.

The involved students read aloud Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian and Spanish poems in their original tongue and then reread the poems in English, in translations devised by the foreign language students themselves.

The translations and performances were prepared with the help of the language fellows from the participating departments. The event also included a musical performance from the Mahagonny Choral Ensemble, a student-run singing group conducted by Naomi Dubin '12, to open the evening of poetry, and even more music sung by the language fellows together to conclude the evening.

Translators must reconcile the vast differences between any two cultures when they go about translating a given text. Poetry especially, with its attention to precison in meaning, sound and style beyond prosaic communication only further complicates translating. And no matter how incisive a translated text turns out to be, there will always be loose and missing ends.

Even communication itself, not just connotative word choices, differ. As Japanese Language Fellow Yumi Katsuyama noted, "It's hard for people who aren't Japanese to understand these Japanese ways of communication. Sometimes, Japanese people can guess each other's feelings without saying anything. It's called ‘ishindenshin.'" Ishindenshin refers to non-verbal communication as a Japanese cultural value over explicit verbal communication.

Roman Kopit, the language fellow for the Jewish Studies Department, was particularly excited about the event's inclusion of Hebrew, a language that had not been featured in previous ModFest readings. He hopes that Hebrew will remain an important part of Vassar's foreign language curriculum.

"The event is important because it gives stage to the Hebrew language and allows those of us who study Hebrew to have an audience," Kopit said. Kopit explained that the hardest part of preparing for the event was training his four students to read clearly and articulately, and to pronounce every word correctly.

Kopit enabled his students to formulate their own interpretations of the poems they read, using their very own poetry. However, allowing that much creative control proved a formidable task for his students.

Maintaining a poem's formal integrity—its sounds, flow and meaning, for exampe—after any translation is a difficult task, even for the most seasoned of translators. For this reason, German Language Fellow Eva Hansel approached translation as a lively and collaborative enterprise, rather than a solitary exercise.

Hansel argued that spirited debate and discussion among student translators with competing opinions was crucial to the translation process and its ultimate result. "What makes translation better, more interesting, is when you have more than one opinion," Hansel said.

At her instruction, Hansel's students worked together translating each of their poems. With certain works, students decided that the poem's meter and rhythm were more important to maintain than the rhyme; with other poems, they concluded the exact opposite. But whatever the outcome, each translated poem was a collective effort.

Hansel's presentation focused on urban life during the Weimar Republic. While students read their poems aloud, scenes from Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City were projected on the wall behind them. The film coincides, chronologically, with each of the poems that Hansel selected for her students, and also illustrated many of the same facets of urban life discernable inside the very poems: the anonymity, curiosity and excitement of big cities.

According to Hansel, the poems may address similar themes, but many of them are remarkably different from each other in mood and tone and style. Some poems are enthusiastic and expressive, others melancholic and others sarcastic. Retaining these distinctive moods in the translated versions of the poems was as challenging and painstaking a task as it was crucial and rewarding.

Wilson initiated ModFest 10 years ago, in the hopes of instilling a feeling of pride in Vassar's varied and active arts programs. After retiring from teaching in 2002, Wilson began taking courses in Vassar's German Studies Department, where she became acquainted with several students and language fellows in this process. She decided that a collaborative poetry project would prove not only worthwhile, but also immensely helpful for students hoping to achieve fluency in a foreign language.

"This is my gift to Vassar as an alum," wrote Wilson in an emailed statement. Wilson believed that the poetry readings and translations have been a great success in years past, and expected such a strong event to continue to do well.

"It was such a success that I didn't want to do it again right away the next year," Wilson noted. "It was like a movie that was so intense and strong in your mind afterward that you don't want to watch it again for a while." Though, luckily for students, they will surely watch it again in next year's performance.