13 abr 2005

Under the influence of Lawrence Venuti, I was for a time a proponent of foreignizing translation. Now I'm drifting back toward the "domesticating" pole. Here's one I've been working on today:

Harder to wake up
with nobody
keeping watch over me.

No point
in wiping the sand
from my lids yet.

We're still in love
with the blind body
of night.

Cats too
dream of colors
they have never known.

[from Intravenus by Lola Velasco and Amalia Iglesias]

The point is to include nothing that you or I wouldn't write in a poem originating in English. That might mean not writing anything you wouldn't actually "say" out loud in English. Colloquialness is not the gold standard, but it is a useful way of measuring. Thus no translatorese, or allowing Spanish to exert pressure on English. As a scholar I'm fond of translations that refuse to domesticate, but as a reader I'm not.

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