Lost in Translation II - totally lost

[lord of the mark]

Are you guys familiar with the Hughes - Plath controversy?

[Winston]

No. What were they up to?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Winston
No. What were they up to?

Real short. They were married, and both poets. Sylvia Plath was INTENSELY depressed, and commited suicide, not before writing "The Bell Jar". IIUC many blame her husband Ted Hughes, allegedly cold and absorbed in his own career, of being largely "at fault". Thats about all I remember about it.

Given that, seeing the final translation, and then learning the original was by Ted Hughes, is just damned spooky.

[lord of the mark]

wiki on Plath

"Born in Boston, Plath showed early promise, publishing her first poem at the age of 8. Her father, Otto, a college professor and noted authority on the subject of bees, died around the same time, on October 5, 1940. She continued to try and publish poems and short stories in American magazines and achieved marginal success.

She suffered from severe bipolar disorder throughout her adult life. In her junior year at Smith College, Plath made the first of her suicide attempts. She later depicted her breakdown in the semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. She was committed to a mental institution (McLean Hospital), and seemed to make an acceptable recovery, graduating from Smith with honours in 1955.

Plath earned a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where she continued writing poetry, occasionally publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity. At Cambridge she met English poet Ted Hughes. They were married on June 16, 1956. Plath and Hughes spent from July 1957 to October 1959 living and working in the United States. Plath taught at Smith. They then moved to Boston where Plath sat in on seminars with Robert Lowell. This course was to have a profound influence on her work. Also attending the seminars was Anne Sexton. At this time Plath and Hughes also met, for the first time, W. S. Merwin, who admired their work and remained a lifelong friend. On hearing that Plath was pregnant, they moved back to the United Kingdom.

She and Hughes lived in London for a while and then settled in North Tawton, a small market town in Devon. She published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, in England in 1960. In February 1961 she suffered a miscarriage. A number of poems refer to this event. The marriage met with difficulties and they were separated less than two years after the birth of their first child. Their separation was mainly due to the affair that Hughes had with fellow poet Assia Wevill.

Plath returned to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas. She rented a flat in a house where W. B. Yeats once lived; Plath was extremely pleased with this and considered it a good omen as she began legal separation proceedings. The winter of 1962/1963 was very harsh. On February 11, 1963, ill and low on money, Plath asphyxiated herself with coal gas from an oven. She is buried in the churchyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire"

[Winston]

That really is amazingly spooky, looking at yours and the original.

[lord of the mark]

wiki on Ted Hughes

Edward James Hughes, referred to normally as Ted Hughes (August 17, 1930 – October 28, 1998) was an English poet and children's writer. He is considered by some to be one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was Poet Laureate in England from 1984 until his death. He was also famously married from 1956–63 to the American poet Sylvia Plath and was believed by many feminists to have helped to cause Plath's suicide (and also his lover Assia Wevill's suicide). He explored his complex relationship with Plath in his last book of poems, Birthday Letters (1998).



Hughes' Early Life
Hughes was born on August 17, 1930 in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire and raised among the farms in the area. According to Hughes, "My first six years shaped everything." [1]. When Hughes was seven his family moved to Mexborough, Yorkshire, where they ran a newspaper and tobacco shop.

[edit]
Hughes' Personal Life
Hughes studied English, anthropology and archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he met fellow poet Sylvia Plath. They married on June 16, 1956 and separated in the autumn of 1962. Hughes' role in Plath's suicide in 1963 has long been a subject of much speculation by feminist critics. As Plath's widower, Hughes became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel (1966). He also destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last three years together.

6 years after Plath's death, on March 25, 1969, Assia Wevill (Hughes's lover) killed herself and their daughter, Alexandra Tatiana Eloise Wevill, nicknamed Shura, who had been born on March 3, 1965,

In August 1970, Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse. They remained together until his death on October 28, 1998. Hughes died after an 18-month-long battle with liver cancer.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
so spiff - whats 'comble" mean? I had no idea, and i needed a rhyme, so i put in the poetic "morrow"

"Comble" means "full" (there are also other meanings, which are completely unrelated, and that I couldn't express in English).

"Combler" (adj comblé) means "to greatly satisfy". There's a sense of wonder in the word. That's what you say of people who are overjoyed by a gift they just had, or that's what you say of women living a fulfilling sexual life.

The word isn't rude, even in the sexual meaning. "Je suis une femme comblée" can actually be a polite way to dodge a discussion that's beginning to lean too much about the woman's sexual life.

[lord of the mark]

ganger I should have gotten - Of course it means to win, some part of my brain is wired that gagner means to earn.

[Pave]

Excellent, everyone, excellent. I actually was scared it wouldn't have been so screwd-up.

Originally posted by Az
(II)

And so, from this time on, I
always when I remind myself of the tricks ( yep. truc. again, no clue ) that I make today
But to tell the truth, I won't be changed by my actions
And I am glad of my own charm, of which
I am a member of.

WTF? When I translated that one, I thought it was about a trick monkey of somekind

[Robert]

Next time I should really try to translate something I do speak fluently, instead of french

In fact I'm quiet proud that I did such a good job!

[Kassiopeia]

[foolish_icarus]

It's brilliant. InstaPoetry.

[Wernazuma III]

Awesome, I had some very good laughs while reading. My neighbors are starting to give me weird looks.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Winston
Absolutely brilliant rundown of all the versions, Atahualpa! You put a lot of effort into this, thanks very much. I thought about this earlier also, the way you set up the path was very well done, taking into consideration the fluent/non-fluent/for fun abilities of people (my impression was you thought about this in setting up the path).

Excellent show.

I'm having some graphic troubles with the forum, will comment more later.

Thx
Yes, I picked from each one several translations that I considered to be "interesting" and then tried to combine these as good as possible.

I'm having graphic troubles as well, btw.

[Q=Spiffor]Ata: Well, so that you can comment my own mangle-up, here's how I interpreted the Spanish poem
[...]
(1) I thought it was like "soy", a form of the verb "to be", for women.
(2) "with my presence". Assuming we talk about a women, that would be "at my side"
(3) "doy valor". Well, obviously it must mean "je dois le valoir", i.e. "I must be worth it"
(4) I seriously wondered if "Alimana" was Germany. But I remembered it would be "Alemana" then. Since we were talking about a girl, and since I know the word "manana", I thought she was the beauty of the morning.
(5) "elegido" must have something to do with "elected", doesn't it?
(6) First word for which I looked up on the internet. Considering how many times governments "acomete" a plan, it seemed like it meant "enterprising" something. With the word (7)"labor" (labeur - labour) just behind, I understood that the woman initated a session of hard work.
(8) "quererlo" looked like related to the French word "quérir", which means "to seek, to look for". Since the woman wasn't looking any further, the meaning was that she wasn't hesitating.
(9) "algo que" looks like "alors que" (even though). It also looks like "algue" (seaweed), but I thought it was out of context.
(10) "entiende" probably shares his root with "entendre" (to hear) or "tenir" (to hold). I guessed that the meaning was something like hearing/holding the true nature of the man, i.e. knowing him.
(11) "Viajar" looks related to "vie" (life), but also to "vais" (a form of the verb "to go").
(12)"alrededor" looked like the extremeity of something.
(13) I spent some time on this "desde entonces". I had absolutely no idea what it meant. When I looked up the net, it looked like a linkage word. I deemed it completely unimportant thus.
(14) "trampas" looked like something bad. Considering that the man was always winning, obviously it meant that he wasn't prepared for dire things.
(15) "Mientras" = "mienne" (mine). Obviously
(16) Well, if "ti amo" is "I love you", "mi amo" ought to be "my love", inn'it?
(17) "satisfecho" is "satisfaire" in French. In love relationships, this implies a sexual satisfaction of the woman, which is why I used the word "comblée"[/Q]


Look like french and spanish don't have soo much in common as we think.
(3)doy = I give, je dois = I must
(4)Upon reading Karoch's translation, I really hoped you'd mistake Alimana for Germany, btw I don't know about alimana myself, but it's a great interpretation you've chosen!
(5) correct
(8) quererlo is actually "querer = like/love" + lo = "it" - the spanish have a way of appending pronouns to the verbs in some cases, for example in imperative cases (ábrela = open it) or in infinitve cases as with quererlo
(9) hihihi algo que = something that
(10) close, it means understand
(11) I'm impressed with this deduction, viajar = to travel
(13) desde entonces = since then
(15) rofl mientras = meanwhile
(16) don't know, but online translation suggests "my master"

[Q=Gangerolf]is that sarcasm I smell?[/Q]


No, not at all!

[Q=CyberShy]Next time I should really try to translate something I do speak fluently, instead of french

In fact I'm quiet proud that I did such a good job![/Q]

And the best laugh I had

[Atahualpa]

Btw, please, everyone check the first line of the second poem and how it changed (cute)
Looking at the english translations only, should give you an idea of what I am talking about. This is one of the true gems of this game (b)