They are meant to be savored, devoured, digested.
These translations are meant to transport you to another place. This issue of DoubleSpeak attempts to bring together poets from every corner of the world and translators from beyond the scope of Penn. Just because I don’t understand doesn’t make it wrong. Just because I can’t understand the first set of squiggles doesn’t mean it’s any less valid than the second. It’s not always visible, but it is there. I hope you feel the helpless loss of Nâzım Hikmet’s “Story of Separation” and the honey-laced tenderness of Dora Gabe’s “Silence.” I hope that Mahmoud Darwish’s “Identity Card” will remind you of all those who continue to be persecuted in our world.ĭeliberately or not, meaning is constantly evading us as we chase after it. Perhaps they are meaningful in ways different from their original counterparts, but each one has moved me in a way that I can only hope to share with you. We translate the squiggles themselves but our efforts lie in trying to preserve the meaning behind them.Įach of the twenty translations in this magazine was wrought out of its original language and crafted into something meaningful in English. Those of us who translate try to take one set of squiggles and turn it into another. We designate squiggles to signify sound, which then string together to form words and then phrases and then poetry. Multitudes of letters pile up line after line, hoping to mean something.
Translation involves finding chaos within the chaos.
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