Bossing - and then problems of translation
After a month long time with barely any babysitting - seems like forever - I have now added an extra morning - a friend of a friend who has a home daycare. There, this morning, M. discovered the joys of Bossing a Baby.
The Baby was one of those placid blobby ones, sitting firmly planted and immovable, grabbing whatever comes near with fat grubby hands. I forgot how babies just throw up without noticing; this one was nonchalant about it, almost debonair.
M.: No a baby hold this people. [gives fisher price little people thingie to baby]
Baby: Uh! [grabs]
M: No baby, no put it inna mouf. It goes here.
Baby: Uh! Ga! (slobber)
M: Silly baby. Put it here in a chair like this. Goes here.
Baby: [doesn't mind when he grabs the thing back]
M: I show you. Like this!
Now here at home M. just put me to bed for a nap, bringing me a blanket, pillow, and fake bottle, kissing me and saying "Night night sleep tight". "You go bed and I go bed. And close the eyes. No mama, no onna computer, go a bed."
I spent some hours translating this morning - that was the point I was trying to get to.
I start out making a super rough translation either in my notebook or on the compu. I put any words I don't know in square brackets.
Sometimes I get confused about verb tenses and look them up too, like if I forget if it's first person or third person future conditional or whatever. It is even worse if I am stopped cold by some "would have been doing" sort of construction. Not being sure what the verb tense is makes the whole poem seem like nonsense - I can't even tell what it's about.
Then I go look up all the words I don't know. I am mostly translating poems by one poet, J. de I., and she has certain fads in words, so I know the Spanish for odd things like: drowning, misery, bleeding, sunset, wretchedness, anguish, bitter alkalinity, apathy, withered, poppies, lilies, wax candles you'd have at a funeral, nightfall, arrows, spears, desire, and last but not least, the words for "Take me now".
So, when I look up a word, like "laceria" in the dictionary - I use Velasquez or the online DRAE, both good and literary - I write down a bunch of different word possibilities in brackets if there is any ambiguity, like so:
Ah! [Wretchedness/misery/oppression/poverty/(laceration)]!
I get to a stage where I have lines like this:
And perhaps the jasmine of birth
at the secret/hiddden/obscure/arcane vertex/zenith of the voyage
Then I read the mangled, overly wordy result a whole bunch of times. I fix easy things like
making "cistern of salt/bitter/alkali of my heart" instead be "heart's salt-bittter cistern".
And yet: [cistern? well? reservoir?]
And grammatical things like:
Ah si pudiera ser de piedra o cobre
Para no sufrir!
Para que así mis ojos se apagaran
cual dos trozos mojados de carbón.
Ah if I could be [made of] rock or copper
[so that I won't, in order not to] suffer!
...
[in order for/ so that/ so/ ] That way my eyes will [close, go out, be extinguished]
I might stare at one line for quite a long time and write it 10 different ways.
Eventually I end up with something that's more or less done:
The hour
Take me now while it's early
and because I have dahlia buds in my hands.
Take me now while my tumbling locks
are still shadow-black.
Now, while I have fragrant flesh
and clear eyes and skin like a rose.
Now, while I wear on my light feet
the living sandals of spring.
Now, while on my lips a smile chimes
like a bell struck suddenly.
Afterwards... Ah, I know
that what I have now, I won't have later!
That then your desire will be useless
as flowers on a tomb.
Take me now while it's early
and while I have plenty of lilies in my hands!
Today, not later. Before night falls
and the fresh petals wither.
Today, not tomorrow. Oh beloved, don't you see
that the morning-glory shelters the graveyard cypress?
J. de Ibarb. - LLdeD 1919 "Luz Interior"
But even here I have serious problems with the last line, it's clunky and awkward and I'm not sure I'm really getting the sense of it across correctly or even getting it correctly.
I could happily spend all day doing this. It is oddly soothing.
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