Lettres

In Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (1997, Basic Books), Douglas R. Hofstadter offers no less than eighty-eight renditions of a poem by Clément Marot, the 16th century French poet. Hofstadter's book has much to say about the art of translation, although it is hardly limited to that subject. Hofstadter presents his own many versions of A une Damoyselle malade while inviting friends, students and colleagues to do the same. The end result is a beautiful commentary on how time, place, our current state in life and a myriad of other external factors influence the creative process. Some renderings are scholarly, others are tongue-in-cheek, and another takes the young lady from her 16th century sickbed to the 21st with @ signs and all! For anyone who wants to really ponder what is involved in the act of translation, Hofstadter muses about such concepts as the utterly untranslatable and the challenge of wordsmithing. He poses questions about the voice we hear when we read a work in translation. Is it the voice of the author or poet, or is it combined in some way with that of the translator?

I consider translation as a kind of performance, not unlike the work of the actor, the director or the musician. I begin with what is not mine and so I must approach the text with the care that one takes with another's belongings. It is like house-sitting. One does not go in and rearrange the furniture. Instead, we usually exert more caution and respect for other peoples' things than we do for our own. In translation, I try as I might to be faithful to the spirit of the original.

Here is my rendition of Antoine Bernadin's La Flute de Bambou, published in the Haitian newspaper, Le Septentrion, on October 6, 1989 and in the GW Review, in the same year.

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In Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (1997, Basic Books), Douglas R. Hofstadter offers no less than eighty-eight renditions of a poem by Clément Marot, the 16th century French poet. Hofstadter's book has much to say about the art of translation, although it is hardly limited to that subject. Hofstadter presents his own many versions of A une Damoyselle malade while inviting friends, students and colleagues to do the same. The end result is a beautiful commentary on how time, place, our current state in life and a myriad of other external factors influence the creative process. Some renderings are scholarly, others are tongue-in-cheek, and another takes the young lady from her 16th century sickbed to the 21st with @ signs and all! For anyone who wants to really ponder what is involved in the act of translation, Hofstadter muses about such concepts as the utterly untranslatable and the challenge of wordsmithing. He poses questions about the voice we hear when we read a work in translation. Is it the voice of the author or poet, or is it combined in some way with that of the translator? I consider translation as a kind of performance, not unlike the work of the actor, the director or the musician. I begin with what is not mine and so I must approach the text with the care that one takes with another's belongings. It is like house-sitting. One does not go in and rearrange the furniture. Instead, we usually exert more caution and respect for other peoples' things than we do for our own. In translation, I try as I might to be faithful to the spirit of the original. Here is my rendition of Antoine Bernadin's La Flute de Bambou, published in the Haitian newspaper, Le Septentrion, on October 6, 1989 and in the GW Review, in the same year. Return to Texts in Translation \| Lettres Home \| Comments to Laura L. Franklin