Writing | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

7/Dec/2016

Constellations

Your father told you about magic. About the stories hanging from the ceiling of the world like carcasses in a slaughterhouse. About astronomy and astrology. You learned to draw maps of places that didn’t exist. He told you it was okay to not know the names of constellations, because you can create your own astronomical phenomena and your own myths. Sometimes it might hurt seeing lines drawn by someone else hundreds of years ago. It doesn’t matter that things go missing, because you can find them again. Outside the apartment the whole hospital was quarantined. He was talking about himself.

Leave a comment

9/Nov/2016

DM;DO Song

I only publish poems after disasters, now.

DM;DO Song

by Johannes Punkt

Vi byggs inifrån som träd, och det växer ut broar mellan oss som inte är av död materia och dött tvång. Från oss går det levande ut. I er går det livlösa in.

– Karin Boye, Kallocain

Strip, pluck those lashes out like daddy’s long
legs. Bow your head like you’ve done something wrong
      and let your ostrich feather boa go
      and take your tar-black evening gloves off. Throw
            your widow’s veil and hat away and cut
      your fishnets up, your lace, your straps, your bow.
      Let fall what’s left of that old dress real slow.
            Step out of those Doc Martens. Don’t rebut —
don’t walk, don’t run, don’t march.
                                                 Don’t look me in the eyes.
                                                 Don’t mourn, don’t organize.
                                                 Your body tells no lies.
                                                 Your body tells no lies.
                                                 Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

Salt water waits its turn and then a church
roof crashes down on land. The gargoyles perch
      on solid oil. Pick up the blackest stone
      that you can find on Lesbos’ shore on loan
            from King Poseidon: vote with it as hard
      as you can throw it, when the tide is low.
      Now break, collapse, like waves, alone. You owe
            nobody anything. Let down your guard.
Don’t pray. Don’t supplicate.
                                        Just wait and see who dies.
                                        Don’t mourn, don’t organize.
                                        Your body tells no lies.
                                        Your body tells no lies.
                                        Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

Light. Stained light moves like maggots on a fresh
corpse, hesitant. Don’t flinch, don’t twitch, don’t thresh
      about. Don’t budge an inch. You’re dead so don’t
      get up. Don’t whimper when you’re kicked. It won’t
            get better. Don’t you think it would behoove
      you to lay still? Don’t rise, I know you’re prone
      to giving in to those who have a bone
            to have picked clean with you: the maggots move
like light on placid ponds.
                                    Don’t swat away the flies.
                                    Don’t mourn, don’t organize.
                                    Your body tells no lies.
                                    Your body tells no lies.
                                    Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

Tide pulls at you and your reflection blinks
six times. The woman in the mirror thinks
      that you’re the copy, staring through the moat
      the tide digs round your body as you bloat.
            You think the moon’s tug means the sea draws breath.
      The sea does no such thing. You see them row
      to shore the boats that overflow, that stow
            ten thousand migrants, in the shibboleth.
They’re refugees. Don’t think.
                                          Don’t fear the tide. Don’t rise.
                                          Don’t mourn, don’t organize.
                                          Your body tells no lies.
                                          Your body tells no lies.
                                          Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

All funerals should be immediate.
Yours was. The gulls made sure your needs were met
      then turned to vultures. If you find me: roll
      my useless wooden body to a hole
            and push me in and say what’s on your mind.
      No strings attached. Don’t be polite. Let’s go,
      let go. Don’t claim you’re sad, Pinocchio,
            lest something sprout. Don’t say shit to be kind.
Don’t notify my next
                              of kin. Don’t eulogize.
                              Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

                              Your body tells you lies.
                              Your body tells you lies,
                              don’t tell me otherwise.
                              No farewells, no goodbyes.
                              Don’t mourn, don’t organize.

Grief, love. A gunclap in your ribcage: grief,
grief, grief will turn you to a liar, thief,
      and murderer. Your deadbeat heartbeat: strobe;
      your heart: arachnid and arachnophobe;
            your body: like a tongue, but you – stay still.
      Don’t understand it. How can those you know
      be gone when you recall –? Grief waits below,
            between your shadows on the stone, to kill,
revive, repeat. And if
                              you hear my song, don’t rise.
                              Don’t rise, don’t rise, don’t rise.

Leave a comment

11/Sep/2016

Yours Truly

Dear All,

I wrote a long poem on twitter, and the marvellous Ria Gray read it aloud, and also had some very nice things to say about me. You can listen to her magnificent interpretation here: thebookofnights.com/post/150052083638 or read it for yourself here: twitter.com/_/status/685799168913346561.

Ria is a good friend of mine and a better poet. Her poems are like half-rusted keys you find hanging off trees, which then proceed to fit a lock you clasped onto a bridge-railing years ago; it’s okay now to drop the weight into the canal. This one still gives me shivers, for example: thebookofnights.com/post/43478744214

If you for some reason want to have me talk about my poem, just grab me and ask me. I’m all yours.

Your Truly,
Johannes

Leave a comment

23/Aug/2016

NORTH OF REALITY TRANSLATION PROJECT: HAST THOU SLAIN THE JABBERWOCK?

Greetings. Today’s post is scheduled to appear on a Tuesday, which shows just how much I rely on induction. This is the last of these posts! Today’s translation is Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock?

The notes, along with a back-translation of the translated piece, can be found at the bottom. Also there you will find the text of the translated Jabberwocky which I base my translation upon. Wild. The other entries in the project can be found at the following link: /tag/the-north-of-reality-translation-project/

NORR OM VERKLIGHETEN: OCH HAR DU DÖDAT TJATTERSLÅN?
av Uel Aramchek
översättning: Johannes Punkt

Säkerligen har du läst om vidundret i Eva Håkanssons översättning av Lewis Carrolls verk, detta ilskebubblande monster som gömmer sig bakom en språkslöja. Inom loppet av några strofer söker en namnlös hjälte efter Tjatterslånet och sedan, påstås det, dödar han det. När han kommer hem igen vill den unge mannens far veta om han verkligen dräpt besten. Men någonting saknas ifrån frågan:

Och har du dödat Tjatterslån?

Efter jublet som följer upprepas första strofen i hela dess oroväckande form för att markera slutet på dikten. Legenden har skildrats och slaget vunnits men ändå verkar universum ha stannat kvar i exakt samma skick. Segerropen har än en gång överröstats av grösens mommande och skrangelmopps jämrighet. Det är uppenbart att någonting fattas.

Är det verkligen fadern som ställer den där frågan till sin pojk? I originaltexten svävar det citattecken runt faderns tal för att indikera att det är han som ställer frågan; i översättningen skrivs inget sådant stängsel för hans ord: det är samma röst som berättar som ställer frågan. I en dikt som i stort sett handlar om språk och kontext är det svårt att föreställa sig att denna detalj raderas omedvetet.

Med detta i åtanke, låt oss ställa frågan: vem är det som pratar? Lewis Carroll sade aldrig ordet tjatterslån men det är han som är författare till dikten. Ursprungligen var det han som ställde frågan ifall du har dödat Tjatterslån och Eva Håkanssons svar, på ett annat språk, lyder: Och har du dödat Tjatterslån?

Men hur är det du har dödat Tjatterslån egentligen? Håkansson har översatt nonsensordet ”vorpal” till det nästan förståbara ”hälfte.” Denna översättning tycks antyda att svärdet klyver monstret i tu. Men varför antyda det? Låt oss göra ett hastigt antagande: det speglar översättningsprocessen. För att ens kunna översätta Carrolls nonsensord och de ord som kamouflerar sig med nonsensdräkt måste hon ta isär dem för att se vad de består av. Som exempel kan vi undersöka det första av dessa ord: grilltock. Ordet ”brillig” ifrån originaltexten härleds enligt de flesta experter ifrån ”to broil,” att steka/halstra/grilla, och betyder således den tid då man börjar grilla maten inför kvällsmålet. Håkansson sydde ihop det översatta ordet med ett onomatopoetiskt klockslag och kom fram till grilltock. På samma sätt har hon klyvt och klistrat ihop besten.

Carrolls monster kan ha än mer djup att utforska. Som du kanske vet är det en av de mest översatta dikterna från det engelska språket, någonting som Håkansson måste ha varit medveten om då hon inte ens var den första att översätta dikten till svenska. Ändå kände hon att det var nödvändigt att än en gång ta isär och plåstra ihop Tjatterslånet.

Reptition är nyckeln till att förstå dikten. När den första strofen upprepas i slutet av dikten kommer vi tillbaks till början, och vi vet att monstret har kluvits i tu bara för att bli helt igen. Detta händer varje gång dikten läses. Ifall denna tolkning stämmer upplever läsaren något tidlöst: kanske är det en enda hjälte, dömd till att dräpa Tjatterslån för alltid; måhända är saken en generationsfråga: sonen tror sig ha dräpt Tjatterslånet och blir sedan gammal och upptäcker att det fortfarande är vid liv, så han skickar sin egen son för att avsluta det han påbörjade. Detta händer var gång dikten läses, oavsett om den läses av någon utanför texten eller Alice själv.

Det som repeteras är tolkningshandlingen. Oavsett om du bokstavligen fläker upp dikten och översätter den till ditt eget språk eller om du bara läser den tyst för dig själv tas innebörden sönder i ditt huvud för att komma ut pånyttfödd. Sådan är odjurets anatomi: Tjatterslånets hjärtklaffar är bläcket dess namn är skrivet med. När det läses högt är läsarens tonaccent odjurets puls. Fastän tungans hälfte svärd alltid klyver besten i tu återkommer alltid den sista strofen. Håkanssons översättning visar medelst avsaknaden av citattecken att det inte finns någon skillnad mellan den som dräper monstret och den som ställer frågan, inte heller mellan den som ställer frågan och den som läser upp. Inte heller, antyds det, mellan den som läser och den som dräper.

Nu måste jag ställa frågan till dig, kära läsare: har du dödat Tjatterslån? Oavsett ditt svar finns texten kvar i väntan på att du ska läsa den en gång till.

Notes

This feels like a fitting note to end this project with. I admit it’s an indulgence, but I couldn’t help it. Also this is my blog, I can do what I want. I might translate a few more on the occasion of a blue moon, because this has been very tilted towards my favourites in the beginning of the NoR archives and since it’s been going more favourites have emerged of course, but this is officially the end of the project. You’ll find the translation notes below, but first a machine-assisted back-translation of the piece itself because I found that funny:

Surely you have read about the behemoth of Eva Håkansson’s translation of Lewis Carroll’s works, this rage bubbling monster hiding behind a veil of language. Within a few stanzas seeking a nameless hero after Nagging Planters loan, and then, it is alleged, he kills it. When he comes back home want the young man’s father to know if he really killed the beast. But something is missing from the question:

And have you killed Tjatterslån?

After the jubilation following repeated the first verse in all its alarming form to indicate the end of the poem. The legend has been depicted and the battle won but still seems the universe have stayed in the exact same condition. The cries of victory has once again been voted by over mome raths and mimsy borogoves. It is obvious that something is taken.

Is it really the father who makes that question to her boyfriend? In the original text hovering the quotes around the father’s speech to indicate that it is he who poses the question; in the translation written no such fence to his words: it is the same voice that tells us who asks the question. In a poem which largely deals with language and context, it is difficult to imagine that this detail is deleted unconsciously.

With that in mind, let’s ask the question: who is speaking? Lewis Carroll never said the word tjatterslån, but it is he who is the author of the poem. Originally, it was he who asked the question if you have killed Tjatterslån and Eva Håkansson’s answer, in another language, reads: And have you killed Tjatterslån?

But how is it that you have killed Tjatterslån really? Håkansson has translated nonsense word “Vorpal” to almost understand only “Hälfte.” This translation seems to imply that the sword cleaves the monster in two. But why suggest it? Let us make a hasty assumption: it reflects the translation process. To even be able to translate Carroll’s nonsense words and the words that camouflages itself with nonsense costume she had to take them apart to see what they consist of. As an example, we examine the first of these words: grilltock. The word “brillig” from the original text are derived according to most experts from “to broil,” to fry/broil/grill, and thus means the time when you start to grill the food for the evening meal. Håkansson cobbled together the translated word with an onomatopoetic time and came to the grilltock. Similarly she cleaved and bonded, beast.

Carroll monsters can have even more depth to explore. As you may know, it is one of the most translated poems from the English language, something Håkansson must have been aware of when she was not even the first to translate the poem into Swedish. Yet she felt that it was necessary to again disassemble and plaster together Nagging Planters loan.

Reptition is the key to understanding the poem. When the first stanza are repeated at the end of the poem, we return to the beginning, and we know that the monster has been cleaved in two, only to become whole again. This happens every time the poem is read. If this interpretation is experiencing the reader something timeless: perhaps it is a single hero, doomed to slay Tjatterslån forever; perhaps it is a generational issue: son believes he has slain Nagging Planters loan and then becomes old and discovers that it is still alive, so he sends his own son to finish what he started. This happens every time the poem is read, whether it is read by anyone outside the text or Alice herself.

It repeated the interpretation the act. Whether you literally flaker up the poem and translate it into your own language, or if you just read it silently to yourself is the meaning apart in your head to come out reborn. Such is the beast’s Anatomy: Nagging Planters loan’s heart valves are ink its name is written in. When read aloud the reader’s tone accent beast pulse. Although the tongue Hälfte sword always cuts the beast in two always come the last stanza. Håkansson’s translation shows by the lack of quotation marks that there is no difference between the one who slays the monster and the one that poses the question, nor between the person asking the question and the one who reads aloud. Nor, it is implied, between the reading and the slaying.

Now I have to ask the question to you, dear reader: you have killed Tjatterslån? Whatever your answer is the text still waiting for you to read it again.

Like with any translation involving Carroll, this piece presented some unique challenges. The first and most obvious of these is the fact that in the objectively best translation of Jabberwocky, by Eva Håkansson in the 1950s or so, the head of the Jabberwock is not chopped off and carried back to the father, making the father’s question entirely reasonable. This kind of uproots the uncanniness of that question. For your benefit, here is the full text of her translation:

Tjatterslånet

Vid grilltock när de smiga gropp
de snuck och spack på visotass.
Helt jämrig då var skrangelmopp
och grösen mommande bölsvass.

Sök skydd för Tjatterslån, min son,
för bitska gap och snapparklor!
Sky Jällonhök och fly ifrån
den hemska Haffagrip som glor!

Han tog sitt hälfte svärd i hand
och sökte länge utan blund.
Sen sov han i ett grönsaksland
och tänkte där en liten stund.

Då där han stod och grubblade
kom Tjatterslån med blick i brand.
Den röt och ilskebubblade
och visade var spetsig tand.

Han drog sitt hälfte svärd och svor
att utan snicksnack döda den.
Det gjorde han, och sedan for
han i galoppsan hem igen.

Och har du dödat Tjatterslån?
O, sabelfablig lyckodag!
Kom i min famn, min tapperson,
så god och glitterglad är jag!

Vid grilltock när de smiga gropp
de snuck och spack på visotass.
Helt jämrig då var skrangelmopp
och grösen mommande bölsvass.

In researching for this piece, I was able to identify three separate translation techniques relevant for the translation of Lewis Carroll. I’m sure some academics have talked about this but I was not able to find and pore over a copy of this book: aliceinaworldofwonderlands.com, which I covet, so I don’t know how much already-treaded ground I’m covering here. But no mattter. These techniques show up in nearly any Jabberwocky translation as far as I can tell. Not counted amongst these are things such as the deliberate avoidance of portmanteaux, which is an uninteresting item.

The first most obvious one is to replace “nonsense” words with nonsense words. At least as far as I can tell – in Håkansson’s translation we get the “Jällon” in “Jällonhök,” for Jubjub, for example. You can also translate words that have an actual meaning into nonsense words, which is cheating and seemingly unavoidable. Or maybe I can just not deduce the meaning of “visotass.” [19-apr-2017 I have since found out that this is a neologism to do with the sundials that toves live under, and that the ‘jällon’ is a mangled up way of saying ‘lejon’, lion. Still, my original points probably stand even though my examples have been uprooted a bit.]

The second one is to treat the words like established loan-words and to write them down using the tools of the target language. For example, the mome raths are mommande in Håkansson’s translation.

The third one is hard work. I explained it in the text because the ideas didn’t make sense without it. First, the original seminonsense word is vivisiphered, then a new word is neologized in the target language to match the meaning of the Carrollian portmanteau. Håkansson does this quite well with grilltock, for example. Also, this technique might be easier now that we can easily search the internet for clues, rather than having to pore over books in the hopes that someone else has deciphered it before you, or going through your vocabulary (or a dictionary) to match beginnings and ends to find likely candidates.

So what I did to counter the problem posed by Håkansson’s translation was to look for other distinctions between the source and the target text. I found that the translator had skipped quote-marks in the poem. Presumably this is because Swedish, especially in the 60s when she translated the poem, usually used en-dashes to indicate speech, and that’s awkward to put in a poem or something. Another, smaller, detail I latched on to was the translation of “vorpal” – a word that Carrol admitted he couldn’t find a meaning for – into a word that actually makes sense. Surplus meaning where none was. This felt important.

I constructed an alternate theory using the gutted Swedish poem for haruspicy around the bones of the English poem and analysis. Most of it is explained in the deliberately-bad machine back-translation, I guess, but I want to point out that in reconstituting the beast’s anatomy I couldn’t find a good way to make a cadence a pulse, as in Uel’s original. Sure, the word cadence can mean rhythm, and you can talk about someone’s speech rhythm – this can be translated word for word, essentially – but it doesn’t sound like it means cadence. Instead I transposed the Swedish tonals (usually these are explained with a graph to show the tone change) onto the screen of an EKG machine, and said the tone accent became the beast’s pulse instead. This bit would likely go missing if I hadn’t explained it here, you know.

I quite like the idea that a statement is true in two different contexts for two entirely different reasons. Something about it pleases me: in both Uel’s text and my translation, the reader is the one causing the beast to resurrect, but the process by which this happens is different. Ultimately, that’s why I can still call this a translation, although that’s stretching it. The linguistic context has changed, therefore some paths taken change and almost become unrecognizable.

That’s all, folks.

Leave a comment

31/Jul/2016

Dogs Would Know

I thought I’d be good with animals, growing up. Just one of those strange kids who exerts no pressure on the surfaces he touches, and exudes goodness, something birds can trust. In the square by the cathedral they came to me because I paid a man to put seeds in my hands. I thought because I was broken in half there would be good inside me spilling out like a ruptured silo and that dogs would know.

You think the accident gave you superpowers. Like abuse has made you better as a person.

I thought that dogs would know. When I was homeless I slept in the bed of a woman who did not believe in evil; I think that must be the reason she let me stay there. I think there’s something foul in me. I slept in the corner of her mattress, like a dog. I took up as little space as I could and I disappeared from her life.

And someone else froze when I walked into the room. Jumped if I grazed her, walking past. And she was shaking when she said, I’m not afraid of you, attempting a reassuring tone and not a defiant one, ears perked like a fox in danger. I thought I’d be good with animals, instead I’m limping and shedding fur like an irradiated jackal. I thought from how badly broken I was, there would be recompense if not a reckoning.

Dogs don’t know, or they don’t care.

Any good that comes from me is what I’ve done. And any good that comes from you is you alone.

1 Comment

26/Jul/2016

03-May-2016

A Thing I Thought But
Didn’t Say And Now
I Am Writing it Down

It would be an honour to be your ex.

Leave a comment

19/Jul/2016

NORTH OF REALITY TRANSLATION PROJECT: IN THE SECOND PERSON

Good evening, readers! Welcome back to the North of Reality Translation Project. For the uninitiated, North of Reality is Uel Aramchek’s website where he posts fiction that he writes. I’m a translation major/poet/ghost and I’m translating a few of his stories because I wanted to. If you’re an adult or a ghost, you can do what you want. Although I asked for permission first, before I started to post them; that’s also important. I’m translating into Swedish but there are translation notes below the story.

Today’s piece is in the second person. That is also its title: In the Second Person. All entries can be found at the following link: /tag/the-north-of-reality-translation-project/

NORR OM VERKLIGHETEN: I ANDRA PERSON
av Uel Aramchek
översättning: Johannes Punkt

Som barn råkade du somna på soffan en kväll medan du kollade på Discovery; dock höll sig tingesten som tror att den är du (den du kallar din kropp) vaken flera timmar efteråt. Då lärde den sig allt det fanns att veta om kameleonter från en National-Geographicsspecial. Precis innan du återfick medvetandet snappade en strövande lock av ditt hår åt sig en broms från väggen och påbörjade därmed den långa och hemska förvandlingsprocessen.

Efter den besynnerliga kvällen upptäckte din kropp att den kunde kamouflera sig som dig på pricken. Den tog tillochmed total kontroll över ditt sinne ett flertal gånger utan att du misstänkte någonting. Som tonåring började du dock förnimma en närvaro inuti skallen, en känsla av någonting fantomlikt där din hjärna borde vara. Du försökte ignorera det, men migränattackerna som följde krävde din totala uppmärksamhet.

När du besökte den där röntgenkliniken avslöjade en MRT-undersökning till läkarens stora förvåning en stor ansamling döda insekter som satt fastnaglade mellan dina hjärnlober. Det spekulerades att dessa främmande föremål på något sätt hade tagit sig igenom bensömmarna på skallen men ingen kunde förklara hur de trängt sig in genom din hud, då det inte fanns ärr någonstans på huden.

Självklart fick du omedelbart remiss till en lokal kirurg som skulle undersöka saken närmre; dock hände det att ”du” aldrig dök upp till den bokade tiden.

Part of me wants to translate “a stray curl” as “en irrlock,” although that violates the rule of translation that states that you should avoid innovative translations of standard phrases. I’ve got the floor and the mic, though, so I’ll tell you about irrlock anyway: it is reminiscent of irrbloss, meaning will-o’-the-wisp, and is therefore great. No-one would really say it or write it, though. It literally means “stray curl,” but a less outrageous translation of that phrase would be “en strövande lock,” a roaming curl (cf. roaming eyes, hearts).

At first I cut up the sentence beginning “Much to the surprise of …” into two. It didn’t feel right bt it was better than a straight port of that initial adverbial, which would have sounded like “Till den där röntgenläkaren du besöktes stora förvåning” – which is correct but really awkward, because now we’re having fun with clitics. A clitic, according to Wikipedia, is “always attached to a host” which sounds cool and medical. Er, I mean. I will explain, just bear with me – the possessive s (in Swedish as well as English) is the only example of a clitic that I know. You add the s onto the end of a phrase, not a word. For example:

“I solved [the heir]’s problem.”

“I solved [the heir apparent]’s problem.”

“I solved [that guy you met in the pub the other week who claimed to be next in line for the French throne]’s problem by teaching him about the Revolution.”

In order to avoid this awkwardness, we usually rewrite these notions into of-phrases, like “Much to the surprise of …” and such. So, if the reader stops to figure out where to put those brackets to parse the sentence, you’ve probably done something wrong. The main function of a sentence is to bring you to the next sentence. That is why I cut it up originally. I wrote “Eventually, you looked up doctors.” But it still sounded stilted and too far from what Uel had written.

As usual, the solution was to rearrange things until something clicked. What I went with is farther from the original text than I usually go but I’m confident it’s basically how one would express that in Swedish. So, I’m happy. Thank you for reading.

Thoughts are welcome! Beam them to my brain or try to use lesser, more haphazard forms of communication with me.

Leave a comment

12/Jul/2016

NORTH OF REALITY TRANSLATION PROJECT: CHOKING HAZARD

Good afternoon! This week in the North of Reality Translation Project, a story called Choking Hazard. As usual, English translation notes are found below the story. All the other entries in the project can be found at the following link: /tag/the-north-of-reality-translation-project/

NORR OM VERKLIGHETEN: KVÄVNINGSRISK
av Uel Aramchek
översättning: Johannes Punkt

Han lät henne välja hors-d’œuvre på andra dejten, så när det var hennes tur beställde hon in apelsinklyftefonduen.

”Åh, jag älskar det här stället. De använder bara apelsiner med bottenlösa klyftor här,” förklarade hon. ”Fåglar som försöker äta dem tappar ofta sina näbbar, eller hela sina huvuden. Det krävs en djävligt skicklig kock för att forma dem till någonting en människa tryggt kan svälja.”

”Hur fungerar det?” frågade han. ”Hur får du plats med någonting bottenlöst i någonting i storlek med din knytnäve? Den har ingenstans att gå.”

”Det finns en hel del ingenstans,” lade hon till. ”Om man vet var man inte ska leta.”

Notes

I FUCKING CRACKED IT. You need to go and read the original again, for real, on this one. This is like, the eighth one I’m writing so far, but I’ve been dreading this for a while because that pun is so marvellous I never thought I’d find an equivalent in Swedish. But I did. To explain: in the original they’re eating a fondue of peaches with bottomless pits. In Swedish that loosely transmogrifies into either “bottenlös håla,” which makes sense for the bottomlessness, but not for the fruitness, or “bottenlös sten,” which is a nonsense phrase. So I drew diagrams of semantically related things to both those words, trying to find a similar koncept that I could exploit to make a translation. Perhaps, I thought, there would be some equivalent pun not about bottomlessness, but with other infinities.

Our universe is a bottomless pit, says the Timescanner. Perhaps I could find something about dark matter, or about the one electron universe. I was also toying with the idea of writing a replacement story only vaguely similar, because I have an idea about an orangerie growing globe fruits with two surfaces (i.e. having 720 degrees round instead of 360) – I would then be going very far away from translation and into the murky lands of trying to recreate Uel’s process to write something equivalent, some adaptation.

Anyway. As you may have guessed, my brain was firing on all cylinders. I lingered on this problem for two weeks. Then I went back to the basics and looked a little bit closer at the idea of the bottomless pit. It is biblical. How do they translate it in the bible? Seemed like they only called it an avgrund, an abyss. Although sometimes they write out the full implications of that: en bottenlös klyfta. Klyfta. From the same word as ‘cleave.’ n. I chasm. II section, as in citrus fruit.

Make no mistake, having the fruits carry several bottomlessnesses around the core of the fruit instead of one in the middle probably changes some of the mythology in North of Reality, because these kinds of things do that. But that would be a problem for a future translation, if this were ever to resurface. Mythology is pretty malleable, so I’m fairly certain it would be fine.

Not much left of this project now. Also I haven’t finished writing all the notes because I somehow acquired a job, but I’ll have the next piece ready on time. Worry not. Not that you were worried.

Leave a comment

5/Jul/2016

NORTH OF REALITY TRANSLATION PROJECT: THE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL LABYRINTH

Godafton. That’s Swedish for “good evening.” How quaint. Welcome back to the North of Reality Translation Project. Tonight’s translated piece is called: The Roosevelt National Labyrinth. Translation notes are found below the story, and they are in English so that most people who are looking at this website can read them. All entries in the project are found at the following link: /tag/the-north-of-reality-translation-project/

NORR OM VERKLIGHETEN: ROOSEVELT NATIONALLABYRINT
av Uel Aramchek
översättning: Johannes Punkt

Roosevelt nationallabyrint börjar nära staten Selimas östligaste gräns och tar aldrig slut. Stundom är den som en skog, då dess tegel ändrar färg med årstiderna och många av murarna fäller sina tegelstenar under månaderna innan vintern. Stundom är den mer som en fängelsehåla, då murarna växer så höga att solen syns inte som en skiva, utan snarare en tunn, enslig linje. Det djupa brummandet från stridulerande jättesyrsor får benen att skallra på alla som är vilse här inne.

Den är det första federalt erkända livet efter detta, ämnat att överbrygga det uråldriga gapet mellan exil och dödsstraff. Det var inte så att labyrinten byggdes – snarare antyddes dess existens väldigt tungt av prejudikat med vikten av hela rättssystemet. ”De sade att den behövde finnas till,” skrev Eisenhower i sin dagbok efter att han underättats om dess förekomst, ”för att fylla tomrummet mellan rättvisans vågskålar. Amerika existerar nu bortom det blott rationella, och alla våra institutioner måste finna sätt att anpassa sig till detta, även de som påstår sig vila på blint förnuft.”

Din advokat försökte så gott han kunde att få dig dömd till döden på ett mer ortodoxt vis, men ditt fall var ganska dystert från första början. Det var meningen, först, att du bara skulle anklagas för att ha försökt fly från fängelset; det vill säga, tills det visade sig att det var den enda anklagelsen på ditt register. Lögndetektorns spikiga skrivstil bevisade att du alltid hade varit i fängelset och avslöjade dig som en institutionsparadox.

Din sista måltid serverades på en papptallrik som smälte sönder från den såskletiga måltiden. Det fanns ett berg av pannstekta getingar med lönnsalsa till dippa, nektarinsyltsglaserade flodhästrevben, genomstekta gelébönor, pisangmos dränkt i sågverkssky och majsmunkar injicerade med vispat tabascosmör. De gav dig varken kniv eller gaffel, så du åt hela middagen med händerna. Du var noga med att spotta ut gaddarna. Sedan sköljde du ner allting med ett glas björnbärsvin.

Dock har allt det sedan dess tagit sig igeom ditt matsmältningssystem och du har aldrig känt dig tommare. Efter två veckor veckor här inne har du äntligen funnit labyrintens minotaur, som står och betar ensam i en glänta stor som ett stadion. Han verkar tämligen förvånad över att du letat upp honom med flit. Hans fyra bisonliknande huvuden höjer sig över det långa gräset som någon primitiv variant av Mount Rushmore och när de ser dig brölar var och en ett strupvrål som avviker lite i tonart från de andra. Du antar ditt öde under hans hovar och undrar vilket liv efter detta som väntar dig härnäst. Du har hört bra saker om Valhall på senaste tiden.

Nästa gång dina ögon öppnar sig är du likväl tillbaka i fängelset i Arizona. Än en gång verkar det som att ditt försök att fly undan systemet har misslyckats.

Notes

I modelled the name of the Roosevelt National Labyrinth after the Swedish rendition of Yellowstone National Park, which seems like the most sensible way to translate it. It did not become a very shocking name in Swedish but I did have to take five minutes to remember any other name for a thing in the US which follows the formula of [name] National [area of land]. I found a lot of forests that no-one has translated into Swedish, though.

The difference between “capital punishment” and “death penalty” is mostly flavour, but it felt like important flavour. Capital punishment seems to me to be the category, whereas death penalty is more a specific instance of someone being sentenced to death, or the death penalty as it exists in some specific form in some state or legal system. The two are translated the same into Swedish, so I took the liberty of loosening the translation a bit for the second one, turning it into a verb to make it feel more immediate and personal: “dödsstraff” vs “dömd till döden.”

For “implied into reality” I had a lot of trouble – because we have no equivalent of “into reality” or “into existence” – and ended up inventing a metaphor based on “heavily” implying something with the full weight of the justice system.

The Swedish rapper Pst/Q once remarked in an interview that the punchline-heavy style that he rapped in at the beginning of his career was “not really Swedish” (I’m paraphrasing and translating from memory here, forgive any misrepresentations) and that people were often baffled by the barrage of wordplay present in his music. Now, basically anyone who talks to me knows wordplay is my thing in any language I’m speaking, but I feel a bit like that when trying to translate the culinary tastes of Uel’s fictional subjects – for example, how do I Scandify “refried jellybeans”?

Of course, you’re meant to feel weird about the food. Go on, feel weird about it.

Anyway, in what was news to me at least, it turns out that the re- in refried beans doesn’t mean again, it just means well. So I simply translated it literally, because there is no equivalent – we barely have these two kinds of beans in Sweden.

The last problem area here is what on earth to do with the phrase “When your eyes open again.” The easiest way to say it is to just say “När du öppnar dina ögon igen” (When you open your eyes again) or even “När du vaknar igen” (When you wake up again). But those alternatives miss the fact that there’s agency in the eyes here, not in the person. The way I read the story, the fact that it’s not the peson themselves doing the waking up is actually very important.

If one were to write that a door opens, for example, to circumscribe the problem here, the way to translate it into Swedish would be one of three options, each working fine on their own but in the context of eyes opening they all feel odd to me. I can write “dörren öppnas,” which is the passive voice and obscures the agent, or I can write “dörren öppnar sig,” making “open” a reflexive verb, or I can write “dörren öppna[s/r sig] av sig själv,” which foregrounds the autonomy of the door. Passive voice is out, because we want to focus on the agency here. Foregrounding the autonomy is also out, because it’s too heavy-laden. Our Goldilocks option seems to be “öppnar sig,” which is a phrasing I can only recall from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, where it’s used as a command and in second-person. And, actually, thinking of it like that, that’s not a bad phrasing, and certainly not a connotation Uel would object to.

Next week the translated piece is Choking Hazard, which, if you read it, seems untranslatable. Feel free to speculate wildly about how I will have solved this.

Leave a comment

28/Jun/2016

NORTH OF REALITY TRANSLATION PROJECT: ON IMMORTALITY

Time: evening. Quality of evening: good. Thing: the North of Reality Translation Project. Today: On Immortality. Translation notes: below. All entries: /tag/the-north-of-reality-translation-project/

NORR OM VERKLIGHETEN: OM ODÖDLIGHET
av Uel Aramchek
översättning: Johannes Punkt

Som barn hade du en viss förmåga att upptäcka de extra liv som låg gömda överallt i virtuella världar. Du visste alltid vilka vattenfall du skulle kika bakom, vilka väggar du skulle sträcka handen igenom och tillochmed vilka lerkärl du skulle ta sönder – men av någon anledning fann du aldrig dem som vi lämnade kvar specifikt för dig.

Det första livet låg gömt på toppen av vattentornet bredvid lekplatsen på din lågstadieskola. Vi lät det drypa i klarblåa pixlar så att du lätt kunde se det från den högsta punkten i gungans bana. Vi hade tillochmed tagit reda på att det var din favoritfärg. Tyvärr lade du aldrig märke till livet och det har sedan länge slitits sönder av fiskmåsar.

Det andra livet låg dolt i en grotta bara en bit ifrån vandringsleden du följde när din familj semestrade vid Niagarafallen. Förutom livets safirglöd såg det precis ut som ditt ansikte – vi var stolta över vårt arbete. Någon annan unge hittade dock det en kort tid efter att du åkt hem, och han bar din identitet när han tog sitt språng från vattenfallets krön med ett skratt. Ett slöseri, om du frågar oss.

De blev fler i takt med att du blev äldre; ett inlåst på en flygplanstoalett, ett annat dammtäckt under sängen där du förlorade din oskuld – men din nyfikenhet hade sedan länge sinat. Du slutade lägga märke till detaljerna i din egen värld, ty din uppmärksamhet hade erövrats av en unken skärmglöd.

Ändå har vi ännu inte slutat tro på dig, vi har inte givit upp. Sök igenom din omnejd noggrannt: det finns ett liv någonstans i närheten.

Notes

The first question in this translation is, do I put a space in the rendition of “extra lives” or not. I’ve mentioned agglutination before but I don’t think I went into it in any detail. Agglutinative languages mash words together; analytic ones separate them. You can’t always tell when people talk out loud, although there are signs such as binding letters used to smoothen the transition from the end of one building block to the beginning of the other. It’s much easier to tell in written language, at least if you’re using a writing system that has spaces in it. It’s a sliding scale, though with Chinese at one end as super analytic and Finnish at the other as super agglutinative. For example. And Swedish is slightly more agglutinative than English. Schoolkids playing Hangman might write 31 underscores for one long, stupid noun: flaggstångsknoppspoleringsmedel (means for polishing the knob of a flagpole). They often write longer ones as well – at my school we use dto write flaggstångsknoppspoleringsmedelsbehållare (container for “–”) but that seems to be local flavour, after a glance at the internet. Other variants include …flaska, …försäljare, …flaskkork, …prenumeration, …flaskkorksetikett … sorry, I got carried away.

The point is, there are more spaces in English writing than in Swedish writing. There is a whole lot of nuance to my ear between extraliv and extra liv. A life is a categorically different thing from an extralife. In English, the phrase “extra life” can easily carry both of the meanings, and so does. But in Swedish I have to choose, and I choose the one with a space in it, because it evokes the much more common spaceless version.

Also, for those of you keeping score at home, it took me half an hour to write out this thinking process but it took me two seconds to decide on it. Also, the sliding scale is a bit more complicated than I made it out to be but that was the level of understanding I was working at when I made my decision. A cool thing you can do when you have studied something for a time is to decide what granularity your models will have in order to serve your purposes for the moment. But do read the wikipedia article on synthetic languages or isolating languages, etc, if you want to know more.

“Lover” is not gender-neutral in Swedish. Though “älskare” is used gender-neutrally by some, it’s registered as exclusively male by a lot of Swedes. Putting a gender to the lover would ruin some of the point of the direct-address second-person pronoun, in that while most people have a first lover, fewer people have a first lover of one specifc gender, and also if your first male lover was after your first female lover that sentence sounds really weird. The points that I want to carry over in the translation are thus: 1. the gender-neutrality, because I like it. 2. the vague notion of growing up somehow, the rite of passage. 3. the conflation of the different senses of exploration – as in first love and as in charting uncharted territory – to contrast with the waning curiosity.

Every single alternative translation I could think of was wrong. I’m skipping directly, here, to the solution of simply saying: the bed where you lost your virginity. I admit this is not an ideal solution (although if you see no problem with it feel free to not think harder about it), but I have been stuck on this problem a long time. I’m typing this paragraph ten minutes before the day is officially over, actually, and I really would not like to be late two weeks in a row with this project. If I go back to this problem, I might switch it back to saying the gendered “lover,” or I might use the really old phrase for “make love” that sounds like it’s from a few turns of the centuries ago, or I might paint a teenage scenario of sneaking into bedrooms over verandra rooves, or inspiration might strike and something else entirely.

A friend looked through my translation and reminded me that it’s really easy to get tunnel-vision on these things, so I’ll probably go back through the old translations and fix a few mistakes over the next week or so. There are bound to be a few of similar kind that she pointed out, such as unclear reference and an unnatural over-reliance of the genitive. But learning is cool! And so is humility, kids. Another thing she pointed out was that in Swedish, a seagull cannot peck. It’s idiomatic in English, but in Swedish it becomes the wrong motion, for some reason. Instead, the seagulls “tear” – sliter – the heart apart.

Gosh. Next week: Roosevelt National Labyrinth.

Leave a comment

Category: Writing