Found in Translation
Preface: Literature students here strongly favor fiction. I find a similar bias in the US, but here it is even more profound. Very few of the literature professors emphasize poetry, and the students readily admit that they are unfamiliar and even scared of it. To their credit, they are extraordinarily open to it, and willing to engage unfamiliar material.
As soon as I realized the need, I decided to teach poetry in the graduate genre course I was assigned. At the beginning of the course, each student chose a poem, which they have been analyzing intensively during the semester and which will be the subject of their final essay. My four students selected the following poems: Langston Hughes, “I, Too” (actually two students originally chose “I, Too” but I asked one of them to change, hence McKay); James Weldon Johnson, “Sence You Went Away”; Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”; and W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.”
After a couple of months of work on their poems (examining narration, sound, form, structure, theme, etc.), I required each of them to translate the poem into a language other than French (the state language)--either one of the four national languages--Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, Kiswahili--or a local language. The results: “I, Too” in Kikongo, “Sence You Went Away” in a different Kikongo and in Kiyombe, “If We Must Die” in Lingala, and “The Second Coming” in Kiswahili. Tshiluba was not represented (which is interesting since the Baluba, although fewer in number than the Bakongo, are known to be well represented in higher education…so much for stereotypes).
It was awesome to hear them read the work aloud. The linguistic resources of this country are astounding. The students all know French, Lingala (Kinshasa lingua franca Lingala, which is different than Lingala indigenous to the Equateur region), at least one other national language, and usually have some familiarity with the other languages. As their classmates were reading, they could pick up words or phrases. They would ask questions of each other, which are ostensibly about language, but are clearly quite profound. “Why isn’t there a word for the color ‘blue’ in Kikongo?” is about more than a problem of translation.
The students really enjoyed this (as did the undergraduates who I had working on Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”). It serves several purposes--it puts the English language in dialogue with other linguistic traditions, which, in my opinion, are not adequately valued by English scholars here. (For example, I would like to see more student research in comparative linguistics.) While I would not go so far as to say that it dis-empowers the English language, it does removes some of the fetishistic political power it has. English is not something that replaces Lingala, but something that coexists with it in dynamic ways.
The students also all discuss how the process of translation forces them to read and understand the poem in more profound ways than they had before. They ask questions about precision and metaphor. (How does someone translate Yeats’s line, "The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” into a language from a place where there are no falcons?) Translation, I tell them, cannot be focused only on the meanings of individual words; it must look at the whole text. In order to translate a poem, you must be able to identify and appreciate what makes it work. Including sounds.
The blog is inadequate to the task of conveying how awesome their readings sounded. Even though I could not understand most of the words, I could easily appreciate the translations. It is like the power of a song that reaches outside the language in which it is being sung--Lingala music is arguably the most popular in all of Africa even though most people on the continent don’t understand the words. I can dig a Wenge concert, and people here can enjoy Johnny Cash or Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton. (The Congolese love of country music is a topic for another blog entry.)
As soon as I realized the need, I decided to teach poetry in the graduate genre course I was assigned. At the beginning of the course, each student chose a poem, which they have been analyzing intensively during the semester and which will be the subject of their final essay. My four students selected the following poems: Langston Hughes, “I, Too” (actually two students originally chose “I, Too” but I asked one of them to change, hence McKay); James Weldon Johnson, “Sence You Went Away”; Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”; and W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.”
After a couple of months of work on their poems (examining narration, sound, form, structure, theme, etc.), I required each of them to translate the poem into a language other than French (the state language)--either one of the four national languages--Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, Kiswahili--or a local language. The results: “I, Too” in Kikongo, “Sence You Went Away” in a different Kikongo and in Kiyombe, “If We Must Die” in Lingala, and “The Second Coming” in Kiswahili. Tshiluba was not represented (which is interesting since the Baluba, although fewer in number than the Bakongo, are known to be well represented in higher education…so much for stereotypes).
It was awesome to hear them read the work aloud. The linguistic resources of this country are astounding. The students all know French, Lingala (Kinshasa lingua franca Lingala, which is different than Lingala indigenous to the Equateur region), at least one other national language, and usually have some familiarity with the other languages. As their classmates were reading, they could pick up words or phrases. They would ask questions of each other, which are ostensibly about language, but are clearly quite profound. “Why isn’t there a word for the color ‘blue’ in Kikongo?” is about more than a problem of translation.
The students really enjoyed this (as did the undergraduates who I had working on Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”). It serves several purposes--it puts the English language in dialogue with other linguistic traditions, which, in my opinion, are not adequately valued by English scholars here. (For example, I would like to see more student research in comparative linguistics.) While I would not go so far as to say that it dis-empowers the English language, it does removes some of the fetishistic political power it has. English is not something that replaces Lingala, but something that coexists with it in dynamic ways.
The students also all discuss how the process of translation forces them to read and understand the poem in more profound ways than they had before. They ask questions about precision and metaphor. (How does someone translate Yeats’s line, "The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” into a language from a place where there are no falcons?) Translation, I tell them, cannot be focused only on the meanings of individual words; it must look at the whole text. In order to translate a poem, you must be able to identify and appreciate what makes it work. Including sounds.
The blog is inadequate to the task of conveying how awesome their readings sounded. Even though I could not understand most of the words, I could easily appreciate the translations. It is like the power of a song that reaches outside the language in which it is being sung--Lingala music is arguably the most popular in all of Africa even though most people on the continent don’t understand the words. I can dig a Wenge concert, and people here can enjoy Johnny Cash or Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton. (The Congolese love of country music is a topic for another blog entry.)
posted by irad at 11:18 AM
3 Comments:
mon coeur, what i remember most about the readings was the baritone in the students' voices, which seemed to resonate, from the ground under us and outside the room and but not before passing through each of us there. it was emotional and intellecutal and physical. i guess i'm just agreeing that it was deep, man, it was deep. oh there just aren't words to describe hearing 'if we must die, let us not die like hogs" in Lingala. i don't want to be melodramatic but it was some revoluntionary shit. dig it. --- co-listener.
Hi Ira:
Sorry I've not written sooner. Your blogs are really quite awesome, but now you've really got me. I know something first hand about the bias (or whatever it is) against teaching poetry in the literature classroom (of all places), however, your blog is the best argument in favor of teaching poetry that I've read in a long time. I mean, I wasn't even there, & just reading your account I get a sense of what your anonymous co-listener experienced. Wow! Do you know the John McCormack recording of "Sense You Went Away"? There's another version of translation for you, though I can't imagine it compares with your class. -- Geoffrey
I have been working with Sterling Brown's poem "Ma Rainey" myself, and the last line seems to sum things up, it "jes' gets hold of us dataway." There really aren't words... Dig it.
I don't know McCormack's recording but need to track it down. I did play Johnson reading "The Creation," and (I am not sure if I should admit this) I sang all three verses of "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
Geoffrey, I have a copy of your new book here, which I will be giving to the English department. Hopefully, we can look forward to some translations of JUST FOR A THRILL!
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