Writer Karessa Ramos ponders whether translation is really a good idea. Or is it just a matter of overthinking or just the feeling of guilt when missing out on some words along the way?
There’s no worse month for an overthinker like me than August, Buwan ng Wika. Not even Mercury Retrograde could make me lose as much sleep. This year, translation keeps me up at night. But it’s not because of my usual unrest for “that which cannot be translated”. It’s more basic than that.
Is translation really a good idea?
Why translate?
Two years ago, I was one of the panelists for the VIII Cultura y Ciudadanía Seminar, organized by the Ministry of Culture (Spain). It was for the roundtable “Glosario. ¿Cómo abordar la dificultad de nombrar y articular en común una realidad de cuerpos diversos?” or “Glossary: How to address the difficulty of naming and articulating in common a reality of diverse bodies?”.
As a writer of color and coming from one of the former colonies of Spain yet the ONLY one who was not taught its language, I asserted our right to understand and be understood.
I pointed out that for migrants like me who arrived in the country lacking language skills, translation played a big role for our survival.
I added that since Tagalog is not a “prestigious” language, we are also far behind being understood. Because aside from Noli Me Tangere, are there any other Filipino-created materials — from any field — translated in Spanish?
I warned that left unaddressed, it could lead to a vicious cycle or worse, magnify an already existing one: a community facing a language barrier with limited opportunities for integration (livelihood, leisure, etc …), rendered practically invisible, therefore, is seldom considered in policy-making and ends up being pushed further towards marginalization and exclusion. I ended with, “Exactly how many Filipino cultural practitioners are present in this three-day event?”. Applause.
I felt so proud of my speech and was full of hope as I acknowledged my co-panelist who was meditating on their statement. It was Francisco “Pancho” Godoy, PhD, a Chilean researcher, writer and curator with a strong decolonial line of work and whom I highly admire. They thanked me and, very kindly but just as resolutely, challenged my posture by asserting their people’s right to “not be understood” as this understanding caused much of their ancestral knowledge to be appropriated by Europeans. I was made to see how translation endangers the preservation of whatever pre colonial legacy they have left, once exposed to the predictable erasure and invisibility by the West.
His argument hit me with the weight of its truth. We applauded but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move… At least, I didn’t need to translate that body language: Tenía razón. They’re right.
What we translate, we create
Fast forward to last month, I went to Berlin for a recital-discussion so I had to translate a few Spanish poems into English. Among them, an untitled one that depicts the agony of learning how to survive in a foreign language where even hopes and dreams end up morphing into an unrecognizable to-do list. During the post event, one of the guests pointed out its “inaccurate” English version.
(Sin título)
No entiendo tu latido,
corazón desplazado.
He de traducir un sueño
a este idioma prestado.
Otro deseo postizo
subtitulado.
Untitled)
You to me are so abstract,
my displaced heart.
Who decodes your rhythm,
nodes and sinoatrial dream?
At the tip of this borrowed tongue
subtitles overhang.
(Walang pamagat)
Hindi ko maisalin ang
iyong tibok sa tinig,
puso kong nahalinhan.
Ano nga ba ang kahulugan?
Naglalambitin, mga kataga
sa aking dila.
I felt like a child caught making mischief. But I stood by an artistic decision and explained that as a writer, I prioritize storytelling over precision, while aiming to preserve the poem’s aesthetic. I ruled out translating “idioma prestado” to “borrowed language” so I could use the prettier words: “nodes”, “sinoatrial” and “dream” ( “sinoatrial node” refers to a part of the heart’s anatomy).
As for the last two lines, I deviated from the original text to invite imagining subtitles hanging on the tip of someone’s tongue, as the directly translated “Another false desire, subtitled” would take too long to kick in. Plus, it sounded ghastly.
The Tagalog version was based on both the original and the English ones. Same story, same musicality. The only difference was that it was more explicit on the quest to merge the “languages of the heart and the mouth”.
Then, Pancho’s statement came to mind and I had to ask myself: By doing this, what parts of the original story was I actually sharing? What parts was I hiding?
It was hard, but I yielded to the fact that one can only know what the translator wants — and is able — to be made known.
Is translation still a good idea?
Translation responds to our incessant search for knowledge through the (false) sense of acquiring it. But is it knowledge per se? After all, we receive the translator’s interpretation of the information they’ve adapted for our understanding…
Any A1-level student knows that “latido” is equivalent to “beat”. But for me (the translator), “beat” is homonymous to other terms, and could conjure completely different images I was afraid would contaminate the poem’s essence. So I chose “rhythm”; it sounded and felt right.
Words hold a particular story for each of us, and translators entrust their own relationship with words when doing their job.
I was battered as a child so I’m not a fan of the term “beat”.
So maybe translation is a good idea, especially when seen as a tool that could bring us closer to some sources of knowledge, and when we accept that what we gain from it could be enriched by allowing what we “know” to be contested.
But think twice before taking my word for it (pun intended). At the end of the day, I’m just an obsessed word-freak who still gushes over her treasured version of Anaïs Nin’s “Little Birds” in Spanish and Fito Paez’s “Track-track” in Portuguese.
Columnist’s note: For further information, check out this online conference with poets Natalie Diaz and Marilyn Nelson, together with author Ken Liu.
What's Your Reaction?
