The Art of Translation

The Art of Translation

Do translators have the authority to “enhance” or modify the original content to be understood, or does that violate the trust of translation? Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways to Look at Wang Weigives readers a look into how and why there are many different ways a poem can be translated. Until I read this book I had never really understood the craft behind translation; the true knowledge and critical decisions that go behind translating a piece of literaturefrom one language to another.

Weinberger takes a 1,200-year-old Chinese poem and includes 19 different ways translators have interpreted and presented the Wang Wei poem. Weinberger states in the first paragraph that a poem will always be in a state of constant translation and transformation. With that being said, it is hard for the translator to determine what the true meaning of the poem is as they themselves receive a slightly different message each time they read the text. A piece of literature speaks in different volumes to different people, moods and backgrounds therefore giving different variations of the same translated poem.

Since every translator has a different set of skills to tackle a piece of writing this provides in my opinion the beauty of variation. By seeing nineteen different translations and comparing their differences it was easier to see that the little changes or additions made by the translator made a difference in how the tone of the poem was perceived. Weinberger included a wide range of translations. Some translators stuck to the accuracy of the translation down to translating what every character meant to some translators adding double the amount of lines and going on their version of Wei’s poem. The more accurate the translation the less it contained a western iambic pentameter rhythm. The poems that were more stylized by the translator personally had a familiar feel in the sense that I was able to understand the context of the original poem. By the poem not being in its original state of the Chinese characters an audience member that does not obtain such knowledge loses the ability to fully appreciate and experience the cultural depth of Wang Wei’s style and voice.