TO KNOW ANOTHER language is the best, and most exciting, way of discovering the strengths — and limitations — of the one with which one has grown up. Writing within constraints — of length, rhythm, rhyme perhaps, stress and repetition — is another. Translating poetry is famously both impossible and wildly rewarding and interesting.
It is an exercise both in exact reading and in skilful writing. I have come to value my own translators as my wisest readers — they ask searching questions about precise meanings, they hear the rhythms of long stretches of interwoven writing, they send lists of alternative translations of particular words, all of which add a little meaning in the other language here, and take it away there, all of which are possible, none of which are perfect equivalents. Sometimes they reveal things that I had not understood or reflected on, strengths and weaknesses of my English, meanings I had thought were self-evident, which become truly problematic in Norwegian, or Spanish, or Japanese.
I think of translating poetry as a series of difficult decisions, one after the other. If you love a poem, you love the sound of it in the inner ear, you love the shape of it inside your head, the way each word changes all the words round it, singing or muttering or shouting.
Putting it into English entails a whole series of difficult decisions — do you try to keep a strictly rhymed form, or do you go for faithful words in free verse? Have you any right to add an image of your own as an equivalent image in English of some ancient Greek war cry or modern German street argot? Another delightful aspect of translating into English is the doubleness of our inheritance — we so often have the choice between Germanic or Anglo-Saxon bluntness and Latin elegance. (Both qualities can be found in the other vocabulary also of course, Latin bluntness and Germanic elegance.) Our language is flexible, craggy, sinuous, abstract, airy, rapid, ponderous — and can be discovered in all these aspects in finding equivalents for strange and unEnglish words and thought forms.
The Times Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation was created partly because its founders felt that languages were less and less taught in schools and universities, and that translated literature was less and less read and talked about. At first, for these reasons, it was confined to translators under the age of 30. I am glad to see that this has been changed, with splendid results. The age-range of the entrants in 2005 was ten to 94. Twenty-seven languages were offered, from Anglo-Saxon to Urdu, from Japanese to Tagalog, from Greek and Latin to Persian, Welsh and Esperanto. There are prizes for the young — one for 14 and under, one for 18 and under, that encourage those at school to use the skills they are learning. But there is no age limit on learning about language.
Advertisement
A splendidly intelligent part of the prize is that translators are asked for a commentary on their poem and form of translation. These are really illuminating. The whole idea is to make us think about language, poetry, and the English language in particular. A good translator must make everything problematic and strange, and then hear the poem singing again, with a difference.
HOW TO ENTER
Entrants must submit a translation of a poem from any language, modern or classical, into English, with a commentary of no more than 300 words covering the reason for choosing the poem and the difficulties that they encountered.
There will be three prizes in the Open and 18-and-under categories and one in the 14-and-under category, ranging from £50 to £500. A charge of £3 will be made for each entry (under 18s exempted), to arrive no later than May 26, 2006. Results will be published by October 28. Further details and an entry form are on www.stephen-spender.org, or can be obtained from 3, Old Wish Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN21 4JX. How to enter