Translation in Tongues
This project is an experiment in using the mess of my multilingual brain to my advantage to unlock the paratextual poem 'Chantel's Room' by Nat Raha.[1] My goal is to create a mostly English translation of the English source text, achieved by translation as an act of reading– or else translation as a somewhat impractical interpretative tool. I will translate the poem first into German, then Italian, then French and, finally back to English. My variants will go in this language order (from most to least fluent) to gain distance from the source text, each retranslation offering a new lens to view the poem through. Structurally, I will present excerpts of my translations - which can be found, in full, in my appendix - interspersed with commentary, followed by my "final" poem and concluding thoughts. I want to visualise my process in a call and response format, each translation articulating not an answer but a question the source text poses. I will respond to these questions through prose-poetry, wanting to illustrate and explain my process in a similar way to the source text. I do not presume the existence of one true answer or interpretation of the poem but want to find one that is mine, helped by the languages and personal memories entangled in the linguistic. For the purpose of emulating Raha, my commentary will be framed by the same film framing the source text- Je Tu Il Elle, a 1975 French film by Chantel Akerman.[2] Raha's poem is an ekphrasis: a translation from non-verbal signs to verbal- my translation will thus, in Roman Jakobson's term,[3] be an intralingual translation of an existent ekphrasis. The creative approach to my commentary is inspired by Kate Briggs' This Little Art,[4] specifically her linguistic playfulness and the idea of translation being an act of writing.
I also want to discuss translation as an act of "queering" source texts. BJ Epstein poses the (rhetorical) question: "What does ‘queer’ have to do with translation?".[5] Beyond translating a text dealing with queerness in the sense of sexuality and gender, Pamela Demory defines "queering" as "to make it strange or odd, but also to turn or transform it."[6] translation, thus, can be seen as queering the source text. By queering I thus do not mean creating a same-sex storyline in translation where there is none in the source text, as this would be redundant in the case of Chantel's Room, which stems from the anthology 100 Queer Poems.[7] Chantel's Room is a poem that arguably
incorporates queerness in all of its definitions: transforming the film into poetry, utilising its setting as a metaphor for transitioning, an extensive play with form and grammar. Further queering such a source text is a challenge I am very happy to accept. Wolfgang Iser's phenomenology of reading[8] stipulates the existence of gaps in a text that the reader needs to fill– I aspire to stuff the gaps of the text with my queerly multilingual self until it bursts, bursts, yielding my intralingual translation.
Chantel's Zimmer
i.
mono
chrome & zucker / nicht
metaphern, wir. pro saische,
langsame töne, isolieren
„korress
pondieren
wirbelsäulen inert aus
stellung, mauer
-n so nackt wie wir sein könnten, türkis
eine erinnerung / töne re-kodiert ,
vermindert
bei ihrem nabel speist &
kurvt unsere queeren hüften weiter, lässt nicht
unsere untätigkeit unser fleisch wegnehmen
singulär-uns. unklarheit, du wasser
,
verlangsamt gedankens tresor & tempo
. teile
Waffen im Raum indem wir bezeugen
, die Arbeit dieses (wieder) kleine
Melodien, die wir einander füttern
you spoon the powdered sugar into my waiting mouth,
bird-feed me morsels of song melodies in moll’s house sonorous hollows.
you, my multilingual self-
destruct each time your foot graces the promised [eng]
land, an intimate muffling of vatersprache and madre lingua, tongues held tight between thumb and fore
finger, father fore boding the bodies' persistence for present participles yearning for active partici pation, a touch-a-touch-a-touch of ing and behold your o's, mouth agape with unspilled syllables, split.
in this, the chamber called
mine alone
the furniture seems to rearrange itself each time you allow my gaze to drift my grasping hands lack resolve to fix
this protean charm green, blue, turquoise
black and white
touchstarved, a satt un
satisfaction of unsaturated colours standing attention for more than the in
substantial sweetness of home
ii.
negazioni di problema, l'inerte
scomparendo momentaneamente
come disperazione come attività la
pelle mobile t es a
a impallidenda costola-
de-gabbiata, la stoffa quotidiana abbattuta tra
frazioni distillate & il pensiero che canta
la poesia degli amici
& gli uomini loro hanno soffiato per salario, noi
siamo contro il criminale in se stesso–
I free myself from caustic comfort
hitch-hike a ride with con sonants and rhythm w[h]ore my self out to space bars and en jambements, legs akimbo, metre running away from blank walls and the choir that follows redun
dance of inelegant tumblings a constant hum
bling, brilliance imagined in wind
shield reflection , distorted.
man a vehicle for trans portation, devoid of a real purpose you feed me spoonfuls of salt, coarse and un
pleasantly hyper-aware of your sub
text, fabric unravelled exposing inscribed skin I can't help but kiss
d'alcool & brise-vent cinématiques
lançons nos cadres
autoroutes , escaliers européens
décor accordé , demo-sismique
de vouloir sur amis / amour
ludique , écrit encore à comme nous dé
sirions telles chairs change place s
ouvenait, corps nos / jette
lumière sur menuisière sourire déposant
I scratch my skin like the margins of the letter you sent me
I am earth quaking for a mere caress
I find your bed
dig in my teeth and find layers of grime, decay expertly woven into flesh and
bone, beauty concealed by your yellowed wallpaper we strip away my linguamnesia
[again] find gaps between your letters and
stuff them full of promises our coupling polyphonic voices entwined in all most harmony there may be dragons but
I speak dragonese only armature the mighty pen, cover me in graphite lead
me to poison wells into l[e]aden limbs so heavy with fruit , no longer out of reach. we host a feast and lay your bare self across the chameleon couch
metaphors mixed
Chantal's Chambre
mono
chromes & powdered sugar / not just
metaphors, us. pro
saic slow tones, isolate
my correspondence, caress
my spinal cord's inert expo
sure, wall
-s as bare as we might be, turquoise
our remembrance / shades recoded–
diminished?
I feast by her navel &
we curve our queer hips further, I won't
let inaction take our flesh away
multiply-us. fuzz, you water!
slow the thought's treasury & pace
. shared
armed in the room we witness it
, the work of this (again)
small sounds we feed to each other
negating the hitch, the inert fading
as momentary as despair as activity the
moving dermis taught to feel the (im)paling rib uncaged, the daily fabrication felled between
fragments we've distilled & the thought that sung
the poem of friends
& the dicks we've sucked for wages, they
are against the sinner in himself––
of wine & wind-break cinematics
hurl our frames up the Autobahn , unionised stairwells,
tuned décor , demo-seismic premo
nation of wanting friends & fucking
ludic , write again to how we des
IRE SUCH FLESHES shifting space
remember: bodies our / throws
sunlight on woodwork, smile
dropping
off
Concluding Thoughts
Although I am not suggesting this perhaps convoluted approach to interpretation as a widespread tool, with its practicality questionable and my specific approach highly personal, my multilingual translations have helped me to understand and thus translate Chantel's Room. As even the introduction to this project proclaims, I have long seen my multilingualism as messy, often annoying in its seeming insistence to always be in the wrong language, the wrong time and space. Simultaneously, I have always been aware of my privilege in the matter– I love language and my many homes. Is, perhaps, some amount of mental chaos a desirable quality for a translator? Like Erin Moure, I cannot live in one language:[9] why should I restrict my poetry and translation work to such monolingualism? In a culture and literary market in which multilingualism is often suppressed due to politically-charged linguistic hierarchies (as Don Mee Choi explores in I'm OK I'm Pig)[10] any foray into multilingualism is a step in subverting these hierarchies. My strategy could go further both as subversion and as a method of investigation and I am keen to find another text that asks for such a translation strategy.
By emulating and foregrounding some of Raha's poetics (such as her enjambments, her multilingualism and alliteration) in both my intralingual translation and my commentary, I have attempted to make the poem both mine and hers– a collaboration instead of a conquest. I wonder if my "final" translation is still too close to the source text- is there still a barrier in my incorporation of my other languages? One might argue that I am as much the creator of Chantal's Chambre as Pierre Menard is the author of Don Quixote;[11] my response would be that maybe my interlingual translation can be comprised of not only my final poem, but also the accompanying "commentary". In fact, my whole project and the source text can be seen as a translation of Je Tu Il Elle. The queering of the source text occurs more in my commentary poetry than the translation itself, my attempt at dismantling both the poem and my translation process resulting in a piece that Gerard Genette[12] would define as highly meta-textual.
Cee (he/she/they) is a poet-translator with a passion for finding the borders between self & other, translation & invention and frog & toad. Cee is open to a new translation project (whether German or Italian), so hit them up @ceecomini on instagram for your translinguistic needs!
Bibliography
Akerman, Chantal. "Je Tu Il Elle." Archive.org, 1975. Video. https://archive.org/details/je-tul-il-elle.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Borges, Jorge Luis. Fictions. London: J. Calder, 1985.
Briggs, Kate. This Little Art. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018. Accessed May 22, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Calleja, Jen. "Verfreundungseffekt: Once More With Feeling — Sophie Collins' Currently & Emotion." The Quietus, November 27, 2016. https://thequietus.com/articles/21396-
verfreundungseffekt-literature-translation-sophie-collins-test-centre.
Choi, Don Mee. "Translation in Process: From “I’m OK, I’m Pig”." Lantern Review 6 (2014): 41–
52.
Demory, Pamela, Queer/Adaptation: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Pamela Demory, Springer International Publishing AG, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://
ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uea/detail.action?docID=5710161.
Epstein, BJ. In Queer in Translation, edited by B. J. Epstein, and Robert Gillett, Taylor & Francis
Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uea/detail.action? docID=4779323.
Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Iser, Wolfgang. In Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Edited by Nigel Wood and David Lodge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/ lib/uea/detail.action?docID=1710621.
Jakobson, Roman. "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation." In The Translation Studies Reader, 156– 61. 4th ed. Fourth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2021. |: Routledge, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429280641-19.
Kennedy, David. "Ink & After." Poetics Today 39, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 319–35. https://doi.org/
10.1215/03335372-4324481.
McLennan, Rob. "Multiple Effects: An Interview With Erín Moure on Translation." The Ploughshares Blog, August 26, 2017. https://blog.pshares.org/multiple-effects-an-interview-witherin-moure-on-translation/.
Raha, Nat. "Chantel's Room". In 100 Queer Poems, edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. Penguin Random House, 2022.
Robertson, Eric. "Writing in Tongues: Multilingual Poetry and Self-Translation in France From Dada to the Present." Nottingham French Studies 56, no. 2 (July 2017): 119–38. https://doi.org/
10.3366/nfs.2017.0175.
APPENDIX
Chantel's Zimmer
i.
mono
chrome & zucker / nicht metaphern, wir. pro saische, langsame töne, isolieren
„ korress pondieren wirbelsäulen inert aus stellung, mauer
-n so nackt wie wir sein könnten, türkis eine erinnerung / töne re-kodiert ,
vermindert
bei ihrem nabel speist & kurvt unsere queeren hüften weiter, lässt nicht unsere untätigkeit unser fleisch wegnehmen singulär-uns. unklarheit, du wasser
,
verlangsamt gedankens tresor & tempo
. teile
waffen im raum indem wir bezeugen , die arbeit dieses (wieder) kleine melodien, die wir einander füttern
ii.
verneinungen von problem, die trägheit lässt vorübergehend nach
als verzweiflung als aktivität die
bewegende haut ge spann lehr t
zu verblassendem rippen- un-korb, der tägliche stoff gefällt zwischen destillierten fraktionen & dem gedanken der das gedicht der freunde sang
& die männer die sie für gehalt geblasen haben, wir sind gegen den kriminellen in sich selbst––
von alkohol & wind-bruch kinematik schleudern unsere rahmen hoch autobahnen , europäische treppenhäuser abgestimmtes decor , demo-seismisch
vom warten auf freunde / ficken spielerisch , schreib wieder zu uns ver- langen solch fleisch verschiebe zwischenräume erinnert, körper unsere / wirft tageslicht auf holzwerk lächeln fällt ab
La Stanza di Chantel
i.
mono
cromatiche & zucchero / non metafore noi. pro saici i suoni lenti, isola
„ corress
pondono spine inerte, espo
sizione mur
-a cosi nude come noi potremmo essere, turchese una rimembranza / tinte ri-codate
diminuiscono
al suo ombelico cena &
curva di più gli nostri fianchi queer, non lascia inazione prendere la nostra carne singolar-noi. sfocata, tu acqua
,
rallenta il caveau di pensiero & ritmo
. condivide
braccia nella stanza noi testimoniamo , il lavoro di questo (ancora) piccole melodie che ci diamo da mangiare
ii.
negazioni di problema, l'inerte scomparendo momentaneamente come disperazione come attività la
pelle mobile tesa/teorica a impallidenda costola- de-gabbiata, la stoffa quotidiana abbattuta tra frazioni distillate & il pensiero che canta la poesia degli amici
& gli uomini loro hanno soffiato per salario, noi siamo contro il criminale in se stesso–
d'alcool & cinematografiche frangivento lanciamo le nostre cornici in su autostrade , scale europee decor accordato , demo-sismica di voler' su amici / scopare ludico, scrivi ancora su come noi desideri amo tele carni sposti spazi ricordati, corpi nostri / lancia luce di giorno su falegnameria sorriso cadendo La Chambre de Chantel
i.
mono
chromatiques & sucre / non métaphores nous. pro saiques tons lents, isoler
„ corress pondre colonnes inerts expo satin, mur
-s ainsi nudes que nous pourrions être, turquoise une remembrance / tints ré-codes ,
diminuer
a son nombril dîne & courbe plus nos hanches queers, ne laisse pas l'inaction emporter le notre chair singulier-nous. fuzz, tu eau
,
ralente le caveau de pensées & rythme
. partager
bras dans la chambre nous témoins , le travail de ce (encore) petits mélodies nous donnons a chaque-uns
négations du problème, l'inerte disparaît pour un moment comme désespoir comme activité peau en mouvementant a cote
de-cage, le tissu quotidien abattu entre fractions distillés & le pensée que chantait le poème des amis
& les hommes qu'ils ont soufflé pour salaire, nous sommes contre le criminel dans se même––
d'alcool & brise-vent cinématiques lançons nos cadrés
autoroutes , escaliers européens, décor accordé , démo-sismique de vouloir sur amis / amour ludique , écrit encore à comme nous de sidérons telles chairs change place souvenait, corps nos / jette lumière de jour sur menuisière sourire déposant
[1] Nat Raha, "Chantel's Room". In 100 Queer Poems, edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan, Penguin Random House, 2022.
[2] Chantal Akerman, "Je Tu Il Elle," Archive.org, 1975, https://archive.org/details/je-tul-il-elle.
[3] Roman Jakobson, "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation," in The Translation Studies Reader, 4th ed. (Fourth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2021. |: Routledge, 2021), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429280641-19.
[4] Kate Briggs, This Little Art (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018), https://www.proquest.com/legacydocview/EBC/5046656? accountid=10637.
[5] Robert Gillett and B. J. Epstein, Queer in Translation (Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), 14.
[6] Pamela Demory, Queer/Adaptation: A Collection of Critical Essays (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1.
[7] Chan, Mary Jean, and Andrew McMillan, eds. 100 Queer Poems. Penguin Random House, 2022.
[8] "Wolfgang Iser," in Modern Criticism and Theory (Routledge, 2014), XXXX, https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9781315835488-24.
[9] Rob McLennan, "Multiple Effects: An Interview With Erín Moure on Translation," The Ploughshares Blog, August 26, 2017, https://blog.pshares.org/multiple-effects-an-interview-with-erin-moure-on-translation/.
[10] Don Mee Choi, "Translation in Process: From “I’m OK, I’m Pig”," Lantern Review 6 (2014).
[11] Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions (London: J. Calder, 1985).
[12] Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).