India Meets Ireland

[Liam]

Funny how the names of both countries begin with an "i," and their national flags employ the same set of colors: white, green and orange. But anyway.

The Irish poet and translator Gabriel Rosenstock is bringing out Rabindranath Tagore's collection Stray Birds in a Gaelic translation. The book should become available in a handsome paperback edition later this year.

A wonderful meeting of two fascinating cultures and a great piece of news for those able to read Irish Gaelic.

[Eric]

My only worry is that Rosenstock, while having an intriguing family background involving German, will be translating a Bengali poet very probably via the English. There have been various translators from Bengali (Bangla) into English, but the early ones apparently took great liberties with Tagore's originals. How near Rosenstock gets to the spirit of the original poems very much depends on how good the translations into the intervening languages are.

There is an awful lot of this secondary translation of poetry. I just hope that Rosenstock is using reliable English translations, unless he happens to know Bengali.

[Liam]

Eric, Tagore translated Stray Birds into English himself, so I'm guessing Rosenstock's versions will be based on the author's own translations into English. Yeah, I don't think Rosenstock can read Bengali, but he is a genius with the Irish language, his poetry is amazing.

[Eric]

Being a genius with Irish Gaelic does not necessarily imply that he is a genius at translating poetry from Bengali via the English, or, even if the poems were translated by the author himself, that they are going to be perfect. I think I have demonstrated on these threads on several occasions how translators can sometimes stray a good way from the original poem, but, as no one can check up on them (how many of us know Bengali and Gaelic?), we are taking both Tagore's own translations and those of Rosenstock, at face value, without delving any deeper.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that has really brought Tagore to readers of Irish Gaelic. If Rosenstock is good, this is a real achievement.

[Liam]

translators can sometimes stray a good way

Stray birds, eh?