Thank you for your profound answer to my question about Mayakovsky's title translation of his poem. My method of translating any author is to be as precise as possible. I am a double of my chosen author, and I can't permit my emotions, associative knowledge, erudition, and so on to the subject of my translation. How did Mayakosky relate to Tennison's poem, E. Butler's art, or the roll-call in the army? He angrily asked those who had begun the war to take the responsibility. It is so simple. I prefer Vl. Nabokov's method of literal translation. Thank you.
Your comment has sparked a further set of really interesting ideas and questions over what lies behind a translation, and the idea of the translator as the double of the author, and how this in turn shapes the principles of translation. I agree that Mayakovsky would have been attracted towards Nabokov’s arguments on translation. However, Crnjanki whom I have been translating would have probably disagreed. No doubt my immersion in Crnjanski’s writings and his head implicitly influenced my translation of Mayakovsky’s poem since it was undertaken as a footnote to Crnjanski’s A Journal of a Čarnojević which contains this passage I have translated as follows:-
‘But the prison, the military exercises and the stinking, fetid barracks, all lice-infested and black, how little all this affects me these days. I am beguiled by the water here, and the trees behind the ramparts melting into the yellow-green marshes where the grass is so soft, dry and warm. And I love this charmed life of mine I have sensed since last year after I returned from those mud-sodden, youthful Polish forests where so many others were left behind mangled and bloody, their skulls smashed. And full of memories, I write of them proudly, like some Casanova, the roll-call of those who burned in the fire of life, and those who were utterly disappointed. On dark nights, in small huts or cabins where I am on guard duty with a few lads, I write volumes on all those I mournfully remember.’
Thank you for your profound answer to my question about Mayakovsky's title translation of his poem. My method of translating any author is to be as precise as possible. I am a double of my chosen author, and I can't permit my emotions, associative knowledge, erudition, and so on to the subject of my translation. How did Mayakosky relate to Tennison's poem, E. Butler's art, or the roll-call in the army? He angrily asked those who had begun the war to take the responsibility. It is so simple. I prefer Vl. Nabokov's method of literal translation. Thank you.
Your comment has sparked a further set of really interesting ideas and questions over what lies behind a translation, and the idea of the translator as the double of the author, and how this in turn shapes the principles of translation. I agree that Mayakovsky would have been attracted towards Nabokov’s arguments on translation. However, Crnjanki whom I have been translating would have probably disagreed. No doubt my immersion in Crnjanski’s writings and his head implicitly influenced my translation of Mayakovsky’s poem since it was undertaken as a footnote to Crnjanski’s A Journal of a Čarnojević which contains this passage I have translated as follows:-
‘But the prison, the military exercises and the stinking, fetid barracks, all lice-infested and black, how little all this affects me these days. I am beguiled by the water here, and the trees behind the ramparts melting into the yellow-green marshes where the grass is so soft, dry and warm. And I love this charmed life of mine I have sensed since last year after I returned from those mud-sodden, youthful Polish forests where so many others were left behind mangled and bloody, their skulls smashed. And full of memories, I write of them proudly, like some Casanova, the roll-call of those who burned in the fire of life, and those who were utterly disappointed. On dark nights, in small huts or cabins where I am on guard duty with a few lads, I write volumes on all those I mournfully remember.’