(The Name of This Blog, Poststructuralism, Why all Writing is Translation & The Impossibility of Ever Saying What You Really Mean.... English speakers please see "reacties" for a full translation)
Door "reactie" heeft Klaaz een paar hele interessante punten gemaakt. Volgens mij zijn deze punten een nieuw bericht waarde. Dus heb ik onze dialoog geknipt en geplakt om voor iedereen te kunnen lezen. (De originele dialoog zit onder het blog bericht van maandag 7 maart / 'Tweede Gedicht: Zwarte Zwanen door Deb Matthews-Zott '.) En ik geef mijn laatste reactie beneden.
{{{Het spijt me - Klaaz heeft mij gevraagd om de reacties te verborgen}}}
Mijn Laatste Reactie:
Hoi Klaaz!
Bedankt! Ja, ik wil dat jij gewoon in het nederlands reageer. :-)
Een hedendaagsere woord past er good bij (denk ik) omdat de originele aanhaling zelf hedendaagsere is. Tagore (1861-1941) is een klassieke Bengaals dichter. Volgens mij is 'vriage' het woord hij zou hebben gewild... Maar misschien heb ik niet gelijk. (Dat gebeurt wel eens!... wel wel eens?!) Wat vind je hiervan? (En andere lezers ook - wat vinden jullie hiervan?)
Ik heb pas een korte verhaal door Kees Van Kooten gelezen. Ik vond het heel leuk. En Billy Collins is één van mijn favoriete Amerikaans dichters. Dus moet ik dat boek zoeken. Ik hoop dat ik het in de bieb kan vinden...
Onze dialoog doet mij denken aan Poststructuralisme. Volgens mij is vertaling leuk omdat het de problemen van al formen van schrijven duidelijk maakt. Eigenlijk, volgens mij, is al schrijven een soort van vertaling, omdat je nooit wat je echt bedoelt kan zeggen. Geen taal kan alles volledig zeggen. Zelfs in onze eerste talen, moet wij altijd woorden dat bijna - maar niet helemaal - klopt gebruiken.
Weet je wel wat ik probeer te zeggen? Of ben ik totale onzin aan het schrijven?
;-)
Klaaz made some really important comments under Deb's poem & so I pasted them here because I thought others might be interested too.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenIn summary, Klaaz helped me fix a grammatical error with the title of the poem. Klaaz also suggested that there are alternatives to the word 'vrijage', which is quite an old fashioned word, and suggested to me a wonderful sounding book: Kees Van Kooten's translations of American poet Billy Collins (English into Dutch) which apparently has a good foreward note on the difficulties of translation.
Thanks to Klaaz, I have fixed the grammatical error in the title of the blog. I have for now kept the word 'vrijage' because I think it's what Tagore (the poet who the blog's name quotes) would have wanted. But I'm quite possibly wrong about that. (It happens every so often... in fact quite often!) So I'd be keen to know what others think.
I'm planning to search out the Kees Van Kooten / Billy Collins book at the library - I recently read a short story by Van Kooten and loved it. Collins is one of my favourite American poets.
The conversation has gotten me thinking about poststructuralism. In my opinion, translation is fun because it brings to light the problems of all forms of writing. Really, in my opinion, all writing is a sort of translation, because you can never say what you really mean. No language can fully say everything. Even in our first languages, we must always use words that almost - but not completely - work.
Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Or am I writing total nonsense?
;-)
(emoticons are the same in any langauge)
I understand exactly what you say Amelia. Short of direct telepathy I can never transfer an image or an idea from my brain to yours. It will always be sent through my prism to your prism. My prism is my language and your prism is your understanding of my language. All language is a generalised symbol of our experience. We are constantly trying to distill our own experience and translate it to others through the imperfect prism of language. But we keep trying. That's half the fun!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThanks Rob! I love your 'prism' metaphor and I agree, the inability to ever get it completely right is definitely at least half the fun. If it were easy, what would be the point? The challenges, the ambitions left unfulfilled - they're the things that keep us coming back (and back and back).
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI thought, very briefly, about attempting to translate your comment into Dutch... but I definitely can't do it justice! And since most of the Dutch readers of this blog know English as well as we do, I think they will appreciate your insights better in English than via the prism of my linguistic butchering... ;-)
Yeah, I agree with you & Rob on that, Amelia. Even in our mother tongue, it's so damn hard tracking down the right words, and of course, half the fun too, huh? Until you get it right and then the poem almost dies and you move on!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenLooking forward to looking around some more!
Ashley
Ashely, I really like that concept that if you get it "right", the poem dies... one of the big themes I'm dealing with for my university studies right now is the "is poetry dead?" question... which leads into the question of "how can poetry / a poem be alive?" ...and although it's two very different angles, you've given me a new way of thinking about that (can i maybe even reference you? lol)
BeantwoordenVerwijderenperhaps poetry has something in common with the japanese wabi sabi pottery.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi