Translating Charles Bukowski into Faroese

[hdw]

I put another Faroese translation of a Bukowski poem at the Bukowski thread at Writers, but maybe this is a more suitable location for the third one.

This translation is by Petur Pólsson, who is described at the back of this issue of Vencil as (my translation) born in 1973, composer, poet, translator and bold (djarvur) teacher in the school at Giljanes. Maybe the kids there are especially challenging??

For fun I tried back-translating this from Faroese myself, without looking at the original English, and was pretty pleased with the result (but that's not for publication):-

so tú vilt vera rithøvundur?

kemur tað ikki brestandi úr tær
hóast alt sum mótvirkar,
so ger tað ikki.
uttan so at tað kemur óboðið úr tínum
hjarta og tínum sínni og tínum munni
og tínum innvølum,
so ger tað ikki.
situr tú fleiri tímar og starir at
telduskíggjanum og grópar eftir orðum,
ger tað ikki.
gert tú tað fyri pening ella
viðurkenning,
ger tað ikki.
gert tú tað fyri at fáa kvinnur
í tína song,
so ger tað ikki.
noyðist tú at sita har og
endurskriva tað umaftur og
umaftur og aftur,
so ger tað ikki.
er tað ein strævin byrða bert at
hugsa um at gera tað,
ger tað ikki.
roynir tú at skriva sum
onkur annar,
gloym so alt um tað.

mást tú bíða til tað
floymir úr tær,
so bíða tolin.
kemur tað ongantíð
floymandi úr tær,
so ger okkurt annað.
skalt tú fyrst lesa tað fyri
konuni, damuni ella sjeikinum
ella foreldrunum ella nøkrum
øðrum yvirhøvur,
ert tú ikki til reiðar.

ver ikki sum so mangir høvundar,
ver ikki sum fleiri túsund menniskju
sum rópa seg høvundar.
ver ikki tryggur og keðiligur og
sjálvglaður, ver ikki uppetin
av sjálvalski.
heimsins bókasøvn hava
geispað seg í svøvn
av tínum slagi,
legg ikki aftur at tí.
ger tað ikki.
kemur tað ikki úr sál tíni sum missil.
uttan so at vera kúrrur gjørdi teg
svakan ella sjálvmordara ella drápsmann,
so ger tað ikki.
uttan so at sólin innan í tær
brennir tínar innvølir,
so ger tað ikki.

tá tíðin er komin,
og um tú ert kosin,
vil tað henda av sær
sjálvum og halda á
at gera tað til tú doyrt
ella tað doyr
í tær.
tað er ongin annar háttur.
og hevur aldri verið.

Petur Pólsson týddi (Petur Pólsson translated)


So You Want To Be A Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

[Eric]

I like the idea of private back-translation as a challenge, and as Harry already knows, I am all for Faroese on principle, although I have not yet explored the full arcanities of the pronunciation.

But I am a little more cautious with the author I am wont to call Fukoffski. That poem (which has been translated into Faroese) does seem to suggest a kind of "get off my patch" approach to groundlings and other riff-raff that are not seedy and pock-marked enough to be called upon by the gods to write poetry for real. It's all sound advice from the master, but one does receive the impression that he fancies himself as one of the Chosen Few, the élite (complete with acute accent), the Oobermensh, and so on.

I read to my glee just now in Standpoint:



W. H. Auden, when asked what he did for a living, would reply: "I'm a medieval historian." He was typical among modern poets in being embarrassed by his job. While accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, Wislawa Szymborska said she had met only one poet — Joseph Brodsky — who liked calling himself one, and that was because it had got him locked up by the Soviet Union.


Source: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/books-december-10-taller-when-prone-les-murray-high-priest-of-poetry-daniel-hitchens

I'm sure that if asked what he did for a living, Fukoffski would reply: "a full-time genius and æsthete", even though photos make him look like a down-and-out ex-window-cleaner.

[hdw]

I don't think much of Bukowski's claim to be called a "poet", apart from the fact that he follows the basic rule of printing his text in the middle of the page with a wide margin on either side (the main criterion for poetry these days, it seems to me). But from the point of view of translatability, he has the advantage of using quite simple language, so the target language - in this case, Faroese - uses simple language too. I think it's quite amusing that this nation of fishermen and crofters has academics busily working on producing home-grown versions of the likes of Bukowski, but of course there is an understandable sociolinguistic-cum-political agenda here: they are thereby proving to the world that Faroese is a full-grown language, not just a barbarous dialect. Similarly, a lot of literary activity in the Scots language field has consisted and consists of translating foreign texts and rendering English texts (even the likes of Paddington Bear) into Scots, giving it some credibility as a language (so the argument goes).

Harry

[Eric]

I agree with you, Harry that you don't always read the most sophisticated works of literature when you're using the book for language-learning purposes. Judging by the English alone, that poem is straightforward, and that is indeed what you want when learning a language. The novel I'm reading just now in order to pick up vocabulary is somewhat more sophisticated, involving emotion and lesbianism, depression and smoking, and paragraphs of make-up, which I, not being a tranny, find a trifle hard to get through. But the author is engaging.

[Liam]

Why not Anaïs Nin into Basque? :)

[hdw]

Why not Anaïs Nin into Basque? :)

You mean you think it hasn't been done? I thought that was high up on ETA's list of cultural desiderata.

Harry