“Rapacious or Greedy for Money?”

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“Rapacious or Greedy for Money?”

Chronos of Katica Kulavkova – supreme poetic achievement
Chronos in German – is it poetry at all?

When analyzing the translation I will focus on the poems Chronos 1, 2 and 3, with most details on Chronos 1. The issues that I will mention in this analysis relate to the translations of all Katica Kulavkova’s poems made by Ulrike Draesner.

1. Everyday words

In many translations one notices the tendency of the translator to use words that are not poetic at all and which do not belong to poetry. These are words of the spoken language which do not correspond the original word; on the contrary, they make the verses superficial, banal and sometimes they even sound rude.
Some examples are: The word “цел” (whole, complete) in one place in Chronos [3] is translated by the word “total”, a word which is almost equal to super, cool, etc, despite the existence of appropriate words such as “ganz, völlig, im Ganzen, gänzlich…” which can be used poetically depending on the context.
Further on, the verses: Или си ти во мене
или јас во Тебе!

Have been translated as: Entweder du steckst in mir
oder ich stecke in dir!

Which is not only stylistically wrong, but also in terms of contents and grammar (verb is on the second place); therefore, it is not poetic. The selection of the verb “stecken” is unfounded. The verb means to stick, to insert, to put, etc, and it is widely used in the everyday verbal language phrases (ich stecke fest, ich stecke immer noch im Büro, in der U-Bahn, im Stau fest, ich stecke mir einen Apfel in die Tasche…), thus the whole expression is rough and not poetic. The solution is actually very simple, because the identical expression as the original can be used, including the verb to be, i.e. sein:
Entweder bist du in mir
Oder ich in Dir.

To stress the expression one could also use: lauern, wohnen, leben (lurk, live) etc, but in no way “stecken“.
Another example is the noun Anstrengung, which is mostly used to mark physical, corporal effort, as well as the verb sich anstrengen, and especially the everyday usage of the adverb anstrengend: Die Arbeit ist anstrengend (work is tedious). Or its adjectival usage: anstrengender Mensch (tedious/boring man), which are always used in prose. Poetic words for напор (напорен) would be: Mühe, Mühsal (mühsam).
The original verse: се обидувам, не без напор, да те сфатам!
Translation: versuche, nicht ohne Anstrengung, zu fassen dich!
This verse, in which the last part (zu fassen dich) is also grammatically incorrect, which is not because of the poetic style (see below), should be:
versuche, nicht ohne Mühe, dich zu begreifen!

2. Unknown words

Very often we find words and contexts in the translation which were not understood at all by the translator and therefore she opted for a solution, such as in the example in the next verse of the poem Chronos [1]:
Овде сум на една топка-вртелешка
Вртелешка
of this verse is obviously an unknown word for the translator because she interpreted this verse in this way:
Auf einem Ball stehend kreise! (ich gefalle mir selbst,)

That is, in Macedonian: Стоејќи на топка кружам! (си се допаѓам сама на себе,)
She equalizes the word “вртелешка” with turning, circling; however, the usage of the verb in first person singular without a personal pronoun sounds odd and unclear in German. One can not talk about an ellipse, because in this case it does not improve the style. A better solution would be to leave out the verbal adjective stehend and only leave the verbal adjective, i.e. the participle 1 of the verb kreisen – kreisend
Auf einem Ball kreisend

Which is stylistically better; however, it would not be the best solution since it misses the contents of the original.
To alleviate or miss the mistake of the whole verse, or maybe for her personal insecurity, the translator adds an exclamation mark, and she stylistically and grammatically links the verb (circle) with the subject (I) of the next sentence after the exclamation mark; the sentence does not sound like this at all in the original and it is one verse below.
If there is really a need of elements to improve the style, expression or meaning of the translation, it is by all means fully legitimate to add an punctuation sing, a new word, row lower or elevate the verse or one of its parts; however, in this case there is an attempt to find a solution for what has not been understood, while completely ruining the verse of the poetess.

AuthorElizabeta Lindner
2018-08-21T17:23:03+00:00 May 10th, 2008|Categories: Essays, Literature, Blesok no. 59|0 Comments