It is dangerous to be right when established authority is wrong. Voltaire Translation & Immortality In any contemplation of The Seafarer, these two topics persistently obtrude. The work requires translation. Or do I mean interpretation ? The seafarer is promised immortality when the raptor preys. "Bless thee, seafarer, thou art translated !" Below are three versions of a piece by Jorge Luis Borges, a memoir of a man named Funes. Sadly, I don't have Spanish, which is partly why I've mounted the French version. Interestingly, Andrew Hurley has a note (indicated by the asterix) on the title he gives his version. ".... it must be the brave (or foolhardy) translator who dares change such an odd and memorable title" as Funes the Memorious. Hurley also mentions the French translation. Penguin 2000, page 176. |
| Andrew Hurley appends many notes to his versions. Sample at left. However, if forced, on pain of excruciating torture, to make a choice of an English version of Borges' Funes, I would go for Irby. It was most disconcerting to read "speak" in Hurley's first sentence. Why didn't he say "utter" ? He could have simply titled his version Funes, or Memory. Note from a translation forum: "What concerns is the fact that professional translators apparently can't protect themselves against someone taking a translation of theirs, adjusting a word here and there and then claiming copyright to it, hiding behind the fact that it is based on the same original. It's what happened to one translator with a translation of a Norwegian play - the new claimant did not even have a word of the original source language !" See here, John Irons again. See again, Pound's use of Iddings, here. Just to rub it in, once again: Pound's understanding of Anglish was precisely nil. What, one wonders, was his understanding of Hindi or Chinese ? |
 | Reckless of that, my thought is thrown | |
There is a strong sense in which the heaven promised to the Anglo-Saxon depends on his performance in this world, and that, in truth, his only immortality will come from the name and reputation that he leaves. The enemy varies. The earliest language from which the modern languages of Denmark and Norway, Sweden, and eventually England, slowly evolved, was spoken in what is now Scania, formerly Scedenig, or Scedeland, the coast, at the southernmost tip of the Swedish peninsula, upon which Sceaf, the Moses of Scandinavia, was originally cast. This coast is what is now the province of Skåne, although the Angles must have populated much of the rest of modern southern and central Sweden as well. The suspicion is that the name "Angle" derives not from the improbable German word eng, meaning "narrow", but from the Scandinavian deity Yngve. Of the languages originally, or at some reasonably early time, spoken in the countries listed, Swedish is the one which has been the least susceptible to change during the last 1,500 years, give or take a few centuries. It is therefore the most appropriate modern language via which to penetrate the language of the Anglians. The several words below have been seriously misunderstood by the great majority of translators, ever since the first attempt by Benjamin Thorpe in 1842. Omitting the three in brackets, the remaining words have direct equivalents in modern Swedish, but rarely in modern English. As given below, beneath their Anglish originals: anfloga, eft, gomene, holma, [hreþer], hrusan, [hweteð], hyge, mæg, anflygare, efter, gamman, holme, grus, håg, må The validity of these equivalents will immediately be recognized by any fluent speaker of Swedish, but will obviously escape English-speaking monoglots. Let us be accurate. About time to wind this up. I would like to repeat the point that the "an" of anhaga in The Wanderer means "one"; and the "an" of anfloga in The Seafarer means "on". This is immediately apparent to Swedish speakers, and congenitally hidden from Anglo-American speakers. Some Reading Had The Seafarer been accurately translated from the outset essays & papers The aim of the translation on this site is to achieve the closest fidelity to its original, in both manner and meaning. An edition was published in June 2005, limited to 125 copies: ISBN 0-9550 126-0-0 The published text has since been repeatedly and substantially revised on this site © Charles Harrison-Wallace 2018 all rights reserved Some Maxims In The oral text of Ezra Pound's "The Seafarer", in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1961, Vol 47:2, 173-177, J.B.Bessinger notes that Ezra's "poem has survived on merits that have little to do with those of an accurate translation". |
