Monday, February 9, 2009
UNIQUE TEXT AND MY TRANSLATION
Hi Friends,
Today is the 5th day of 2009, here's something to inspire all of us,
titled " THE FOUR BLESSED LOOKS"
Look back and Thank God
Look forward and Trust God
Look around and Serve God
Look within and Find God
Without God, our week is: Sinday, Mournday, Tearsday, Wasteday,
Thirstday, Fightday and Shatterday. So allow Him to be with you every
day!
Have a blessed day! Keep your chin up and rest your problem in God's Hands.
Happy New Year 2009!
MY INDONESIAN TRANSLATION:
Hai Sobat,
Hari ini adalah hari ke-5 di tahun 2009. Aku punya sesuatu yang bisa mengilhami kita semua, namanya "EMPAT ANUGERAH MELIHAT"
Lihatlah ke belakang dan bersyukurlah pada Tuhan
Lihatlah ke depan dan percayakan kepada Tuhan
Lihatlah sekeliling dan layanilah Tuhan
Lihatlah ke dalam dan temukan Tuhan
Tanpa Tuhan, dalam seminggu hanyalah berisi: Ahad penuh maksiat, Senin penuh duka berpilin, Selasa penuh air mata membahana, Rabu bagai abu,
Kamis dahaga nan mengiris, Jumat dendam kesumat dan Sabtu tak ada yang tersisa bagimu. Maka biarkan Dia bersamamu tiap hari!
Semoga harimu diberkahi! Tegakkan kepala dan serahkan segala risaumu padaNya.
Selamat Tahun Baru 2009!
sofiamansoor@gmail.com
Today is the 5th day of 2009, here's something to inspire all of us,
titled " THE FOUR BLESSED LOOKS"
Look back and Thank God
Look forward and Trust God
Look around and Serve God
Look within and Find God
Without God, our week is: Sinday, Mournday, Tearsday, Wasteday,
Thirstday, Fightday and Shatterday. So allow Him to be with you every
day!
Have a blessed day! Keep your chin up and rest your problem in God's Hands.
Happy New Year 2009!
MY INDONESIAN TRANSLATION:
Hai Sobat,
Hari ini adalah hari ke-5 di tahun 2009. Aku punya sesuatu yang bisa mengilhami kita semua, namanya "EMPAT ANUGERAH MELIHAT"
Lihatlah ke belakang dan bersyukurlah pada Tuhan
Lihatlah ke depan dan percayakan kepada Tuhan
Lihatlah sekeliling dan layanilah Tuhan
Lihatlah ke dalam dan temukan Tuhan
Tanpa Tuhan, dalam seminggu hanyalah berisi: Ahad penuh maksiat, Senin penuh duka berpilin, Selasa penuh air mata membahana, Rabu bagai abu,
Kamis dahaga nan mengiris, Jumat dendam kesumat dan Sabtu tak ada yang tersisa bagimu. Maka biarkan Dia bersamamu tiap hari!
Semoga harimu diberkahi! Tegakkan kepala dan serahkan segala risaumu padaNya.
Selamat Tahun Baru 2009!
sofiamansoor@gmail.com
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Art of Poetry Translation
The Art of Poetry Translation
Four Translators Talk About Their Methods
May 1, 2008
During the Poetry International festival each year various poetry translation projects take place. The Chinese Whispers programme is a kind of fun relay race in which a poem moves from Dutch through as many languages as possible and back again into Dutch during the course of the week. The participating poets provide the flow. The resulting poem is usually rather different from the original and its differences are often humorous, the project is not so much to be considered poetry translation as an exercise in linguistics and a demonstration of the foibles of language.
Alongside this, there are more serious translation ventures. Supervised workshops enable participating poets to translate festival poets (this year Iwakiri and ter Balkt) into their mother tongues. The ways in which a poet might be better or less well- equipped to translate a fellow poet than a professional translator is something I’ll be considering when I report on the workshops during the festival.
Beforehand, it is interesting to take a look at how the professionals go about their job. How does one even begin to translate poetry? I’ve invited four translators from the PIW site to share their expertise.
ALOK BHALLA
Alok Bhalla is a Professor of English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He has translated a range of poems, plays and fictional texts from Hindi and Urdu and, as a critic, has published extensively on literature, politics and translation theory.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I think that choosing a poem for translation is always a startling and an enigmatic process. Sometimes, I am sure, it is similar to throwing coins to find the right hexagram in that I Ching that suddenly seems to speak to one’s peculiar emotional state or one’s present political anger That doesn’t mean one is ‘fated’ to translate a particular poem. Rather, a poem ‘asks’ to be translated by someone with whose present anguish or sentiment resonates with its own. That is how, I think, the poems I have translated with a degree of pleasure ‘found’ me. Poems by Udayan Vajpai, Kedarnath Singh and Kunwar Narain seem to have become accessible to my need to understand specific personal and political conditions – sometimes of power and base surrender, sometimes of private loss and grief, and sometimes of public acknowledgement of a poet’s gracefulness and my own gratitude at reading an ordinary spoken Hindi that was not first required to pay homage to Sanskrit. These poems became ‘visible’ in bookstores, or arrived by mail, or insistently placed themselves along my intellectual journey so that I had to either glance at them or push them aside, be either irritated by them or notice that they had a remarkable clarity which I could translate for others. I translated them because I knew that they deserved another ‘life’ in another language, another hearing by others located somewhere else.
Where do you go from there?
I have always refused to mingle the ‘art’ of translation with any of the ‘theories’ of translation. I think both have their protocols. Theorists of translation are not always so generous. Many a time they adopt the tone of stern law-givers for whom the translator is always a guilty thing who does or does not, must or must not reveal, deform, explain, improve, expand, rationalize, eroticize, clarify, infect, simplify, defer, ennoble, rewrite, natives, destroy, exoticism, feminize, domesticate, minorities, foreignism, impoverish, colonies, subvert or misrepresent the meaning of the original text – there are other spurs on their whips of flagellation (the poor translator is always at the receiving end). They inevitably speak about the impossibility of translating the ‘original’, the ‘primal’ glory of a culture or its language. I don’t believe that a translator is required to carry the ontological burden of our times or be the messianic voice of a civilization. Let me at least assert, even if my assertion does not have the melodramatic bass of the theory: It is possible for a translator to imagine another language and hence other forms of living and being; and, it is possible for a translator to speak to others who understand how we become ‘human’ when we find ourselves in conversation with others who have an utterly different way of ‘being human’ than we have. My own claim to intellectual cosmopolitanism (which I need to declare again and again for I live in the midst of sectarian arrogance and the genocidal virulence of identity politics) depends upon the labour of a community of translators, as does my claim that for a translator to be part of a literary habitat we need to understand the important ways in which translation contributes to the creation of cultural and moral pluralities.
If the task of the theorist is to craft critical tools so as to understand what may have determined the rhythms, phrases, cultural presuppositions, philosophic or moral preoccupations of the original text, the translator is guided by radically other considerations. Or, at least, I as a translator I am. A translator must fulfill two ethical or aesthetic tasks simultaneously. Even as a translator crafts a new work, the translated version must respect the integrity of the original so that the vision of the original is made available. This is a minimum ethic (I know this has a naive edenic nostalgia attached to it, just as I am aware of the theoretical temptations to make translation part of our more suspicious and skeptical age which distrusts the power of all ‘originals’).
I almost always begin my translations by making a literal draft which is so shamelessly dependent on dictionaries and thesauruses that the lines on the page are as depressing and meaningless as marching ants. The first scribbles almost inevitably confront me with the inadequacy of my qualifications and imaginative competence to the task. Just because the draft seems mock the ego, I put the original aside and try to remake each line so as to meet of Coleridge’s definition of a poem as the best possible arrangement of words best suited to the sentiments and thoughts expressed. That involves listening to each line within the surrounding silence. Only after I am seemingly satisfied that I actually ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the translated words as well as I can, do I begin to attach them to the sentences, lineation or spaces that precede or follow them. Once the poem begins to ‘speak’ well in English, I dare myself to return to the original to ensure that I haven’t violated the two ethical and aesthetic imperatives I have laid down for translators above.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
Before speaking about my translations of poems which have been posted on this website, I should like to mention that the poetic translation which took me the longest of time, and of which I am the proudest, is that of Dharamvir Bharati’s play, Andha Yug (The Blind/Dark Age, OUP). The play, which is perhaps one of the finest written in post-independence India, posed great difficulties because it functions on three different levels of religious, ethical and personal awareness. I had to find, in English, a language and a rhythm which is, at times, hieratic and is, at other times, recognizable as a song of ethical lament. I also had to craft a dramatic speech for characters that is tormented because men and women find themselves participating in a war that humiliates and debases each of them.
Of the poems on the website, the prose-poems by Udayan Vajpeyi were perhaps the most difficult to translate. The first problem that confronted me was the shape of the texts. Along with the original Hindi versions of the poems, Udayan had sent me copies of their French translations also. The visual shape of the French translations, which had Udayan’s approval, was different from that of the Hindi text. In the original the poems appeared like blocks of lines which so crowded each other as to create a sense of claustrophobic walls from which the consciousness of the poet was trying, with growing sense of futility and despondency, to escape into spaces where it could breath more freely. In the French version, the lineation was looser as each cluster of images or emotions was given its own space. The arrangement had its virtues. Instead of creating a feeling of entrapment by opaque and relentlessly indifferent circumstances within which a consciousness finds itself placed, it suggested spaces of silences from which the self could not escape as well as abysses of memory and time which faced the self in its attempt to deal with loss or find meaning. I offered both kinds of arrangements to Udayan to choose from when I translated his poems into English. I could ‘hear’ the sounds of both the versions and accept the virtues of each arrangement.
The other difficulty I faced as I translated Udayan’s poems was to find a way to communicate in English a mode writing which was simultaneously austere in its language and surreal in its vision. A literal translation of the tone (as distinct from the images and emotional situations concerned with memories of grief and consequent bewilderment) of the original Hindi could well have turned into bathos and sentimental excess. Fortunately, English has the possibility of understatement that can at the same time accommodate a feeling of the strange and the surreal in the affairs of human beings.
DAVID COLMER
David Colmer was born in Australia and has lived in the Netherlands for seventeen years. His poetry translations include work by Benno Barnard, Tsead Bruinja, Anna Enquist, Ramsey Nasr and Mustafa Stitou. His translation of Nijhoff's Awater will appear later this year from Anvil Press.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I read the original and quickly try to see elements that I need to try to reproduce in the translation. I mainly look for technical elements such as metrical structure, internal rhyme, sound patterns. I don’t explicitly think about the meaning or the mood at this stage, because I get those implicitly at first. It is however easy to miss some technical aspects because you read over them and it's important to check whether there is a specific structure.
Where do you go from there?
Then I just start translating. Draft after draft, comparing the translations to the original. If possible I leave time between the different drafts so that I can see the translation with fresh eyes. (Forgetting why I did certain things and just seeing how they work or, more often, fail.) I do the first four or five drafts on the computer and then carry on on paper. The longer I work on it, the faster each run-through becomes. In the end I might just be reading it out loud and changing a word or two, or not changing it at all. When I start changing the same words back and forth between two variants it’s time to make a decision and call it finished. (Although I would always revise it if given a chance at a later date.)
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
I think Benno Barnard’s, ‘A Kiss in Brussels’. The difficulties are obvious to anyone who reads the original, but that of course requires Dutch. The poem really has it all: rhyme and rhythm, images that are simply beautiful and images that make you think. At the same time, there's something mysterious about it despite its clarity. For me the translation just fell into place and I feel like I have gone a long way toward producing a poem that can stand in English on its own merits. Obviously I failed to do full justice to lines as beautiful as “mijn hand blijft steken in een teer gebaar”, but that failing is somehow compensated by what I see as the compelling simplicity of the English version. Even the line I most doubt (“my fingers...”) has something moving about it and every time I think about changing it I can’t help but think that it might be its awkwardness that makes it so moving and appropriate. Will I still think so in a year or two? I don’t know.
TAKAKO LENTO
Takako Lento was born in Japan and has lived in the US for over thirty years. He was educated at Tsuda College and Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Iowa in the US, with MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Lento writes and translates prose and poetry from Japanese to English as well as from English to Japanese.
How do you go about translating a poem – where do you start?
I identify a poem I want to translate. I read, chew, taste and digest the poem. I try to understand my experience of the poem.
Where do you go from there?
I prepare the first draft by recreating in English my experience of the original, following each original line. At this time I focus on the original poem’s overall tone, messages, and overt or subtle references. My revisions of this draft focus on the original words, their usage, intended effects, implications, or associations or references, often culturally loaded. I try to reflect these elements in my translation as fully as I can manage. I ask a native speaker to check the English. Then I prepare a final version incorporating the checker’s linguistic corrections as well as any changes that I sense need to be made based on the native speaker’s reading or understanding of the translation.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of; what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
‘Invisible Tree’ by Ryuichi Tamura. The problem I faced was in relation to the use of the word “mind.” This is a poem I love, but I am not sure if the difficulty is resolved in my translation. The Japanese word “kokoro” means either “heart [emotionally charged entity]” or “mind [mind’s function].” This is a perennial issue in translating Japanese poetry. Of course, when someone’s ‘heart is aching,’ no one would argue against choosing to use “heart.” Or when someone ‘imagines in his mind,’ the choice of “mind” is probably universal. But in Tamura’s poetry, the heart and the mind are so closely tied together that I often find it difficult to choose one against the other.
RICHARD ZENITH
A native of Washington DC, previous PIW-Portugal editor, Richard Zenith has lived as an adult in Colombia, Brazil, France, and – since 1987 – in Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and researcher in the Fernando Pessoa archives. Zenith has rendered a number of other Portuguese and Brazilian poets into English, as well as novels by Portugal’s António Lobo Antunes and Angola’s José Luandino Vieira.
How I translate a poem...
I don’t begin by producing a slavishly literal translation. Or rather, I don’t distinguish between ‘literal’ and ‘literary’. The moment I begin translating, I’m already searching for the word or phrase that works in English. My first drafts are full of alternate possibilities placed in brackets, or I’ll place question marks after words or phrases that don’t seem quite right. The written word gains a false authority; we’re more liable to give it credence just because it’s already there on the page. So I’m nervous, as a translator or as a writer, about jotting just anything down, with the idea that I’ll improve on it later.
After establishing an initial multi-translation (‘multi’ because of all the variant wordings I still have to choose from), I look at what I've done against the original, very closely. A translation should not be a close reading, or an interpretation, but the translator must read closely and carefully interpret — without, however, revealing that interpretation in the translation.
At a certain point I abandon the original text and just read the English. And when it seems right enough (perfection, of course, is never achieved), then I'll read it once more alongside the original.
I seek out all the help I can get, asking native speakers to clarify even the tiniest doubt. If the poet is living, I always ask her or him to see what I’ve done, but only when I’ve achieved what seems to be a relatively final version. If her or his English is poor, I explain any hesitations or uncertainties I may have and listen attentively to what the author has to say.
I feel especially proud of certain translations right when I finish them, but once they’re out there, published, they become public property and I don’t feel that they belong to me anymore. So I can’t really name a translation I feel especially proud of, unless it’s one I did yesterday. [Editor’s note: Richard Zenith’s most recent translations are of A.M. Pires Cabral ]
Michele Hutchison
From:
Four Translators Talk About Their Methods
May 1, 2008
During the Poetry International festival each year various poetry translation projects take place. The Chinese Whispers programme is a kind of fun relay race in which a poem moves from Dutch through as many languages as possible and back again into Dutch during the course of the week. The participating poets provide the flow. The resulting poem is usually rather different from the original and its differences are often humorous, the project is not so much to be considered poetry translation as an exercise in linguistics and a demonstration of the foibles of language.
Alongside this, there are more serious translation ventures. Supervised workshops enable participating poets to translate festival poets (this year Iwakiri and ter Balkt) into their mother tongues. The ways in which a poet might be better or less well- equipped to translate a fellow poet than a professional translator is something I’ll be considering when I report on the workshops during the festival.
Beforehand, it is interesting to take a look at how the professionals go about their job. How does one even begin to translate poetry? I’ve invited four translators from the PIW site to share their expertise.
ALOK BHALLA
Alok Bhalla is a Professor of English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He has translated a range of poems, plays and fictional texts from Hindi and Urdu and, as a critic, has published extensively on literature, politics and translation theory.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I think that choosing a poem for translation is always a startling and an enigmatic process. Sometimes, I am sure, it is similar to throwing coins to find the right hexagram in that I Ching that suddenly seems to speak to one’s peculiar emotional state or one’s present political anger That doesn’t mean one is ‘fated’ to translate a particular poem. Rather, a poem ‘asks’ to be translated by someone with whose present anguish or sentiment resonates with its own. That is how, I think, the poems I have translated with a degree of pleasure ‘found’ me. Poems by Udayan Vajpai, Kedarnath Singh and Kunwar Narain seem to have become accessible to my need to understand specific personal and political conditions – sometimes of power and base surrender, sometimes of private loss and grief, and sometimes of public acknowledgement of a poet’s gracefulness and my own gratitude at reading an ordinary spoken Hindi that was not first required to pay homage to Sanskrit. These poems became ‘visible’ in bookstores, or arrived by mail, or insistently placed themselves along my intellectual journey so that I had to either glance at them or push them aside, be either irritated by them or notice that they had a remarkable clarity which I could translate for others. I translated them because I knew that they deserved another ‘life’ in another language, another hearing by others located somewhere else.
Where do you go from there?
I have always refused to mingle the ‘art’ of translation with any of the ‘theories’ of translation. I think both have their protocols. Theorists of translation are not always so generous. Many a time they adopt the tone of stern law-givers for whom the translator is always a guilty thing who does or does not, must or must not reveal, deform, explain, improve, expand, rationalize, eroticize, clarify, infect, simplify, defer, ennoble, rewrite, natives, destroy, exoticism, feminize, domesticate, minorities, foreignism, impoverish, colonies, subvert or misrepresent the meaning of the original text – there are other spurs on their whips of flagellation (the poor translator is always at the receiving end). They inevitably speak about the impossibility of translating the ‘original’, the ‘primal’ glory of a culture or its language. I don’t believe that a translator is required to carry the ontological burden of our times or be the messianic voice of a civilization. Let me at least assert, even if my assertion does not have the melodramatic bass of the theory: It is possible for a translator to imagine another language and hence other forms of living and being; and, it is possible for a translator to speak to others who understand how we become ‘human’ when we find ourselves in conversation with others who have an utterly different way of ‘being human’ than we have. My own claim to intellectual cosmopolitanism (which I need to declare again and again for I live in the midst of sectarian arrogance and the genocidal virulence of identity politics) depends upon the labour of a community of translators, as does my claim that for a translator to be part of a literary habitat we need to understand the important ways in which translation contributes to the creation of cultural and moral pluralities.
If the task of the theorist is to craft critical tools so as to understand what may have determined the rhythms, phrases, cultural presuppositions, philosophic or moral preoccupations of the original text, the translator is guided by radically other considerations. Or, at least, I as a translator I am. A translator must fulfill two ethical or aesthetic tasks simultaneously. Even as a translator crafts a new work, the translated version must respect the integrity of the original so that the vision of the original is made available. This is a minimum ethic (I know this has a naive edenic nostalgia attached to it, just as I am aware of the theoretical temptations to make translation part of our more suspicious and skeptical age which distrusts the power of all ‘originals’).
I almost always begin my translations by making a literal draft which is so shamelessly dependent on dictionaries and thesauruses that the lines on the page are as depressing and meaningless as marching ants. The first scribbles almost inevitably confront me with the inadequacy of my qualifications and imaginative competence to the task. Just because the draft seems mock the ego, I put the original aside and try to remake each line so as to meet of Coleridge’s definition of a poem as the best possible arrangement of words best suited to the sentiments and thoughts expressed. That involves listening to each line within the surrounding silence. Only after I am seemingly satisfied that I actually ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the translated words as well as I can, do I begin to attach them to the sentences, lineation or spaces that precede or follow them. Once the poem begins to ‘speak’ well in English, I dare myself to return to the original to ensure that I haven’t violated the two ethical and aesthetic imperatives I have laid down for translators above.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
Before speaking about my translations of poems which have been posted on this website, I should like to mention that the poetic translation which took me the longest of time, and of which I am the proudest, is that of Dharamvir Bharati’s play, Andha Yug (The Blind/Dark Age, OUP). The play, which is perhaps one of the finest written in post-independence India, posed great difficulties because it functions on three different levels of religious, ethical and personal awareness. I had to find, in English, a language and a rhythm which is, at times, hieratic and is, at other times, recognizable as a song of ethical lament. I also had to craft a dramatic speech for characters that is tormented because men and women find themselves participating in a war that humiliates and debases each of them.
Of the poems on the website, the prose-poems by Udayan Vajpeyi were perhaps the most difficult to translate. The first problem that confronted me was the shape of the texts. Along with the original Hindi versions of the poems, Udayan had sent me copies of their French translations also. The visual shape of the French translations, which had Udayan’s approval, was different from that of the Hindi text. In the original the poems appeared like blocks of lines which so crowded each other as to create a sense of claustrophobic walls from which the consciousness of the poet was trying, with growing sense of futility and despondency, to escape into spaces where it could breath more freely. In the French version, the lineation was looser as each cluster of images or emotions was given its own space. The arrangement had its virtues. Instead of creating a feeling of entrapment by opaque and relentlessly indifferent circumstances within which a consciousness finds itself placed, it suggested spaces of silences from which the self could not escape as well as abysses of memory and time which faced the self in its attempt to deal with loss or find meaning. I offered both kinds of arrangements to Udayan to choose from when I translated his poems into English. I could ‘hear’ the sounds of both the versions and accept the virtues of each arrangement.
The other difficulty I faced as I translated Udayan’s poems was to find a way to communicate in English a mode writing which was simultaneously austere in its language and surreal in its vision. A literal translation of the tone (as distinct from the images and emotional situations concerned with memories of grief and consequent bewilderment) of the original Hindi could well have turned into bathos and sentimental excess. Fortunately, English has the possibility of understatement that can at the same time accommodate a feeling of the strange and the surreal in the affairs of human beings.
DAVID COLMER
David Colmer was born in Australia and has lived in the Netherlands for seventeen years. His poetry translations include work by Benno Barnard, Tsead Bruinja, Anna Enquist, Ramsey Nasr and Mustafa Stitou. His translation of Nijhoff's Awater will appear later this year from Anvil Press.
How do you go about translating a poem - where do you start?
I read the original and quickly try to see elements that I need to try to reproduce in the translation. I mainly look for technical elements such as metrical structure, internal rhyme, sound patterns. I don’t explicitly think about the meaning or the mood at this stage, because I get those implicitly at first. It is however easy to miss some technical aspects because you read over them and it's important to check whether there is a specific structure.
Where do you go from there?
Then I just start translating. Draft after draft, comparing the translations to the original. If possible I leave time between the different drafts so that I can see the translation with fresh eyes. (Forgetting why I did certain things and just seeing how they work or, more often, fail.) I do the first four or five drafts on the computer and then carry on on paper. The longer I work on it, the faster each run-through becomes. In the end I might just be reading it out loud and changing a word or two, or not changing it at all. When I start changing the same words back and forth between two variants it’s time to make a decision and call it finished. (Although I would always revise it if given a chance at a later date.)
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of, what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
I think Benno Barnard’s, ‘A Kiss in Brussels’. The difficulties are obvious to anyone who reads the original, but that of course requires Dutch. The poem really has it all: rhyme and rhythm, images that are simply beautiful and images that make you think. At the same time, there's something mysterious about it despite its clarity. For me the translation just fell into place and I feel like I have gone a long way toward producing a poem that can stand in English on its own merits. Obviously I failed to do full justice to lines as beautiful as “mijn hand blijft steken in een teer gebaar”, but that failing is somehow compensated by what I see as the compelling simplicity of the English version. Even the line I most doubt (“my fingers...”) has something moving about it and every time I think about changing it I can’t help but think that it might be its awkwardness that makes it so moving and appropriate. Will I still think so in a year or two? I don’t know.
TAKAKO LENTO
Takako Lento was born in Japan and has lived in the US for over thirty years. He was educated at Tsuda College and Kyushu University in Japan and the University of Iowa in the US, with MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Lento writes and translates prose and poetry from Japanese to English as well as from English to Japanese.
How do you go about translating a poem – where do you start?
I identify a poem I want to translate. I read, chew, taste and digest the poem. I try to understand my experience of the poem.
Where do you go from there?
I prepare the first draft by recreating in English my experience of the original, following each original line. At this time I focus on the original poem’s overall tone, messages, and overt or subtle references. My revisions of this draft focus on the original words, their usage, intended effects, implications, or associations or references, often culturally loaded. I try to reflect these elements in my translation as fully as I can manage. I ask a native speaker to check the English. Then I prepare a final version incorporating the checker’s linguistic corrections as well as any changes that I sense need to be made based on the native speaker’s reading or understanding of the translation.
Which translation of yours on the site are you most proud of; what were the difficulties and how did you solve them?
‘Invisible Tree’ by Ryuichi Tamura. The problem I faced was in relation to the use of the word “mind.” This is a poem I love, but I am not sure if the difficulty is resolved in my translation. The Japanese word “kokoro” means either “heart [emotionally charged entity]” or “mind [mind’s function].” This is a perennial issue in translating Japanese poetry. Of course, when someone’s ‘heart is aching,’ no one would argue against choosing to use “heart.” Or when someone ‘imagines in his mind,’ the choice of “mind” is probably universal. But in Tamura’s poetry, the heart and the mind are so closely tied together that I often find it difficult to choose one against the other.
RICHARD ZENITH
A native of Washington DC, previous PIW-Portugal editor, Richard Zenith has lived as an adult in Colombia, Brazil, France, and – since 1987 – in Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and researcher in the Fernando Pessoa archives. Zenith has rendered a number of other Portuguese and Brazilian poets into English, as well as novels by Portugal’s António Lobo Antunes and Angola’s José Luandino Vieira.
How I translate a poem...
I don’t begin by producing a slavishly literal translation. Or rather, I don’t distinguish between ‘literal’ and ‘literary’. The moment I begin translating, I’m already searching for the word or phrase that works in English. My first drafts are full of alternate possibilities placed in brackets, or I’ll place question marks after words or phrases that don’t seem quite right. The written word gains a false authority; we’re more liable to give it credence just because it’s already there on the page. So I’m nervous, as a translator or as a writer, about jotting just anything down, with the idea that I’ll improve on it later.
After establishing an initial multi-translation (‘multi’ because of all the variant wordings I still have to choose from), I look at what I've done against the original, very closely. A translation should not be a close reading, or an interpretation, but the translator must read closely and carefully interpret — without, however, revealing that interpretation in the translation.
At a certain point I abandon the original text and just read the English. And when it seems right enough (perfection, of course, is never achieved), then I'll read it once more alongside the original.
I seek out all the help I can get, asking native speakers to clarify even the tiniest doubt. If the poet is living, I always ask her or him to see what I’ve done, but only when I’ve achieved what seems to be a relatively final version. If her or his English is poor, I explain any hesitations or uncertainties I may have and listen attentively to what the author has to say.
I feel especially proud of certain translations right when I finish them, but once they’re out there, published, they become public property and I don’t feel that they belong to me anymore. So I can’t really name a translation I feel especially proud of, unless it’s one I did yesterday. [Editor’s note: Richard Zenith’s most recent translations are of A.M. Pires Cabral ]
Michele Hutchison
From:
Monday, May 5, 2008
AN ENGLISH POEM TO TRAIN PRONOUNCIATION
This is a poem written by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, 1870-1946. Anyone wants to translate it into your native language? Hi..hie
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
The author of The Chaos was a Dutchman, the writer and traveller Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité. Born in 1870, he studied classics, then law, then political science at the University of Utrecht, but without graduating (his Doctorate came later, in 1901). From 1894 he was for a while a private teacher in California, where he taught the sons of the Netherlands Consul-General. From 1901 to 1918 he worked as a schoolteacher in Haarlem, and published several schoolbooks in English and French, as well as a study of the Dutch constitution. From 1909 until his death in 1946 he wrote frequently for an Amsterdam weekly paper, with a linguistic column under the pseudonym Charivarius.
--From Chaos by Chris Upward, Aston University, UK
Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
The author of The Chaos was a Dutchman, the writer and traveller Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité. Born in 1870, he studied classics, then law, then political science at the University of Utrecht, but without graduating (his Doctorate came later, in 1901). From 1894 he was for a while a private teacher in California, where he taught the sons of the Netherlands Consul-General. From 1901 to 1918 he worked as a schoolteacher in Haarlem, and published several schoolbooks in English and French, as well as a study of the Dutch constitution. From 1909 until his death in 1946 he wrote frequently for an Amsterdam weekly paper, with a linguistic column under the pseudonym Charivarius.
--From Chaos by Chris Upward, Aston University, UK
Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society
Friday, April 11, 2008
ESSLIN, THEATER OF ABSURD
Ini sampel terjemahan saya. Saya sudah menerjemahkan secara lengkap. Mungkin ada yang berminat menerbitkan silahkan kontak saya di mukhid_translator@yahoo.com
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PENDAHULUAN
Absurditas Yang Absurd
Pada tanggal 19 November 1957, sekelompok aktor yang cemas sedang bersiap tampil di hadapan para penonton. Para aktor tersebut adalah para anggota Company of San Fransisco Actors’ Workshop. Penonton terdiri atas seribu empat ratus narapidana di penjara San Quentin. Belum pernah ada pertunjukkan langsung ditampilkan di San Quentin sejak Sarah Bernhardt tampil di sana pada tahun 1913. Kini, empat puluh tahun sesudahnya, naskah yang dipilih, sebagian besar karena tidak ada peran wanita di dalamnya, adalah karya Samuel Beckett berjudul Menunggu Godot (naskah asli berbahasa Prancis, sudah diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia dari bahasa Inggris oleh Rendra dan terakhir oleh Penerbit Bentang).
Tak mengherankan jika para aktor dan Herbert Blau, sang sutradara, merasa cemas. Bagaimana mereka harus menghadapi salah satu khalayak penonton paling keras di seluruh dunia dengan sebuah naskah intelektual yang samar, yang nyaris menimbulkan kericuhan para penonton jenius kelas atas di Eropa Barat? Herbert Blau memutuskan untuk menyiapkan khalayak penonton San Quentin atas apa yang akan terjadi. Dia melangkah ke atas panggung dan menyapa North Dining Hall yang gelap dan penuh sesak - lautan nyala korek yang dilemparkan para narapidana ke pundak mereka sehabis menyalakan rokok. Blau membandingkan pentas drama itu dengan sebuah nomor musik jazz ‘yang mana setiap orang harus menyimak apapun yang ada di dalamnya’. Dia juga berharap akan ada makna di dalamnya, makna pribadi bagi setiap penonton Menunggu Godot.
Layar terangkat. Drama dimulai. Dan apa yang telah mengguncangkan khalayak penonton berpendidikan di Paris, London dan New York dapat dipahami dengan mudah oleh para narapidana..Sebagaimana yang ditulis oleh penulis `Catatan sehabis pementasan malam pertama’ di kolom koran penjara, San Quentin News:
Trio pria berotot, otot bisep bergerak-gerak…memarkir seluruh berat badan sebesar 642 pon berderet menantikan para gadis dan lelucon. Ketika yang ditunggu tidak muncul, mereka menggerutu dan memutuskan untuk menunggu sampai lampau gedung redup sebelum melarikan diri. Mereka keliru. Mereka menyimak dan menonton dua menit lebih lama - dan bertahan. Mereka baru keluar di akhir pertunjukan. Semuanya takjub…1
1. San Quentin News, San Quentin, California., 28 Nopember 1957
Atau sebagaimana ditulis oleh penulis cerita utama dari koran yang sama, dengan judul, `San Fransisco Group Leaves S.Q. Audience Waiting for Godot’:
Sejak setting yang serius dan terlupakan buatan Wegner ditimpa cahaya, sampai tepukan penuh harap dan sia-sia terakhir secara ragu ditimbulkan oleh dua orang pengembara yang sedang melakukan pencarian, kelompok teater San Fransisco ini telah membuat penontonnya terjerat... Mereka yang sudah merasakan media yang tidak terlalu kontroversial akan berusaha menganggapnya sebagai drama pertama yang membuat mereka merasa gentar lima menit sesudah karya Samuel Bekcett ini mulai tersingkap.2
2. ibid.
Seorang reporter Chronicle San Fransisco yang hadir di sana menengarai bahwa para narapidana tidak merasa kesulitan dalam memahami drama tersebut. Seorang napi berkata kepadanya, “Godot adalah masyarakat.” Yang lainnya berkata: “Dia ada di luar sana.”3 Seorang guru yang menjadi tahanan berkata, “Mereka tahu apa artinya menunggu...dan mereka juga tahu bahwa kalau pun Godot pada akhirnya datang, itu hanya akan menjadi sebuah kekecewaan.”4
3. Theatre Arts, New York, Juli 1958.
4. ibid.
Itu merupakan sebuah ekspresi simbolis untuk menghindari segala macam teror pribadi, oleh seorang penulis yang mengharapkan penontonnya akan menarik kesimpulan sendiri, membuat kesalahan sendiri. Tidak mempertanyakan apapun, tidak memaksakan moral yang didramatisir kepada penontonnya, tidak ada harapan khusus....Kita masih menunggu Godot, dan akan terus menunggu. Ketika yang ada di panggung kurang menarik dan lakuannya terlalu lambat, kita akan saling memanggil nama dan bersumpah untuk pergi selamanya – tapi, ternyata kita tidak pergi kemana-mana!5
5. San Quentin News, 28 Nopember 1957
Diaktakan bahwa Godot itu sendiri, maupun pergantian frasa dan tokoh dari naskah itu telah menjadi bahasa pribadi yang permanen, menjadi mitologi institusional San Quentin.
Mengapa sebuah naskah yang dianggap sebagai garda depan esoteris ini memberikan dampak yang bersifat langsung dan mendalam kepada penonton yang terdiri dari para napi? Apakah karena drama ini menghadapkan mereka pada sebuah situasi yang mirip dengan situasi mereka sendiri? Mungkin. Atau mungkin karena mereka tidak cukup cerdas untuk menonton teater tanpa gagasan-gagasan yang sudah ada sebelumnya dan siap sedia dengan harapan-harapan sehingga mereka menghindari kesalahan yang banyak menjebak para kritikus mapan yang mencerca drama ini karena tidak ada alur, perkembangan, perwatakan, tegangan atau nalar biasa. Tentunya para napi San Quentin tidak bisa dicurigai sebagai kelompok yang sok tahu, karena begitu banyaknya penonton Waiting for Godot seringkali diolok-olok sebagai berpura-pura menyukai sebuah pementasan padahal tidak memahaminya, hanya seolah-olah memahami.
Penerimaan Waiting for Godot di San Quentin, dan banyak mendapat pujian yang diberikan terhadap naskah-naskah karya Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter dan lain-lain, yang menyatakan bahwa naskah-naskah yang seringkali dianggap hanya omong kosong atau mistifikasi ini, memiliki makan tertentu dan dapat dipahami. Sebagian besar dari ketidakpahaman atas naskah-naskah semacam ini masih dialami oleh para kritikus maupun para pengamat teater, sebagian besar kebingungan yang ditimbulkan dan masih dirasakan berasal dari kenyataan bahwa naskah-naskah itu merupakan bagian dari sebuah konvensi pementasan yang masih baru dan tengah berkembang dan belum dipahami secara umum, apalagi untuk dapat diuraikan. Tak pelak lagi, naskah-naskah yang ditulis dalam konvensi baru ini akan dianggap sebagai kurang ajar dan kasar kalau dinilai berdasarkan kriteria dan standar konvensi lain. Kalau memang sebuah naskah harus berupa sebuah cerita yang dibangun secara cerdas, maka tidak ada cerita atau alur di sini. Kalau sebuah naskah dinilai berdasrakan kehalusan perwatakan dan motivasi, maka naskah-naskah tersebut acapkali tanpa tokoh-tokoh yang bisa dikenali dan menghadirkan boneka-boneka yang nyaris mekanis kepada penontonnya. Jika sebuah naskah yang bagus harus mempunyai tema yang dijelaskan secara utuh, yang dipaparkan secara rapi dan akhirnya dituntaskan, maka naskah-naskah itu kerapkali tanpa awal atau akhir. Bila sebuah naskah yang bagus harus menjadi cerminan alam dan menggambarkan perilaku maupun manerisme jaman dalam gambaran yang sangat rinci, maka naskah-naskah ini kerap hanya merupakan cerminan dari mimpi dan mimpi buruk. Jika sebuah naskah yang bagus bergantung pada tanya jawab yang cerdas dan dialog yang terarah, maka naskah-naskah ini seringkali hanya berupa ocehan yang tidak ada juntrungnya.
Naskah-naskah drama yang kita bahas di sini memiliki tujuan dan capaian yang sama sekali berbeda dengan naskah konvensional sehingga membutuhkan metode yang sama sekali berbeda pula. Naskah-naskah itu hanya bisa dinilai berdasarkan standar Teater Absurd, yang akan didefinisikan dan dijelaskan dalam buku ini.
Namun demikian, perlu kiranya ditekankan di sini bahwa para dramawan yang karyanya dibahas dini tidaklah memproklamirkan suatu aliran atau gerakan. Malahan, setiap penulis yang dipertanyakan di sini adalah sosok individu yang menganggap dirinya sebagai orang luar yang kesepian, tercerabut dan terisolasi dari dunia pribadinya. Masing-masing memiliki pendekatan prbadinya sendiri baik terhadap persoalan maupun bentuk; terhadap akar, sumber maupun latar belakangnya. Kalaupun mereka memiliki banyak kesamaan, yang memang jelas demikian kendati mungkin tidak mereka sadari, hal itu dikarenakan karya mereka sangat peka dalam menjadi cermin dan mencerminkan berbagai keasyikan maupun kecemasan, emosi maupun pikiran dari orang-orang pada jamannya di dunia Barat.
Namun ini bukan berarti mengatakan bahwa karya-karya mereka merupakan representasi sikap massa. Terlalu sederhana jika diasumsikan bahwa suatu jaman merepresentasikan sebuah pola yang homogen. Keberadaan kita pada masa transisi, lebih dari yang lain, menampilkan suatu gambaran yang berlapis: berbagai keyakinan abad pertengahan masih dipertahankan dan dilapis oleh rasionalisme abad kedelapan belas maupun Marxisme abad kesembilan belas, dikejutkan oleh ledakan fanatisme pra sejarah dan kultus kesukuan primitif. Setiap unsur pola budaya jaman itu menemukan ekspresi artistiknya sendiri. Namun demikian, Teater Absurd bisa dipandang sebagai refleksi apa yang tampaknya merupakan sikap paling murni representasi jaman kita.
Tonggak sikap ini adalah nalar bahwa keyakinan-keyakinan maupun asumsi-asumsi dasar yang tak tergoyahkan pada jaman sebelumnya sudah dihancur leburkan, diuji kembali dan dianggap tidak layak, dipandang sebagai ilusi murahan dan kekanak-kanakan. Runtuhnya keyakinan beragama masih tersembunyi sampai pada akhir Perang Dunia II denagn agama-agama pengganti seperti kemajuan, nasionalisme dan berbagai ajaran sesat totaliarianisme. Semua itu hancur lebur oleh peperangan. Pada tahun 1942, dengan tenang Albert Camus menyodorkan pertanyaan, kalau memang hidup sudah kehilangan makna, mengapa tidak bunuh diri saja. Dalam salah satu pencari besar pada jaman kita, The Myth of Sisyphus (Mite Sisifus), Camus berusaha mendiagnosis situasi manusia di dunia mana keyakinan sudah hancur lebur:
Sebuah dunia yang tidak bisa dijelaskan dengan nalar, betapapun kelirunya, adalah dunia yang dikenal. Namun dunia yang tiba-tiba tercerabut dari ilusi dan cahaya, manusia jadi merasa seperti orang asing. Dia adalah seorang buangan yang tak terpulihkan karena tercerabut dari kenangan kampung halaman yang hilang dan juga tidak punya harapan akan adanya negeri yang dijanjikan. Perceraian antara manusia dan kehidupannya, antara aktor dan settingnya, itulah makna Absurditas yang sebenar-benarnya.1
1. Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (Paris: Gallimard, 1942), hlm. 18.
Kata `Absurd’ aslinya berarti `tidak harmonis’ dalam konteks musik. Maka dari itu definisi kamusnya adalah: “tidak selaras dengan nalar atau kelayakan umum; tidak kongruen, tidak masuk akal, tidak logis.” Dalam pemakaian sehari-hari, `absurd’ berarti `menggelikan’, tapi bukan dalam pengertian seperti yang digunakan oleh Camus, maupun pengertian dalam pembahasan Teater Absurd. Dalam sebuah esai tentang Kafka, Ionesco mendefinisikan pemahamannya mengenai istilah tersebut sebagai berikut: “Absurd berarti tidak ada tujuan...Tercerabut dari akar relijius, metafisis maupun transedental, manusia tersesat; segala perilakunya jadi tak bernalar, absurd, sia-sia.”2
2. Eugène Ionesco, `Dans les armes de la villa’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madelaine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, no. 20, Oktober 1957.
Makna kesenduan metafisis atas absurditas kondisi manusia ini, secara umum menjadi tema naskah-naskah Adamov, Ionesco, Genet dan para penulis lain yang dibahas dalam buku ini. Namun ini bukanlah satu-satunya pokok persoalan yang diuraikan dari apa yang disebut sebagai Teater Absurd. Makna ketidakbermaknaan hidup yang sama, tak terelakkannya penurunan nilai cita-cita, kemurnian dan tujuan, juga menjadi tema sebagian besar dramawan seperti Giraudoux, Anoulih, Salacrou, Sartre dan Camus sendiri. Sekalipun demikian, para penulis tersebut berbeda dengan para dramawan Absurd dalam hal penting: mereka menyajikan pemikiran mereka soal rasionalitas kondisi manusia dalam bentuk penalaran yang dibangun dengan bagus dan sangat logis, sementara Teater Absurd berusaha mengekspresikan ketidakbermaknaan kondisi manusia dan ketidaklayakan pendekatan rasional dengan cara melakukan penangguhan terbuka atas berbagai piranti rasional dan pemikiran diskursif. Sementara Sartre atau Camus mengekspresikan muatan baru dengan konvensi lama, Teater Absurd melangkah lebih jauh lagi dengan berusaha mencapai penyatuan antara asumsi-asumsi dasar tersebut dengan bentuk yang diekspresikannya. Dalam pengertian tertentu, teater Sartre dan Camus kurang memadai sebagai ekspresi filsafat Sartre dan Camus – dalam pengertian artistik, bukan filosofis – dibandingkan dengan Teater Absurd.
Jika Camus berpendapat bahwa pada jaman kita yang mengecewakan ini dunia sudah kehilangan makna, maka dia melakukannya secara rasionalis elegan dan gaya diskursif moralis abad kedelapan belas, dengan naskah-naskah yang tertata dan halus. Kalau Sartre berpendapat bahwa eksistensi ada sebelum esensi dan bahwa pribadi manusia bisa direduksi menjadi potensi murni dan kebebasan untuk memilih dirinya sendiri baru setiap saat, dia menyajikan gagasan-gagasannya dalam bentuk naskah-naskah yang didasarkan pada tokoh-tokoh yang digambarkan secara cerdas dan benar-benar konsisten sehingga masih mencerminkan konvensi lama bahwa setiap manusia memiliki esensi inti yang tak bergeming dan tak berubah – yaitu jiwa abadi. Untain kalimat indah dan kecerdasan argumentatif Sartre maupun Camus penelitian tak kenal lelahnya, ternyata masih menunjukkan keyakinan tersembunyi bahwa wacana logis bisa menjadi solusi yang sah, bahwa analisis bahasa akan menggiring pada penyingkapan konsep-konsep dasar – gagasan-gagasan Platonis.
Ini merupakan sebuah kontradiksi batin yang berusaha diatasi dan dipecahkan oleh para dramawan Absurd dengan insting dan intuisi dan bukannya dengan usaha sadar. Teater Absurd tak lagi berpendapat soal absurditas manusia, namun hanya menyajikan keadaannya – artinya, dalam pengertian gambaran konkret di atas panggung. Inilah perbedaan antara pendekatan filsuf dan penyair; pendekatan untuk mengambil contoh dari bidang lain, antara gagasan Tuhan dalam karya-karya Thomas Aquinas atau Spinoza dengan intuisi Tuhan pada St John of the Cross atau Meister Eckhart – perbedaan antara teori dan pengalaman.
Ini merupakan upaya untuk memadukan isi dan bentuk ekspresi yang membedakan antara Teater Absurd dengan teater Eksistensialis.
Tentu juga harus dibedakan dengan kecenderungan sejenis lain dalam teater Prancis kontemporer, yang juga asyik dengan absurditas dan ketidakpastian kondisi manusia: teater `garda depan puitis’ para dramawan seperti Michel de Ghelderode, Jacques Audiberti, Georges Neveux dan generasi muda seperti Georges Schehadé, Henri Pichette dan Jean Vauthier, untuk menyebut beberapa eksponen penting. Bahkan lebih sukar lagi untuk menarik suatu garis batas, karena kedua pendekatan tersebut saling tumpang tindih. `Garda depan puitik’ bersandar pada fantasi dan realitas mimpi sebagaimana halnya Teater Absurd. Teater ini juga mengabaikan dalil-dalil tradisional maupun kesatuan dasar dan konsistensi setiap tokoh serta adanya alur. Kendati begitu, pada dasarnya `garda depan puitik’ merepresentasikan suasana batin yang berbeda; lebih liris dan kurang kejam dan aneh. Yang lebih penting lagi adalah perbedaan sikap terhadap bahasa: `garda depan puitik’ lebih banyak bersandar pada tuturan `puitik’ sadar; mengilhami naskah dengan puisi-puisi efek, citraan-citraan yang dibangun dari segudang asosiasi verbal.
Di lain pihak, Teater Absurd cenderung mengarah pada devaluasi (penurunan nilai) radikal bahasa, menuju sebuah puisi yang muncul dari citraan-citraan konkret dan diobyektifikasi dari panggung itu sendiri. Unsur bahasa masih memainkan peranan penting dalam konsep ini, namun yang terjadi di atas panggung mentransedenkan, dan juga kerap berkontradiksi, kata-kata yang diucapkan tokoh-tokohnya. The Chairs (Kereta Kencana) karya Ionesco misalnya, muatan puitik dari sebuah naskah yang sangat puitis tidak terletak pada kata-kata biasa yang diucapkan, tetapi pada kenyataan bahwa kata-kata itu diucapkan kepada kursi-kursi yang jumlahnya makin banyak.
Dengan demikian, Teater Absurd merupakan bagian dari gerakan `anti-literer’ pada jaman kita, yang telah menemukan ekspresinya dalam lukisan abstrak, dengan penolakannya pada unsur-unsur `literer’ lukisan; atau dalam `novel baru’ Prancis, dengan kebergantungannya pada deskripsi benda dan penolakannya terhadap empati dan antrofomisme. Seperti halnya gerakan-gerakan tersebut maupun berbagai macam usaha untuk menciptakan bentuk-bentuk ekspresi baru dalam berbagai bidang seni, maka bukanlah kebetulan jika Teater Absurd berpusat di Paris.
Ini tidak berarti bahwa Teater Absurd pada hakikatnya Prancis. Secara umum Teater Absurd didasarkan pada rentang tradisi kuno Barat, dan benih-benihnya ada di Inggris, Spanyol, Italia, Jerman, Swiss, Eropa Timur dan Amerika Serikat maupun Prancis sendiri. Lebih dari pada itu, para praktisinya yang terkemuka yang tinggal di Paris dan menulis dalam bahasa Prancis bukanlah orang-orang Prancis.
Sebagai rumahnya gerakan modern, Paris merupakan sebuah pusat intersional, bukan hanya Prancis: Paris berfungsi sebagai magnet yang menjadi daya tarik bagi para seniman dari berbagai penjuru bangsa yang ingin mencari kebebasan berkarya dan menjalani kehidupan non konformis yang tidak terganggu dengan keharusan melongok apakah tetangganya akan terkejut. Inilah rahasia Paris sebagai ibukota para individualis dunia: di sinilah tempatnya dunia kafe dan hotel-hotel kecil yang memungkinkan untuk hidup santai dan tanpa gangguan.
Itulah sebabnya seorang kosmopolitan yang asal usulnya tidak jelas seperti Apollinaire; orang Spanyol seperti Picasso atau Juan Gris; orang Rusia seperti Kadinsky dan Chagall; orang Rumania seperti Tzara dan Brancusi; orang Amerika seperti Gertrude Stein, Hemingway dan E.E. Cummings; orang Irlandia seperti Joyce; dan banyak lagi yang lain dari berbagai penjuru dunia, bisa datang ke Paris dan membentuk gerakan modern dalam dunia sastra dan seni. Teater Absurd lahir dari tradisi yang sama dan dikembangkan dari akar yang sama. Orang-orang seperti sang Irlandia Samuel Beckett; seorang Rumania seperti Eugène Ionesco; seorang Rusia asal Armenia, Arthur Adamov, tidak hanya menemukan atmosfir kebebasan bereksperimen di Paris, tetapi juga mendapat berbagai kesempatan untuk mementaskan karya mereka.
Standar pementasan dan produksi di teater-teater kecil Paris seringkali dikritik sebagai sembrono dan asal-asalan. Mungkin kadang memang demikian kenyataannya. Namun kenyataannya tidak banyak tempat di dunia ini dimana banyak orang-orang teater hebat yang suka berpetualang dan cukup cerdas untuk mengerjakan karya eksperimental para penulis naskah baru dan membantu mereka menguasai suatu teknik panggung – dari Lugné-Poë, Copeau dan Dullin, sampai Jean-Louis Barrault, Jean Vilar, Roger Blin, Nicolas Battaile, Jacques Mauclair, Sylvian Dhomme, Jean-Marie Serrau dan masih banyak lagi yang namanya terkait dengan kebangkitan teater kontemporer.
Yang tidak kalah pentingnya adalah bahwa Paris juga merupakan tempat publik teater yang cerdas, yang bersikap reseptif, serius dan mampu menyerap gagasan-gagasan baru. Ini tidak berarti bahwa pementasan pertama sejumlah perwujudan mengejutkan dari Teater Absurd tidak mendapat demonstrasi yang memusuhi atau bahkan, pada awalnya tak ada penonton. Persoalannya adalah bahwa skandal-skandal tersebut merupakan ekspersi kepedulian dan perhatian, bahkan gedung-gedung kosong itu dihadiri sedikit orang yang antusias yang cukup untuk menjadi juru bicara yang kuat dan efektif atas kelebihan eksperimen-eksperimen orisinil yang telah mereka saksikan.
Sekalipun demikian, kendati ada situasi-situasi pendukung tersebut, yang menjadi bawaan iklim budaya Paris, keberhasilan Teater Absurd, yang dicapai dalam waktu singkat, tetap merupakan salah satu aspek paling mengejutkan dari fenomena ini. Drama-drama itu begitu aneh dan membingungkan, jelas tanpa daya tarik tradisional teater konvensional, selama kurang dari satu dasawarsa sudah dipentaskan di seluruh dunia, dari Finlandia sampai Jepang, dari Norwegia sampai Argentina, dan tentunya juga merangsang penciptaan banyak karya dengan konvensi serupa, dengan sendirinya merupakan ujian yang ampuh dan benar-benar empiris akan pentingnya Teater Absurd.
Kajian atas fenomena ini sebagai sastra, sebagai teknik pementasan maupun sebagai manifestasi pemikiran pada jamannya haruslah berasal dari pengamatan atas karya-karya itu sendiri. Hanya dengan itu, karya-karya tersebut dapat dipandang sebagai bagian dari sebuah tradisi kuno yang pada saat-saat tertentu sudah tenggelam tapi bisa dilacak kembali. Hanya sesudah gerakan masa kini diletakkan dalam konteks historisnya, maka bisa dilakukan suatu usaha untuk menilai maknanya dan memantapkan arti pentingnya maupun peranan yang harus dimainkan dalam pola pemikiran kontemporer.
Khalayak yang terkondisi pada suatu konvensi berterima cenderung menerima dampak berbagai pengalaman artistik melalui saringan standar-standar kritis dari harapan-harapan maupun ketentuan-ketentuan yang sudah dibangun sebelumnya, yang merupakan akibat alami pembelajaran selera maupun daya persepsi. Kerangka-kerangka nilai ini, yang ternyata begitu efisien, hanya melahirkan hasil-hasil yang membingungkan ketika dihadapkan pada sebuah konvensi yang sama sekali baru dan revolusioner – tarik ulur terjadi antara kesan yang mau tak mau sudah diterima dengan pra konsepsi kritis yang jelas mengabaikan kemungkinan bahwa kemungkinan semacam itu bisa dirasakan. Maka dari itu, badai frustasi dan kejengkelan selalu saja ditimbulkan oleh karya-karya dalam konvensi baru.
Tujuan buku ini adalah untuk memberikan sebuah kerangka acuan yang akan menunjukkan karya-karya Teater Absurd dalam konvensinya sendiri sehingga relevansi dan kekuatannya bisa menjadi gamblang bagi para pembaca Waiting for Godot maupun para narapidana di penjara San Quentin.
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PENDAHULUAN
Absurditas Yang Absurd
Pada tanggal 19 November 1957, sekelompok aktor yang cemas sedang bersiap tampil di hadapan para penonton. Para aktor tersebut adalah para anggota Company of San Fransisco Actors’ Workshop. Penonton terdiri atas seribu empat ratus narapidana di penjara San Quentin. Belum pernah ada pertunjukkan langsung ditampilkan di San Quentin sejak Sarah Bernhardt tampil di sana pada tahun 1913. Kini, empat puluh tahun sesudahnya, naskah yang dipilih, sebagian besar karena tidak ada peran wanita di dalamnya, adalah karya Samuel Beckett berjudul Menunggu Godot (naskah asli berbahasa Prancis, sudah diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia dari bahasa Inggris oleh Rendra dan terakhir oleh Penerbit Bentang).
Tak mengherankan jika para aktor dan Herbert Blau, sang sutradara, merasa cemas. Bagaimana mereka harus menghadapi salah satu khalayak penonton paling keras di seluruh dunia dengan sebuah naskah intelektual yang samar, yang nyaris menimbulkan kericuhan para penonton jenius kelas atas di Eropa Barat? Herbert Blau memutuskan untuk menyiapkan khalayak penonton San Quentin atas apa yang akan terjadi. Dia melangkah ke atas panggung dan menyapa North Dining Hall yang gelap dan penuh sesak - lautan nyala korek yang dilemparkan para narapidana ke pundak mereka sehabis menyalakan rokok. Blau membandingkan pentas drama itu dengan sebuah nomor musik jazz ‘yang mana setiap orang harus menyimak apapun yang ada di dalamnya’. Dia juga berharap akan ada makna di dalamnya, makna pribadi bagi setiap penonton Menunggu Godot.
Layar terangkat. Drama dimulai. Dan apa yang telah mengguncangkan khalayak penonton berpendidikan di Paris, London dan New York dapat dipahami dengan mudah oleh para narapidana..Sebagaimana yang ditulis oleh penulis `Catatan sehabis pementasan malam pertama’ di kolom koran penjara, San Quentin News:
Trio pria berotot, otot bisep bergerak-gerak…memarkir seluruh berat badan sebesar 642 pon berderet menantikan para gadis dan lelucon. Ketika yang ditunggu tidak muncul, mereka menggerutu dan memutuskan untuk menunggu sampai lampau gedung redup sebelum melarikan diri. Mereka keliru. Mereka menyimak dan menonton dua menit lebih lama - dan bertahan. Mereka baru keluar di akhir pertunjukan. Semuanya takjub…1
1. San Quentin News, San Quentin, California., 28 Nopember 1957
Atau sebagaimana ditulis oleh penulis cerita utama dari koran yang sama, dengan judul, `San Fransisco Group Leaves S.Q. Audience Waiting for Godot’:
Sejak setting yang serius dan terlupakan buatan Wegner ditimpa cahaya, sampai tepukan penuh harap dan sia-sia terakhir secara ragu ditimbulkan oleh dua orang pengembara yang sedang melakukan pencarian, kelompok teater San Fransisco ini telah membuat penontonnya terjerat... Mereka yang sudah merasakan media yang tidak terlalu kontroversial akan berusaha menganggapnya sebagai drama pertama yang membuat mereka merasa gentar lima menit sesudah karya Samuel Bekcett ini mulai tersingkap.2
2. ibid.
Seorang reporter Chronicle San Fransisco yang hadir di sana menengarai bahwa para narapidana tidak merasa kesulitan dalam memahami drama tersebut. Seorang napi berkata kepadanya, “Godot adalah masyarakat.” Yang lainnya berkata: “Dia ada di luar sana.”3 Seorang guru yang menjadi tahanan berkata, “Mereka tahu apa artinya menunggu...dan mereka juga tahu bahwa kalau pun Godot pada akhirnya datang, itu hanya akan menjadi sebuah kekecewaan.”4
3. Theatre Arts, New York, Juli 1958.
4. ibid.
Itu merupakan sebuah ekspresi simbolis untuk menghindari segala macam teror pribadi, oleh seorang penulis yang mengharapkan penontonnya akan menarik kesimpulan sendiri, membuat kesalahan sendiri. Tidak mempertanyakan apapun, tidak memaksakan moral yang didramatisir kepada penontonnya, tidak ada harapan khusus....Kita masih menunggu Godot, dan akan terus menunggu. Ketika yang ada di panggung kurang menarik dan lakuannya terlalu lambat, kita akan saling memanggil nama dan bersumpah untuk pergi selamanya – tapi, ternyata kita tidak pergi kemana-mana!5
5. San Quentin News, 28 Nopember 1957
Diaktakan bahwa Godot itu sendiri, maupun pergantian frasa dan tokoh dari naskah itu telah menjadi bahasa pribadi yang permanen, menjadi mitologi institusional San Quentin.
Mengapa sebuah naskah yang dianggap sebagai garda depan esoteris ini memberikan dampak yang bersifat langsung dan mendalam kepada penonton yang terdiri dari para napi? Apakah karena drama ini menghadapkan mereka pada sebuah situasi yang mirip dengan situasi mereka sendiri? Mungkin. Atau mungkin karena mereka tidak cukup cerdas untuk menonton teater tanpa gagasan-gagasan yang sudah ada sebelumnya dan siap sedia dengan harapan-harapan sehingga mereka menghindari kesalahan yang banyak menjebak para kritikus mapan yang mencerca drama ini karena tidak ada alur, perkembangan, perwatakan, tegangan atau nalar biasa. Tentunya para napi San Quentin tidak bisa dicurigai sebagai kelompok yang sok tahu, karena begitu banyaknya penonton Waiting for Godot seringkali diolok-olok sebagai berpura-pura menyukai sebuah pementasan padahal tidak memahaminya, hanya seolah-olah memahami.
Penerimaan Waiting for Godot di San Quentin, dan banyak mendapat pujian yang diberikan terhadap naskah-naskah karya Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter dan lain-lain, yang menyatakan bahwa naskah-naskah yang seringkali dianggap hanya omong kosong atau mistifikasi ini, memiliki makan tertentu dan dapat dipahami. Sebagian besar dari ketidakpahaman atas naskah-naskah semacam ini masih dialami oleh para kritikus maupun para pengamat teater, sebagian besar kebingungan yang ditimbulkan dan masih dirasakan berasal dari kenyataan bahwa naskah-naskah itu merupakan bagian dari sebuah konvensi pementasan yang masih baru dan tengah berkembang dan belum dipahami secara umum, apalagi untuk dapat diuraikan. Tak pelak lagi, naskah-naskah yang ditulis dalam konvensi baru ini akan dianggap sebagai kurang ajar dan kasar kalau dinilai berdasarkan kriteria dan standar konvensi lain. Kalau memang sebuah naskah harus berupa sebuah cerita yang dibangun secara cerdas, maka tidak ada cerita atau alur di sini. Kalau sebuah naskah dinilai berdasrakan kehalusan perwatakan dan motivasi, maka naskah-naskah tersebut acapkali tanpa tokoh-tokoh yang bisa dikenali dan menghadirkan boneka-boneka yang nyaris mekanis kepada penontonnya. Jika sebuah naskah yang bagus harus mempunyai tema yang dijelaskan secara utuh, yang dipaparkan secara rapi dan akhirnya dituntaskan, maka naskah-naskah itu kerapkali tanpa awal atau akhir. Bila sebuah naskah yang bagus harus menjadi cerminan alam dan menggambarkan perilaku maupun manerisme jaman dalam gambaran yang sangat rinci, maka naskah-naskah ini kerap hanya merupakan cerminan dari mimpi dan mimpi buruk. Jika sebuah naskah yang bagus bergantung pada tanya jawab yang cerdas dan dialog yang terarah, maka naskah-naskah ini seringkali hanya berupa ocehan yang tidak ada juntrungnya.
Naskah-naskah drama yang kita bahas di sini memiliki tujuan dan capaian yang sama sekali berbeda dengan naskah konvensional sehingga membutuhkan metode yang sama sekali berbeda pula. Naskah-naskah itu hanya bisa dinilai berdasarkan standar Teater Absurd, yang akan didefinisikan dan dijelaskan dalam buku ini.
Namun demikian, perlu kiranya ditekankan di sini bahwa para dramawan yang karyanya dibahas dini tidaklah memproklamirkan suatu aliran atau gerakan. Malahan, setiap penulis yang dipertanyakan di sini adalah sosok individu yang menganggap dirinya sebagai orang luar yang kesepian, tercerabut dan terisolasi dari dunia pribadinya. Masing-masing memiliki pendekatan prbadinya sendiri baik terhadap persoalan maupun bentuk; terhadap akar, sumber maupun latar belakangnya. Kalaupun mereka memiliki banyak kesamaan, yang memang jelas demikian kendati mungkin tidak mereka sadari, hal itu dikarenakan karya mereka sangat peka dalam menjadi cermin dan mencerminkan berbagai keasyikan maupun kecemasan, emosi maupun pikiran dari orang-orang pada jamannya di dunia Barat.
Namun ini bukan berarti mengatakan bahwa karya-karya mereka merupakan representasi sikap massa. Terlalu sederhana jika diasumsikan bahwa suatu jaman merepresentasikan sebuah pola yang homogen. Keberadaan kita pada masa transisi, lebih dari yang lain, menampilkan suatu gambaran yang berlapis: berbagai keyakinan abad pertengahan masih dipertahankan dan dilapis oleh rasionalisme abad kedelapan belas maupun Marxisme abad kesembilan belas, dikejutkan oleh ledakan fanatisme pra sejarah dan kultus kesukuan primitif. Setiap unsur pola budaya jaman itu menemukan ekspresi artistiknya sendiri. Namun demikian, Teater Absurd bisa dipandang sebagai refleksi apa yang tampaknya merupakan sikap paling murni representasi jaman kita.
Tonggak sikap ini adalah nalar bahwa keyakinan-keyakinan maupun asumsi-asumsi dasar yang tak tergoyahkan pada jaman sebelumnya sudah dihancur leburkan, diuji kembali dan dianggap tidak layak, dipandang sebagai ilusi murahan dan kekanak-kanakan. Runtuhnya keyakinan beragama masih tersembunyi sampai pada akhir Perang Dunia II denagn agama-agama pengganti seperti kemajuan, nasionalisme dan berbagai ajaran sesat totaliarianisme. Semua itu hancur lebur oleh peperangan. Pada tahun 1942, dengan tenang Albert Camus menyodorkan pertanyaan, kalau memang hidup sudah kehilangan makna, mengapa tidak bunuh diri saja. Dalam salah satu pencari besar pada jaman kita, The Myth of Sisyphus (Mite Sisifus), Camus berusaha mendiagnosis situasi manusia di dunia mana keyakinan sudah hancur lebur:
Sebuah dunia yang tidak bisa dijelaskan dengan nalar, betapapun kelirunya, adalah dunia yang dikenal. Namun dunia yang tiba-tiba tercerabut dari ilusi dan cahaya, manusia jadi merasa seperti orang asing. Dia adalah seorang buangan yang tak terpulihkan karena tercerabut dari kenangan kampung halaman yang hilang dan juga tidak punya harapan akan adanya negeri yang dijanjikan. Perceraian antara manusia dan kehidupannya, antara aktor dan settingnya, itulah makna Absurditas yang sebenar-benarnya.1
1. Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (Paris: Gallimard, 1942), hlm. 18.
Kata `Absurd’ aslinya berarti `tidak harmonis’ dalam konteks musik. Maka dari itu definisi kamusnya adalah: “tidak selaras dengan nalar atau kelayakan umum; tidak kongruen, tidak masuk akal, tidak logis.” Dalam pemakaian sehari-hari, `absurd’ berarti `menggelikan’, tapi bukan dalam pengertian seperti yang digunakan oleh Camus, maupun pengertian dalam pembahasan Teater Absurd. Dalam sebuah esai tentang Kafka, Ionesco mendefinisikan pemahamannya mengenai istilah tersebut sebagai berikut: “Absurd berarti tidak ada tujuan...Tercerabut dari akar relijius, metafisis maupun transedental, manusia tersesat; segala perilakunya jadi tak bernalar, absurd, sia-sia.”2
2. Eugène Ionesco, `Dans les armes de la villa’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madelaine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, no. 20, Oktober 1957.
Makna kesenduan metafisis atas absurditas kondisi manusia ini, secara umum menjadi tema naskah-naskah Adamov, Ionesco, Genet dan para penulis lain yang dibahas dalam buku ini. Namun ini bukanlah satu-satunya pokok persoalan yang diuraikan dari apa yang disebut sebagai Teater Absurd. Makna ketidakbermaknaan hidup yang sama, tak terelakkannya penurunan nilai cita-cita, kemurnian dan tujuan, juga menjadi tema sebagian besar dramawan seperti Giraudoux, Anoulih, Salacrou, Sartre dan Camus sendiri. Sekalipun demikian, para penulis tersebut berbeda dengan para dramawan Absurd dalam hal penting: mereka menyajikan pemikiran mereka soal rasionalitas kondisi manusia dalam bentuk penalaran yang dibangun dengan bagus dan sangat logis, sementara Teater Absurd berusaha mengekspresikan ketidakbermaknaan kondisi manusia dan ketidaklayakan pendekatan rasional dengan cara melakukan penangguhan terbuka atas berbagai piranti rasional dan pemikiran diskursif. Sementara Sartre atau Camus mengekspresikan muatan baru dengan konvensi lama, Teater Absurd melangkah lebih jauh lagi dengan berusaha mencapai penyatuan antara asumsi-asumsi dasar tersebut dengan bentuk yang diekspresikannya. Dalam pengertian tertentu, teater Sartre dan Camus kurang memadai sebagai ekspresi filsafat Sartre dan Camus – dalam pengertian artistik, bukan filosofis – dibandingkan dengan Teater Absurd.
Jika Camus berpendapat bahwa pada jaman kita yang mengecewakan ini dunia sudah kehilangan makna, maka dia melakukannya secara rasionalis elegan dan gaya diskursif moralis abad kedelapan belas, dengan naskah-naskah yang tertata dan halus. Kalau Sartre berpendapat bahwa eksistensi ada sebelum esensi dan bahwa pribadi manusia bisa direduksi menjadi potensi murni dan kebebasan untuk memilih dirinya sendiri baru setiap saat, dia menyajikan gagasan-gagasannya dalam bentuk naskah-naskah yang didasarkan pada tokoh-tokoh yang digambarkan secara cerdas dan benar-benar konsisten sehingga masih mencerminkan konvensi lama bahwa setiap manusia memiliki esensi inti yang tak bergeming dan tak berubah – yaitu jiwa abadi. Untain kalimat indah dan kecerdasan argumentatif Sartre maupun Camus penelitian tak kenal lelahnya, ternyata masih menunjukkan keyakinan tersembunyi bahwa wacana logis bisa menjadi solusi yang sah, bahwa analisis bahasa akan menggiring pada penyingkapan konsep-konsep dasar – gagasan-gagasan Platonis.
Ini merupakan sebuah kontradiksi batin yang berusaha diatasi dan dipecahkan oleh para dramawan Absurd dengan insting dan intuisi dan bukannya dengan usaha sadar. Teater Absurd tak lagi berpendapat soal absurditas manusia, namun hanya menyajikan keadaannya – artinya, dalam pengertian gambaran konkret di atas panggung. Inilah perbedaan antara pendekatan filsuf dan penyair; pendekatan untuk mengambil contoh dari bidang lain, antara gagasan Tuhan dalam karya-karya Thomas Aquinas atau Spinoza dengan intuisi Tuhan pada St John of the Cross atau Meister Eckhart – perbedaan antara teori dan pengalaman.
Ini merupakan upaya untuk memadukan isi dan bentuk ekspresi yang membedakan antara Teater Absurd dengan teater Eksistensialis.
Tentu juga harus dibedakan dengan kecenderungan sejenis lain dalam teater Prancis kontemporer, yang juga asyik dengan absurditas dan ketidakpastian kondisi manusia: teater `garda depan puitis’ para dramawan seperti Michel de Ghelderode, Jacques Audiberti, Georges Neveux dan generasi muda seperti Georges Schehadé, Henri Pichette dan Jean Vauthier, untuk menyebut beberapa eksponen penting. Bahkan lebih sukar lagi untuk menarik suatu garis batas, karena kedua pendekatan tersebut saling tumpang tindih. `Garda depan puitik’ bersandar pada fantasi dan realitas mimpi sebagaimana halnya Teater Absurd. Teater ini juga mengabaikan dalil-dalil tradisional maupun kesatuan dasar dan konsistensi setiap tokoh serta adanya alur. Kendati begitu, pada dasarnya `garda depan puitik’ merepresentasikan suasana batin yang berbeda; lebih liris dan kurang kejam dan aneh. Yang lebih penting lagi adalah perbedaan sikap terhadap bahasa: `garda depan puitik’ lebih banyak bersandar pada tuturan `puitik’ sadar; mengilhami naskah dengan puisi-puisi efek, citraan-citraan yang dibangun dari segudang asosiasi verbal.
Di lain pihak, Teater Absurd cenderung mengarah pada devaluasi (penurunan nilai) radikal bahasa, menuju sebuah puisi yang muncul dari citraan-citraan konkret dan diobyektifikasi dari panggung itu sendiri. Unsur bahasa masih memainkan peranan penting dalam konsep ini, namun yang terjadi di atas panggung mentransedenkan, dan juga kerap berkontradiksi, kata-kata yang diucapkan tokoh-tokohnya. The Chairs (Kereta Kencana) karya Ionesco misalnya, muatan puitik dari sebuah naskah yang sangat puitis tidak terletak pada kata-kata biasa yang diucapkan, tetapi pada kenyataan bahwa kata-kata itu diucapkan kepada kursi-kursi yang jumlahnya makin banyak.
Dengan demikian, Teater Absurd merupakan bagian dari gerakan `anti-literer’ pada jaman kita, yang telah menemukan ekspresinya dalam lukisan abstrak, dengan penolakannya pada unsur-unsur `literer’ lukisan; atau dalam `novel baru’ Prancis, dengan kebergantungannya pada deskripsi benda dan penolakannya terhadap empati dan antrofomisme. Seperti halnya gerakan-gerakan tersebut maupun berbagai macam usaha untuk menciptakan bentuk-bentuk ekspresi baru dalam berbagai bidang seni, maka bukanlah kebetulan jika Teater Absurd berpusat di Paris.
Ini tidak berarti bahwa Teater Absurd pada hakikatnya Prancis. Secara umum Teater Absurd didasarkan pada rentang tradisi kuno Barat, dan benih-benihnya ada di Inggris, Spanyol, Italia, Jerman, Swiss, Eropa Timur dan Amerika Serikat maupun Prancis sendiri. Lebih dari pada itu, para praktisinya yang terkemuka yang tinggal di Paris dan menulis dalam bahasa Prancis bukanlah orang-orang Prancis.
Sebagai rumahnya gerakan modern, Paris merupakan sebuah pusat intersional, bukan hanya Prancis: Paris berfungsi sebagai magnet yang menjadi daya tarik bagi para seniman dari berbagai penjuru bangsa yang ingin mencari kebebasan berkarya dan menjalani kehidupan non konformis yang tidak terganggu dengan keharusan melongok apakah tetangganya akan terkejut. Inilah rahasia Paris sebagai ibukota para individualis dunia: di sinilah tempatnya dunia kafe dan hotel-hotel kecil yang memungkinkan untuk hidup santai dan tanpa gangguan.
Itulah sebabnya seorang kosmopolitan yang asal usulnya tidak jelas seperti Apollinaire; orang Spanyol seperti Picasso atau Juan Gris; orang Rusia seperti Kadinsky dan Chagall; orang Rumania seperti Tzara dan Brancusi; orang Amerika seperti Gertrude Stein, Hemingway dan E.E. Cummings; orang Irlandia seperti Joyce; dan banyak lagi yang lain dari berbagai penjuru dunia, bisa datang ke Paris dan membentuk gerakan modern dalam dunia sastra dan seni. Teater Absurd lahir dari tradisi yang sama dan dikembangkan dari akar yang sama. Orang-orang seperti sang Irlandia Samuel Beckett; seorang Rumania seperti Eugène Ionesco; seorang Rusia asal Armenia, Arthur Adamov, tidak hanya menemukan atmosfir kebebasan bereksperimen di Paris, tetapi juga mendapat berbagai kesempatan untuk mementaskan karya mereka.
Standar pementasan dan produksi di teater-teater kecil Paris seringkali dikritik sebagai sembrono dan asal-asalan. Mungkin kadang memang demikian kenyataannya. Namun kenyataannya tidak banyak tempat di dunia ini dimana banyak orang-orang teater hebat yang suka berpetualang dan cukup cerdas untuk mengerjakan karya eksperimental para penulis naskah baru dan membantu mereka menguasai suatu teknik panggung – dari Lugné-Poë, Copeau dan Dullin, sampai Jean-Louis Barrault, Jean Vilar, Roger Blin, Nicolas Battaile, Jacques Mauclair, Sylvian Dhomme, Jean-Marie Serrau dan masih banyak lagi yang namanya terkait dengan kebangkitan teater kontemporer.
Yang tidak kalah pentingnya adalah bahwa Paris juga merupakan tempat publik teater yang cerdas, yang bersikap reseptif, serius dan mampu menyerap gagasan-gagasan baru. Ini tidak berarti bahwa pementasan pertama sejumlah perwujudan mengejutkan dari Teater Absurd tidak mendapat demonstrasi yang memusuhi atau bahkan, pada awalnya tak ada penonton. Persoalannya adalah bahwa skandal-skandal tersebut merupakan ekspersi kepedulian dan perhatian, bahkan gedung-gedung kosong itu dihadiri sedikit orang yang antusias yang cukup untuk menjadi juru bicara yang kuat dan efektif atas kelebihan eksperimen-eksperimen orisinil yang telah mereka saksikan.
Sekalipun demikian, kendati ada situasi-situasi pendukung tersebut, yang menjadi bawaan iklim budaya Paris, keberhasilan Teater Absurd, yang dicapai dalam waktu singkat, tetap merupakan salah satu aspek paling mengejutkan dari fenomena ini. Drama-drama itu begitu aneh dan membingungkan, jelas tanpa daya tarik tradisional teater konvensional, selama kurang dari satu dasawarsa sudah dipentaskan di seluruh dunia, dari Finlandia sampai Jepang, dari Norwegia sampai Argentina, dan tentunya juga merangsang penciptaan banyak karya dengan konvensi serupa, dengan sendirinya merupakan ujian yang ampuh dan benar-benar empiris akan pentingnya Teater Absurd.
Kajian atas fenomena ini sebagai sastra, sebagai teknik pementasan maupun sebagai manifestasi pemikiran pada jamannya haruslah berasal dari pengamatan atas karya-karya itu sendiri. Hanya dengan itu, karya-karya tersebut dapat dipandang sebagai bagian dari sebuah tradisi kuno yang pada saat-saat tertentu sudah tenggelam tapi bisa dilacak kembali. Hanya sesudah gerakan masa kini diletakkan dalam konteks historisnya, maka bisa dilakukan suatu usaha untuk menilai maknanya dan memantapkan arti pentingnya maupun peranan yang harus dimainkan dalam pola pemikiran kontemporer.
Khalayak yang terkondisi pada suatu konvensi berterima cenderung menerima dampak berbagai pengalaman artistik melalui saringan standar-standar kritis dari harapan-harapan maupun ketentuan-ketentuan yang sudah dibangun sebelumnya, yang merupakan akibat alami pembelajaran selera maupun daya persepsi. Kerangka-kerangka nilai ini, yang ternyata begitu efisien, hanya melahirkan hasil-hasil yang membingungkan ketika dihadapkan pada sebuah konvensi yang sama sekali baru dan revolusioner – tarik ulur terjadi antara kesan yang mau tak mau sudah diterima dengan pra konsepsi kritis yang jelas mengabaikan kemungkinan bahwa kemungkinan semacam itu bisa dirasakan. Maka dari itu, badai frustasi dan kejengkelan selalu saja ditimbulkan oleh karya-karya dalam konvensi baru.
Tujuan buku ini adalah untuk memberikan sebuah kerangka acuan yang akan menunjukkan karya-karya Teater Absurd dalam konvensinya sendiri sehingga relevansi dan kekuatannya bisa menjadi gamblang bagi para pembaca Waiting for Godot maupun para narapidana di penjara San Quentin.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Nine Things Your Translators Wish You Knew
By Rachel A. Davis
If you’re a technical writer with more than, oh, say, forty-five minutes of experience in writing for international audiences, you’ve likely encountered
the frustrations and challenges that often come with multi-language translation. So what are the secrets to
a stress-free and productive translation experience? How can you make sure that you’re getting the best value for your money, while ensuring that misunderstandings and schedule delays are kept at bay?
To find out, I asked Kristin Constantineau and Cyle Hajek, directors at International Language Services (ILS),a multi-language translation and localization
firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kristin and Cyle have over fourteen years of combined translation experience,
and they know how to smooth the process. Here are the top nine things they want you to know before you submit
your next translation project :
1. Keep translations in mind throughout your writing
process. Writing with translation in mind is more than knowing which languages you’ll support. It means paying attention to all those nuances and often overlooked
details of writing that vary from culture to culture. Use the following guidelines to ensure a translation friendly writing style.
Don’ts:
• Avoid making unnecessary culture or location-specific references. Time zones, units of measure, and national
holidays are particularly troublesome. Sports analogies should be strictly avoided.
• Avoid jargon and clichés. For international readers, these are ambiguous and confusing at best, meaningless
and baffling at worst.
• Avoid references to fiction or myth, which are unlikely to be understood outside their country of origin.
• Don’t include complex similes and metaphors, no matter how clever they might be in English! Chances are, your wit won’t translate across cultures.
• If possible, avoid the use of homographs (words that have the same spelling but different meanings or
pronunciations). These words can cause problems for writers, translators, and readers alike!
• Avoid using excessive noun strings. The nature of technical writing lends itself easily to cumbersome strings of nouns and their descriptors. It’s hard
to avoid. Keep in mind, though, that if it’s potentially confusing in English, it’s probably doubly confusing when translated.
Do’s:
• Use short, concise, and complete sentences. Simple sentences are easier to translate and understand.
• Use a formal tone. Maintaining a formal writing style offers a sense of respect and credibility for both domestic and international readers.
• Locate phrases next to the words they modify. This simple step will save your audience lots of backtracking and rereading.
• Repeat nouns instead of referring back to them. Too many references across sentences and paragraphs can
cause confusion for even the most proficient reader.
• Leave lots of extra space in your documents to permit expansion during translation. Translated documents can
require up to 30 percent more space than their English counterparts. Keep this in mind when writing and laying
out your English text. According to Cyle Hajek, ILS’s director of quality, “Keep your writing and your layout
simple. It’s going to get bigger anyway, so don’t make it more unwieldy than it already is.”
• Keep your language simple. While you undoubtedly have an impressive vocabulary, save your more obscure
usage for the English-major types who will appreciate it. Readers of technical manuals want information as quickly and simply as possible.
• Use complete clauses or complete sentences when making lists. Incomplete sentences are often problematic when it’s time for translation.
• Hyphenate phrases or noun strings that modify other words. Using hyphens might look awkward at times, but it provides a very clear indicator of what’s being modified.
2. Leverage your translation memory with consistent
Terminology. If you want to save money and take
advantage of your translation memory, intercultural technical communication use consistent terminology throughout your manual. Better yet, use that same
terminology (wherever possible) across multiple documents as well. Leveraging your translation memory in this way will simplify the job for everyone. It’s
often easiest to create boilerplate or “standard” text in sections like Safety or Warranty. If identical features are shared across multiple product lines, meet
with all relevant project team members ahead of time to agree on a standard text for those features. This will save lots of translation time and money later.
3. Choose the right application for your documentation—and use that application properly. Let’s face it: Microsoft Word is probably not the best option for your graphics-intensive 350-page maintenance manual. But you’d be surprised at how many translation clients will submit just such a manual, complete with text-rich graphics already embedded. Most translators prefer a document with “live text”instead of one with cross-references, tags, and other predefined variables.
Some of these English-language software time-savers end up costing time and creating confusion during the
translation process.
4. Never underestimate the importance of pictures.
Effective photographs, diagrams, and illustrations can do more to create a clear understanding than even the most competent, graceful, and savvy writing. A picture really is worth a thousand words (and thousands of dollars in translation costs!). An important note here: It’s usually best to avoid embedding text within your graphics, so the graphics don’t require additional updates. Instead, use text boxes outside of graphics
5 . Understand the difference between translating for
publication and translating for information. According to the American Translators Association (ATA), there’s a significant difference between translating “for publication” and “for information.” Translating for information means providing a technically accurate but unpolished translation that’s “good enough to understand.” In a “for information” translation, the finer details of good writing (smooth transitions between ideas, consistent terminology, correct word order, etc.) will probably be sacrificed for speed and cost-effectiveness. In translating for publication, however, grammar and style are critical elements, along with technical accuracy. Creating a “smooth” and polished final product is the goal of “for publication” translations, which are usually preferred when customers see the final product.
6.Finalize your text before having it translated. Changing your text after translation is under way will affect your cost and schedule. By ensuring that the text is final before handing it off, you’ll save yourself lots of time and headaches. Of course, it’s not always reasonable to expect a “final, final (no, really), final” document every time. And translators
understand this. Do your best, though, to ensure that your project team signs off on a document before you submit it for translation. If they insist upon changes
after the fact, make sure they understand the effect on time and budget
7. Talk to your translators. Don’t just throw your project over the wall to be translated and then wait a couple of weeks to get it back. Talk to your translation team. Help them understand the project’s goals, priorities, and potential pitfalls. Explain areas of text that were particularly challenging to write; they’ll likely be challenging to translate as well. Discuss your company’s needs, or any unique concerns you have about the project. Also critical? Make sure your translators understand your audience. You wouldn’t write for retiring medical professionals
in the same way you’d write for young skateboarding enthusiasts, and neither should your translators.Make sure your translators understand the readers for whom they’re writing.
8. Ask lots of questions while you’re writing.
As a technical writer, it’s your responsibility to provide clear and concise instructions for your readers. This means putting yourself in their shoes—even if those shoes are on a different continent! Ask lots of questions as you write: Could your text be interpreted in another way? Are you using simple sentences and clear language? Have you used any culturally biased language? Is the text appropriate for its intended audience and media? Your translators will
probably be glad to help you make your writing translation-friendly: you’ll become a better client for them, and their job will be easier in the long run.
9. Respect foreign-language typographical conventions.
The ATA often laments the number of translation clients who feel compelled to “adjust” foreign-language typography to bring it into line with English standards. They point out the following often-abused typographical conventions:
• French requires a space between a word and the colon that follows.
• French uses « and » for quotation marks.
• In German, nouns require capital letters.
• In Spanish and French, neither months nor days of the week require an initial capital.
• Ignoring the pesky and seemingly minor details of accents, umlauts, and ordinals can mean the difference between year (aٌo) and anus (ano). Following these nine rules will mean a better writing process for you, a quicker and more efficient production process for your translators, and a more enjoyable experience for your readers. Happy translating!
Rachel Davis, a member of the Twin Cities
Chapter STC, is a freelance writer in Minneapolis
and owner of Red Dog Writing Services (http://www.reddogwriting.com). She specializes in nonfiction writing, with an acute interest in technical and historical subject matter. She can be reached at rachel@reddogwriting.com
If you’re a technical writer with more than, oh, say, forty-five minutes of experience in writing for international audiences, you’ve likely encountered
the frustrations and challenges that often come with multi-language translation. So what are the secrets to
a stress-free and productive translation experience? How can you make sure that you’re getting the best value for your money, while ensuring that misunderstandings and schedule delays are kept at bay?
To find out, I asked Kristin Constantineau and Cyle Hajek, directors at International Language Services (ILS),a multi-language translation and localization
firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kristin and Cyle have over fourteen years of combined translation experience,
and they know how to smooth the process. Here are the top nine things they want you to know before you submit
your next translation project :
1. Keep translations in mind throughout your writing
process. Writing with translation in mind is more than knowing which languages you’ll support. It means paying attention to all those nuances and often overlooked
details of writing that vary from culture to culture. Use the following guidelines to ensure a translation friendly writing style.
Don’ts:
• Avoid making unnecessary culture or location-specific references. Time zones, units of measure, and national
holidays are particularly troublesome. Sports analogies should be strictly avoided.
• Avoid jargon and clichés. For international readers, these are ambiguous and confusing at best, meaningless
and baffling at worst.
• Avoid references to fiction or myth, which are unlikely to be understood outside their country of origin.
• Don’t include complex similes and metaphors, no matter how clever they might be in English! Chances are, your wit won’t translate across cultures.
• If possible, avoid the use of homographs (words that have the same spelling but different meanings or
pronunciations). These words can cause problems for writers, translators, and readers alike!
• Avoid using excessive noun strings. The nature of technical writing lends itself easily to cumbersome strings of nouns and their descriptors. It’s hard
to avoid. Keep in mind, though, that if it’s potentially confusing in English, it’s probably doubly confusing when translated.
Do’s:
• Use short, concise, and complete sentences. Simple sentences are easier to translate and understand.
• Use a formal tone. Maintaining a formal writing style offers a sense of respect and credibility for both domestic and international readers.
• Locate phrases next to the words they modify. This simple step will save your audience lots of backtracking and rereading.
• Repeat nouns instead of referring back to them. Too many references across sentences and paragraphs can
cause confusion for even the most proficient reader.
• Leave lots of extra space in your documents to permit expansion during translation. Translated documents can
require up to 30 percent more space than their English counterparts. Keep this in mind when writing and laying
out your English text. According to Cyle Hajek, ILS’s director of quality, “Keep your writing and your layout
simple. It’s going to get bigger anyway, so don’t make it more unwieldy than it already is.”
• Keep your language simple. While you undoubtedly have an impressive vocabulary, save your more obscure
usage for the English-major types who will appreciate it. Readers of technical manuals want information as quickly and simply as possible.
• Use complete clauses or complete sentences when making lists. Incomplete sentences are often problematic when it’s time for translation.
• Hyphenate phrases or noun strings that modify other words. Using hyphens might look awkward at times, but it provides a very clear indicator of what’s being modified.
2. Leverage your translation memory with consistent
Terminology. If you want to save money and take
advantage of your translation memory, intercultural technical communication use consistent terminology throughout your manual. Better yet, use that same
terminology (wherever possible) across multiple documents as well. Leveraging your translation memory in this way will simplify the job for everyone. It’s
often easiest to create boilerplate or “standard” text in sections like Safety or Warranty. If identical features are shared across multiple product lines, meet
with all relevant project team members ahead of time to agree on a standard text for those features. This will save lots of translation time and money later.
3. Choose the right application for your documentation—and use that application properly. Let’s face it: Microsoft Word is probably not the best option for your graphics-intensive 350-page maintenance manual. But you’d be surprised at how many translation clients will submit just such a manual, complete with text-rich graphics already embedded. Most translators prefer a document with “live text”instead of one with cross-references, tags, and other predefined variables.
Some of these English-language software time-savers end up costing time and creating confusion during the
translation process.
4. Never underestimate the importance of pictures.
Effective photographs, diagrams, and illustrations can do more to create a clear understanding than even the most competent, graceful, and savvy writing. A picture really is worth a thousand words (and thousands of dollars in translation costs!). An important note here: It’s usually best to avoid embedding text within your graphics, so the graphics don’t require additional updates. Instead, use text boxes outside of graphics
5 . Understand the difference between translating for
publication and translating for information. According to the American Translators Association (ATA), there’s a significant difference between translating “for publication” and “for information.” Translating for information means providing a technically accurate but unpolished translation that’s “good enough to understand.” In a “for information” translation, the finer details of good writing (smooth transitions between ideas, consistent terminology, correct word order, etc.) will probably be sacrificed for speed and cost-effectiveness. In translating for publication, however, grammar and style are critical elements, along with technical accuracy. Creating a “smooth” and polished final product is the goal of “for publication” translations, which are usually preferred when customers see the final product.
6.Finalize your text before having it translated. Changing your text after translation is under way will affect your cost and schedule. By ensuring that the text is final before handing it off, you’ll save yourself lots of time and headaches. Of course, it’s not always reasonable to expect a “final, final (no, really), final” document every time. And translators
understand this. Do your best, though, to ensure that your project team signs off on a document before you submit it for translation. If they insist upon changes
after the fact, make sure they understand the effect on time and budget
7. Talk to your translators. Don’t just throw your project over the wall to be translated and then wait a couple of weeks to get it back. Talk to your translation team. Help them understand the project’s goals, priorities, and potential pitfalls. Explain areas of text that were particularly challenging to write; they’ll likely be challenging to translate as well. Discuss your company’s needs, or any unique concerns you have about the project. Also critical? Make sure your translators understand your audience. You wouldn’t write for retiring medical professionals
in the same way you’d write for young skateboarding enthusiasts, and neither should your translators.Make sure your translators understand the readers for whom they’re writing.
8. Ask lots of questions while you’re writing.
As a technical writer, it’s your responsibility to provide clear and concise instructions for your readers. This means putting yourself in their shoes—even if those shoes are on a different continent! Ask lots of questions as you write: Could your text be interpreted in another way? Are you using simple sentences and clear language? Have you used any culturally biased language? Is the text appropriate for its intended audience and media? Your translators will
probably be glad to help you make your writing translation-friendly: you’ll become a better client for them, and their job will be easier in the long run.
9. Respect foreign-language typographical conventions.
The ATA often laments the number of translation clients who feel compelled to “adjust” foreign-language typography to bring it into line with English standards. They point out the following often-abused typographical conventions:
• French requires a space between a word and the colon that follows.
• French uses « and » for quotation marks.
• In German, nouns require capital letters.
• In Spanish and French, neither months nor days of the week require an initial capital.
• Ignoring the pesky and seemingly minor details of accents, umlauts, and ordinals can mean the difference between year (aٌo) and anus (ano). Following these nine rules will mean a better writing process for you, a quicker and more efficient production process for your translators, and a more enjoyable experience for your readers. Happy translating!
Rachel Davis, a member of the Twin Cities
Chapter STC, is a freelance writer in Minneapolis
and owner of Red Dog Writing Services (http://www.reddogwriting.com). She specializes in nonfiction writing, with an acute interest in technical and historical subject matter. She can be reached at rachel@reddogwriting.com
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