Translation

I am about to grumble a bit. Bear with me, please; it won’t be long.
In informative texts, form and content are inseparable. You may have discovered the ultimate answer to life, the universe & everything (which, as we all know, is 42), but if you publish your discovery in gobbledygook nobody will be interested, except for a few zealots who will be far too much interested and start religious wars about it. How you write matters as much as what you write about. This is why I have noticed with increasing alarm a recent linguistic development in written Dutch: the abuse of a poor, innocent stylistic device called ‘historic present’. English only uses it in informal speech and tabloid headlines, Dutch also in formal (but never in very formal) written prose. The ‘historic present’ involves, as my beloved Principles & Pitfalls of English Grammar (by J. Lachlan Mackenzie, Coutinho 2002) tells me, ‘ …..using the present to invoke the past…….it is generally regarded as making the Dutch prose more vivid.’ [p.39]. And so it does – if used sparingly and with understanding. That is precisely what increasing numbers of journalists and others will not or cannot do. Our local newspaper is full of clumsy sentences like ‘Fifty years ago Mr Jansen goes to the village school’. Even a respectable popular-history magazine I subscribe to includes articles about events in the (distant) past written almost entirely in the present tense. ‘Julius Caesar is being murdered in March 44BC’. Poor man; dead for ages and still being murdered.
Like English, Dutch depends mainly on verbal tenses to ‘reflect in language our perception of time’ (again according to Principles & Pitfalls of English Grammar [p.37]). Other languages use other devices, but if we Dunglish wish to make ourselves understood we have to stick to what our own languages allow. One of these verbal tenses is the present tense, as in ‘It is now time for lunch’ (very true, incidentally). This present tense is a wily beast, in Dutch perhaps even more so than in English. Take for instance the Dutch sentence ‘Hij gaat naar huis’. The word ‘gaat’ is present tense third person singular of the verb ‘gaan’ (English speakers probably guessed as much). The sentence usually means ‘He is going home’ (present), but in other contexts it may also mean ‘He will be going home’ (future), and even occasionally ‘He must go home!'(command, very much present). In this, the Dutch present tense resembles the English, with a few tricky exceptions which have fooled me many times and will continue to do so. Now, keeping this in mind, imagine the confusion and the potential misunderstanding when a text which deals exclusively with past events is written entirely in the present tense. Or, even worse, imagine what this Persistent Present State does to a text which deals mainly with past events but also includes a few current issues. The poor reader is left to work out what happened after what, what is now and what was long ago, and who did what before, or after, or perhaps simultaneously with, somebody else. Most readers are smart enough to eventually figure it out, assisted by a sprinkling of ‘before’, ‘afterwards’, ‘finally’ or ‘the next year’ the writer has (hopefully!) been kind enough to add. But if the reader understands the intended meaning of such a text it will be despite its style, not because of it. Instead of making the text more intelligible, as good writing should do, its style has made it less so. There is probably a textbook for journalists somewhere which says ‘Use the historic present! It makes your texts more lively’. Well, yes, up to a point. There is nothing wrong with the ‘historic present’ as a stylistic device, but as with so many other things overindulgence is a fault – and that is precisely what these writers have done. As we Dutch might put it, ‘Ze hebben een klok horen luiden maar weten niet waar de klepel hangt’. Very true indeed.
Grumble, grumble, grumble. It really is time for my lunch.

A while ago I read an interesting and moving article in the Guardian Weekly. It was about Native American tribes in the USA who are trying to revive their languages, many of which are nearly extinct. It is too late for Eyak, about which I wrote earlier, but for others there may still be hope now that many tribes are regaining their confidence and the deliberate suppression of native languages by the dominant English-speaking culture is slowly abating.
You may find the the article on The Guardian’s website. It is well worth reading.

There is translation, and then there is translation. Translating an archaeological text from one language into another is relatively straightforward. Translating a poem from one language into another is anything but that. In poetry, at least in good poetry, everything matters desperately. Words, word order, rhythm, sound, allusions and associations and metaphors: they all combine to form an intricate web of constantly shifting colours and shapes. Remove one strand, and the fabric unravels. Replace one thread, and the fabric has lost its identity.
Translating poetry is like attempting to weave cloth which closely resembles the original, but on a different type of loom and with different techniques, materials and colours. Assuming it can be done at all (which is subject to debate) it requires expert weavers. All others should give the tapestry-loom a wide berth. A badly translated archaeological text may still be useful (although I hope none of those will ever leave my desk), but a badly translated poem is merely horrible. That is why I don’t ‘do’ poetry professionally. I fear to damage beautiful textiles beyond repair and thereby to insult the original weavers.
That being said, I must confess that I do dabble a little bit in private, to sharpen my mind and to remind myself from time to time of my limitations. Here is one of my attempts. The victim is a well-known poem by Ernest Dawson (1867-1900), an English poet of the so-called ‘decadent’ school. The subject is the brevity of life and the oblivion that follows. Surely that appeals to archaeologically minded souls. Judge for yourselves, dear readers, and forgive me.

Original text:

‘Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam’*

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

*from Ode I.4 by Quintus Horatius Flaccus/Horace, 65 – 8BC (my translation).

My translation into Dutch:

‘Het korte geheel van het leven verbiedt ons op lange duur te hopen’

Lang duurt het niet, het huilen en het lachen,
Liefde, begeerte en haat:
Me dunkt, met ons hebben ze niets van doen
Als we door de poort gaan.

Lang zijn ze niet, de dagen van wijn en rozen:
Uit mist en droom
Doemt onze weg op, even, lost dan weer op
in een droom.