GUEST POST: “See what surfaces in sleep…”
Aaand we’re back! The previous article had us rambling about the structure of Alexis Kennedy’s prose, something that makes translating it akin to translating poetry.
Today I am going to talk some more about linguistic treasures hidden in seemingly ordinary texts. Let’s start where we left off when illustrating the matter of rhythm:
“Here,
impossibly preserved,
enfolded in the scars inflicted
by the former
prisoner’s
energies.”
Have you, perchance, noticed anything extra? Alright, I’ll spoil you the fun:
“Here,
impossibly preserved,
enfolded in the scars inflicted
by the former
prisoner’s
energies.”
Hidden in plain sight, eh? This technique, when one or several letters (sounds, really) are cunningly repeated throughout the phrase, is called alliteration. And this, too, is a very powerful tool. (The ancient Brits, or Icelanders, would even have said magical. No, seriously: in ancient Iceland a properly written alliterative verse was universally taken to hold magical power.) Anyway, this is an aspect that definitely must not be lost in translation.
Funny thing is, a lot of such examples can, theoretically, be chalked up to coincidence. We even had a minor argument with another colleague of mine over this line:
“Elucidate Enlightenment from an Earlier Era”
‘Oh come on,’ she said, ‘The letter E is just statistically the most widely used letter in the English language!’ Alright. Possibly. (Especially given the fact that the actual sounds here aren’t all the same.) Just possibly.
But there comes a point where you can’t ignore it anymore: Alexis Kennedy really loves his alliteration, and that’s a fact.
“I could curl up in the cold beneath the silent statue’s shadow, and see what surfaces in sleep.”
There’s just no way this can be a mere coincidence!
By the way, the desire to preserve these alliterations had been one of the driving forces behind that Great Gatsby translation that I at first found so unorthodox. The book’s translator did their best to preserve these precious phonetic treasures – and it often meant choosing a specific-sounding word (say, a ‘seismograph’, rather than a generalized ‘machine’) over a correct one.
And, needless to say, no machine-translating generative AI is savvy enough to spot and preserve alliteration. It really does require handcrafted translation!
But now – a fly in the ointment. Turns out, different languages have varying degrees of tolerance for alliteration. The English language loves alliteration. Be it marketing slogans, politicians’ speeches, or titles of Jane Austen novels, English is full of these consonances. Not quite so in Russian. Here the effect is usually regarded as sounding funny, and relegated to children’s books. So an aspiring skald must temper their love for alliteration with prudence and temperance.
Thanslating Alexis Kennedy really is a balancing act!
And with this… see you next week for more tales from localisers’ crypt!
