translation as transformation

“…a Zuni narrator emphasizes the climactic third line not by loudness but by a decrease in amplitude, thus preserving the delicacy of the moment of birth.”

- Dennis Tedlock

While reading Dennis Tedlock’s “Ethnopoetics” last week, I lingered upon this sample of how one might interpret a textual score of oral poetry. Something about the reading seemed to me hasty, incomplete, and somehow unfair. Although this was just a sample, a mere introduction, I was disconcerted nonetheless. I was comforted during Wednesday’s class, however, when we were given a bare-bones outline of the conversion from oral poem to textual representation. We learned that a narrator sounds what we will term a “poem,” that this poem is then phonetically transcribed, and, finally, that the phonetic text is translated by one who is familiar with the narrator’s language. Given the considerable metamorphoses that an oral poem undergoes when it’s funneled from the open realm of sound to the concrete domain of paper, I gathered that the scholars of ethnopoetics must assume that the translating process necessitates great distortion of the original performance. In turn, I assumed that these scholars, like Tedlock, must acknowledge that any interpretive contributions they themselves make to the movement of ethnopoetics will be necessarily colored by their own histories, interests and exigencies. This assumption was substantiated in Kenneth Lincoln’s foreward, which introduced me to translator Frances Densmore. When struggling to choose between the adjectives “rustling” or “rattling” in one of her translations, Densmore was impelled to question whether an “authentic crossing” (of languages, cultures, media, even human beings themselves) will ever be possible.

This semester I look forward to learning more about how oral poetry is translated into visual poetry, modified musical scores, and other textual media. Specifically, I’d like to address my question of whether poet-narrators ever clarify the significance of their variations in pitch, enunciation, and amplitude or if ethnopoetic scholars always impose conventional strategies (e.g., quietude to suggest the “preservation of delicacy”) onto “foreign” poetic styles? Perhaps these variations are intended to keep listeners’ interest; maybe the oral poets view poetic performances as opportunities to showcase their vocal ranges; possibly, oral poets use variations in clarity, tone, and loudness to create aural metaphors that are to be “read” in conjunction with the poems’ themes. I hope to interrogate and explore these and many other interpretive possibilities throughout the course.