Literally Lost in Translation

And sometimes not lost at all…

Image: Sign at Wat, Bangkok, 1996.

I never know where I am going with these posts, which is the common denominator in the endless metaphorical fractions of this life, but often the going becomes the posts and thus the posts tell of the going. Eventually I suppose they make a point.

Image: Point-Breathing Dragon in Bangkok, 1996.

It’s really quite a coincidence that foreign poetry and foreign places occurred simultaneously in my unforeign day, and it was perhaps all spurred by the simple loan of a scanner, for yesterday a friend brought me a scanner for my indefinite use and I started digging through dusty boxes.

The first images I came upon that seemed worthy of a scan were of a Wat I had visited in Thailand in 1996. The header image at the top is a detail of this Wat, which had been modernized. As we were leaving this Wat, in Chaing Mai, we wandered around to the back where we were not supposed to be, and where we found an abandoned bit of the Wat, a remnant, pre-modernization, thrown in a pile carelessly, like so many commas. Something about this discarded scrap of a sacred temple struck me as both wrong and beautiful.

As I was scanning this image I heard an email slide into my inbox. It was from a stranger, more and less, and it pointed to a poem. I felt that his poem seemed a perfect accompaniment to this image even though I had no idea what the poem said, being written in French. I translated it using babelfish and as it began to resemble sense, it seemed that somewhere in the sense there might be more sense and so I sent it to a fluently-French friend who fixed up the translation a bit for me. The resulting poem seems so relevant to the image and so I juxtapose the two below, with the machine translation and original poem below the below:

I think that in this moment
nobody maybe thinks about me in the universe,
that only I think of me,
and if I died now,
nobody, not even me, would think of me.

And here begins the abyss,
as when I go to sleep.
I am my own support and my collapse.
I contribute to covering absence with all sorts of things.

It is for this that maybe
That to think about a man
Comes back to a savior.

~hand-translation from a friend

 

I think that in this moment
person maybe thinks about me in the universe,
that me only I think myself,
and so now I died,
anybody, or me, would not think me.

And here begins the abyss,
as when I myself m’endors.
I am my own support and removes it for me.
I contribute to decorate with absence all things.

This is for that maybe
That to think about a man
Comes back to to save it.

~translation by a well-meaning machine

 

Je pense qu’en ce moment
personne peut-être ne pense à moi dans l’univers,
que moi seul je me pense,
et si maintenant je mourais,
personne, ni moi, ne me penserait.

Et ici commence l’abîme,
comme lorsque je m’endors.
Je suis mon propre soutien et me l’ôte.
Je contribue à tapisser d’absence toutes choses.

C’est pour cela peut-être
Que penser à un homme
Revient à le sauver.

Roberto Juarroz, Première Poésie Verticale.
Extrait de Poésie Verticale,
traduit de l’espagnol (argentin)
par Roger Munier,
© Fayard, 1980

-original poem translated and posted on facebook