translation

Odds and Ends and Insulting Ramblings

It will be four years before this day comes again. Odd how that fact does not fill me with confidence in the Julian Calendar system… among other things.

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Language interests me. Possibly because I’m so bad at picking up new languages. It interest me the things that are lost and changed in translation.

The Uncanny X-men in Spanish becomes La Impossible Patrulla X, which does not mean ‘The Uncanny X-Men’. It translates literally into The Impossible Patrol X. Patrulla meaning Patrol, a small detachment of soldiers to secure the safety or peace of a place.

So the X-MEN though translated, is changed in the translation, to PATROL X. A subtle change admitted, but change none the less.

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Closing out Black History month, I have to remark I really hate the term African American.

It’s right up there with morons using the term political correctness instead of the word respect.

Just use respect whenever you rant about political correctness, and you’ll realize what the eff you’re really complaining about. Racist bastards.

Now back to African American.

Nationalistic boundaries have no place in an ethnographic designation. It’s been removed from the unifying way it was first broached in the 60s, to a moronic misnomer. What is wrong with Black or Colored or Moor or Nubian or hell even Pan-African, all of which are inclusive terms that define your ethnicity regardless of whether you live in Canada or France or Brazil or China or Honduras or Haiti or Senegal.

How such a stupid term is not only in general parlance, but is on federal forms just goes to show you how poorly most people in America reason. And don’t even get me started on separating Black from Hispanic. What the eff are you talking about? How do you separate blood from blood? Keep your divide and conquer nonsense.

“Just like the Spanish, raping the Black and Indian women and creating Latinos!”— Immortal Technique

If you’re walking around and defining your ethnicity based on your nationality, which may work in homogeneous society but does not work in a heterogeneous society, then you sir and mam… are doing something moronic.

And you may want to stop and think, and scratch out that stupid line on federal forms that says African American, and write instead… “Eff You! I Wont Do What You Tell ME! ” (Yeah, that is from RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE).

Think… better.

It’s the only salvation you have.

.

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There is No Forgetting (Sonata) by Pablo Neruda, translated by Clayton Eshleman

Someone spoke to me today of passion.

She didn’t speak profoundly.

Who does these days? Only madmen and writers. 🙂

But I heard something profound.

Something about, those who lacking, search for it, and those who filled, seek wildly for someone to share the weight of it.

The… madness of it.

Passion.

Finding passion in living, in life, in the road less ordinary.

Finding magic, even in the mundane.

It made my mind wander to the work of Pablo Neruda.

There are many translations of Neruda’s poems, I think when you read the following you’ll agree Clayton Eshleman’s is clearly the most… haunting and eloquent. There’s a melody, and a picturesqueness to works written in the romance languages, a sense of surrealism and magic realism, that is typically lost when translated to English.

Not so here.

See for yourself:


There is No Forgetting (Sonata)
by Pablo Neruda, translated by Clayton Eshleman

If you ask me where I have been
I have to say “it happens.”
I have to speak of ground darkened by stones,
of the river that enduring destroys itself:
I know only the things that birds lose,
the sea left behind, or my tearful sister.
Why so many regions, why does one day
attach to another? Why does a black night
accumulate in one’s mouth? Why the dead?

If you ask me from where I come, I have to converse with
broken things,
with deeply-embittered utensils,
with great beasts often rotted
and with my own anguished heart.

Those who have passed are not remembered
nor is the yellowish dove, asleep in oblivion,
nor the faces with tears,
the fingers at throats,
nor that which tumbles from the leaves:
the obscurity of an elapsed day,
a day nourished with our sad blood.

Here are some violets, swallows,
everything that pleases us and appears
on saccharine cards in long gowns
around which time and sweetness stroll.

But we must not penetrate beyond those teeth,
must not bite into the husks amassed by silence,
for I do not know what to answer:
there are so many dead,

and so many sea walls cracked by the red sun
and so many heads smashed against boats,
and so many hands that have locked up kisses,
and so many things that I want to forget.

If you like that, first seek medical attention :), 2nd consider picking up a copy of CONDUCTORS OF THE PIT
, it’s filled with great Eshleman translations.

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