I am having so much trouble translating. I wish I had a more sophisticated post about this, and I don't know how much of a space this is for rather simply personal reflection, but boy oh boy is this turning out to be harder than I even imagined. Tschernichovsky's prose is so obtuse and awkward, and his usage is so strange!! Reading a short story by Micah Yosef Berdichevsky, the beautiful short story "Kayitz Vachoref" (Winter and Summer), in Hebrew from much the same period [ie long before Hebrew was a regularly and organically spoken language] just drove this home to me. One of the glories of that story: sure, I had to look stuff up, but I generally understood it once I did.
With Tschernichovsky, that is certainly not always the case - and even when I do understand the logistics of a line, carrying that over into non-awkward English is just insanely difficult. For one thing, the ordinarily super-adequate online dictionary Milon Morfix (http://morfix.mako.co.il/) for whose existence I thank the good Lord every day, is almost totally useless when it comes to Tschernichovsky's stranger/more innovative word choices. I have had to shlep out my five-volume Alkalai, and my digitally-spoiled self is unaccustomed to the tedium of such work. However, it's generally almost meditative... and sometimes I have to resort to Hebrew Wikipedia, Google searches, Encyclopedia Judaica and other detective work that can actually be pretty exciting [if it even proves fruitful in the end.] I think a big difference between the two works, Kayitz Vachoref and Bar Kochba, is that Berdichevsky wasn't writing dialogue; Tschernichovsky set himself a very daunting task writing dialogue in a language that hadn't been spoken for a thousand years, but I'm becoming less and less convinced that it was an entirely successful one. So I am feeling a little gloomy about the project right now. However, later on in the scene I'm translating are some longer poetic speeches, and I have high hopes for them, because I really love T's sonnets and other poetic works [although they are, to put it mildly, not simple]. So I will be posting snatches of those this weekend, dear readers - bli neder [no promises]!
This blog should be used for any purpose you wish, Talis. So feel free to express your angst. I personally find this post really interesting, especially for how your reflection on the difference between digital sources and old-fashioned print ones. Have you thought of checking out other translations of works written around the same time as Tsch. just for some ideas on how to address some of your issues? I'd also point out that this reader, at least, wants some sense of the state of the language was in when Tsch. wrote. After all, aren't we reading this work in part because we have a certain historical/linguistic concern?
ReplyDelete