Diagonale

Trying to post larger photos from Flickr, since the maximum size in Blogger is so small. Tsk, I can't work out how to do more than one photo per post - apologies to users of feed readers! And I don't like these heavy frames. Sigh.

"The book begins to inhabit me"

" When you’re faced with a novel, how do you actually do it? I call the translation process 'finding a voice'—there’s a point in the translation where I suddenly feel very confident and I know what the mood should be, I know what the characters should say and I know what the register of language should be. It can take quite a while to reach that point. I usually flounder until well over half way through. And then something clicks, the book begins to inhabit me, everything gels and I know what feels right.

" This is the way I work: first of all I read the book and try to absorb it and get an overall sense of what kind of language I’m going to be dealing with, what kind of problems I’m going to need to think about. These concerns lurk at the back of my mind. I mull them over constantly, when I swim my forty lengths at the pool, or when I’m cooking dinner. Once I start work, I need to get the first draft out of the way as quickly as I can. I tend to work fast, I don’t worry about the problems. I don’t make decisive choices at this point. When I hit a tricky patch I type in the French and then put three, four, five alternatives, or a note to remind myself that I’ve got to do some further research. But I crash on. I set myself a daily target, and I need that structure. Once I’ve done my first draft, I print out the translation and revise it. At that point I still have the French close to me, and I double check everything and make sure that the text is all there, and that it actually says what the French says. And for unresolved problems I go back to the French to see if there are clues that I’ve missed, and usually there are. I amend the file, often making further improvements as I type, and print it out again.

" And then I read the translation through as an English text, knowing it’s all there, that it’s 'faithful' in terms of saying as closely as possible what the French says. This is the point that I call 'finding a voice'—the translation has to stand on its own as an English text, it has to work, it has to be coherent and cohesive. At this stage I make quite radical, bold changes, because by now I’m much more confident, I 'own' the text. Then I print it out again and give it another read through, to make sure the voice is consistent. Then the manuscript goes off for copy-editing and there are suggestions to be incorporated. At proof stage I very often make some minor changes as well, a last-minute solution suddenly occurs for something that had been bothering me.

" My overall strategy is governed by the view that as a translator you are first and foremost a reader, and you can only convey your reading of that book. There is no right, objective or single translation; you’re a reader, you are different from any other reader, and your translation is your reading of that author. I think that’s something that translators have to come to terms with. Your choices are inevitably going to be subjective, your vocabulary is a personal vocabulary, you dredge it up from all sorts of hidden depths. It is different from anybody else’s vocabulary. And you do the best job you can, you try to be as sensitive as possible to the author’s idiom, choices, moods, etc., but ultimately it’s one reading of the book. And it’s not necessarily the only one, or the best one, it’s just your reading."

From Translators in Conversation: literary translator from French to English Ros Schwartz in dialogue with Nicolas de Lange, English translator of novels from Hebrew, including those of Amos Oz. Via Wood s Lot and Context, a journal of the Dalkey Archive. I've attended a couple of translation workshops in London with Ros. Her translations include many novels from francophone North Africa and, jointly with Amanda Hopkinson, a terrific series of French crime novels by Dominique Manotti. She has the gift of writing and talking lucidly and inspiringly about her work.

Wooden people

A couple of totem poles were on display in the covered great court of the British Museum. Denuded of their bright paint, austere and monumental, they stretched right up to the glass roof which normally hangs far above any exhibit, its diamond panes like a strange inner sky, patterning and diffusing the light. They were grand and compelling, though bizarrely out of place among the classical pillars and the crowds of visitors who were milling, chattering, busy buying food and souvenirs or clapped out on the floor. They made me smile, as always (their extremeness and their solid themness). I snatched a few photos before my camera batteries went dead, and later, as so often happens, found their accompanying text - posted by Miriam at Escrituraleatoria. The vision is a harsh one, as I suspect mine would be harsher if their native land was mine.

Totems

We went to the park
where they kept the wooden people:
static, multiple
uprooted and trans-
planted.

Their faces were restored,
freshly-painted.
In front of them
the other wooden people
posed for each other´s cameras
and nearby a new booth
sold replicas and souvenirs.

One of the people was real.
It lay on its back, smashed
by a toppling fall or just
the enduring of minor winters.
Only one of the heads had
survived intact, and it was
also beginning to decay
but there was a
life in the progressing
of old wood back to
the earth, obliteration

that the clear-hewn
standing figures lacked.

As for us, perennial watchers,
tourists of another kind
there is nothing for us to worship;
no pictures of ourselves, no blue-
sky summer fetishes, no postcards
we can either buy, or
smiling
be.

There are few totems that remain
living for us.
Though in passing,
through glass we notice

dead trees in the seared meadows
dead roots bleaching in the swamps.

Margaret Atwood

Rainy day at the British Museum

The lines and colours of the centuries-old Chinese paintings of trees, flowers, birds and insects remain pure, delicate and strong, their appeal all the greater, more subtle, perhaps, through the gentle fog of great age.

Outside, I find the same muted palate, the Chinese garden just as fogged and subtle in Saturday's light but relentless rain.

through the veil of rain

and the mist of centuries
the same leafy shapes

Fascination with Nature and China Landscape at the British Museum. An exquisite 14th century painted silk scroll by Xie Chufang, the title of which is sometimes translated as 'Fascination of Nature' inspired the exhibition: photos and information here, and an interesting article.

Calendula cuadrada

Sun, shade

A lot of shade. Working most of the time and not very happy about it. Acutely aware, because of the Mindfulness stuff, of how tired I often feel - and so soon after the long break!

Meantime, in odd moments, pursuing, losing and returning to a stream of thought that might turn out to be a blogpost much less narrowly self-absorbed. And thinking that, despite it all, even on bad days, the time I spend at work in the company of intellectuals and at leisure browsing the Internet both bring gifts. For a long time what I most looked for on line was emotion, creativity, community - and I still seek these, and continue to encounter and hugely value them. Lately, though, I find myself gravitating to slightly broader and more intellectual resources, looking, just tentatively, at psychology, philosophy, excited by the connections that pop up, the light shed on my own experience by what I hear and read. Heartening, really, that my mind in it's 54th year still seems sporadically inclined to venture shyly into new territory, or new approaches, at least, to long-term preoccupations.

Fallen

Peach tea

Sit, gather yourself, glug down a cold drink: a few days ago, on the way from work to an evening meeting. Because I took a photo, the syrupy cold of the iced peach tea and the amber glint of evening sunshine on the glass and the dregs and the melting ice-cubes outlive the moment.

Learning to be here - II

The second session of the MBSR course was this week. We did another Body Scan, some sitting meditation and discussed our experiences of practicing over the previous week. I did not, as in the first session, confront physical pain. I did, though, continue to feel challenged by a crowded and demanding social situation whose essential purpose and content mean that my habitual coping strategies of 'shutting down' or coasting through with minimal participation will not do - and this at the end of a working day, when my resources are depleted.

Mmm. This is harder than I thought it would be. Harder, for me at any rate, to be here in this context than to attend my lovely, silent, austere Buddhist meditation retreats - though those are challenging in their own way. I suspect it will therefore be all the more useful, if I can stick with it, but comfortable it's not. Being mindful of one's wretched, messy, suffering self, whilst hard up against a lot of other people's similarly, but differently, wretched, messy... ouch!

How hard it is came home to me again the following day, when I met rr for lunch and knitting. Creator of a whole family of socks, as well as of many other gorgeous things, she'd come to show me how to turn the heel on my first sock. Attempting to be mindful and to watch one's negative habits whilst knitting one's first sock is not quite earth-shattering on the scale of things, but one's first anything at my advanced age is not easy. Well, actually, it's not so much my age (I reflect, as I knit... 6, 7, 2 together... ach, I've lost count, how many stitches did you say?). I've always found learning anything new and even slightly challenging excruciatingly difficult, so painful and frustrating, so demanding of a willingness to be present and patient that I do not have.

I'm ashamed to think of all the things I've given up on learning, or avoided even starting to learn. It's a sorry tale, highlighting over and over, in contexts small and large, the place where I am broken. And giving attention to the place where I am broken is painful. Fifty years down the line from the day I got broken, turned and faced away from life because I 'couldn't bear' to put my toys away, is it too late to mend, even a little bit? Such portentous thoughts while knitting a sock would be sad if they weren't hilarious, and quite impossible to prolong without the sock going horribly wrong...

Blossom in the graveyard

Dulwich Old Cemetery: “Buried here in unmarked graves are 35 victims of the plague, who died in 1665. Also, Old Bridget, Queen of the Norwood Gypsies, who died in 1768; Samuel Matthews, the hermit murdered in his cave in Dulwich Wood in 1802…”