Hey everyone, I was supposed to post this awhile ago and failed massively. So, let's do it now and just have it done prior to the final reading (?).
Going off the translating idea from class last Wed. and thinking about our evolution from the first on the semester, let's translate something into one of the vocabularies we stated be liked (or disliked) in the first etude. This is really pretty open, so do with it what you will.
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My etude is a translation of an excerpt from Howe's "Nonconformist's Memorial", pg. 75:
ReplyDeleteA poet's iconoclasm
A bestiary of the Night
I am at home in the library
I will lie down to sleep
A great happy century
A little space among herds
So I used vocabulary from a piece written in 565 A.D. by a Byzantine/Roman author, Corippus, describing a deputation of "barbarians" coming to visit the emperor. Historical vocabulary/propaganda.
savage prayers terrified columns
spectacle, pacing edges
preserving in stories
adoration, dream carpets words
enthusiasm, wondrous due order
and lives safe among triumphs
So I took some text from a David's Bridal catalog and merged it with - what else? - obnoxious feminist rhetoric. The original text is over the top, so I made the feminist stuff equally polarised. This was a lot of fun to write. I just titled it Style V9409.
ReplyDeleteOriginal:
strapless A-line gown
a sweep of soft chiffon
and hand-beaded lace
really know how to flatter
this feminine style
features side drape, beaded lace, and lace-up back
sweep train
white or ivory
wrap not included
Translation:
strapless A-line gown to cover up anything too evocative of womanhood
a sweep of soft frailty, matching perceived female weakness
and hand-beaded inbred delicacy
really know how to tuck in the liver and push up the breasts
you must be an absurd object, a strangely artificial vessel
waiting patiently to be filled with your new loving patriarch
s wisdom
this constricting and genderised style
features side drape, beaded lace, and lace-up back to lock you in
good and tight
sweep train to keep from you from turning too quickly
white or other shades of innocence, of childlike purity
to match your fresh hairlessness, your uneducated stare
wrap not included, unprotected brides are always best
and aren’t you lovely now
I am translating a poem entitled "The laws of God, the laws of man" by A.E. Housman, from his book, "Last Poems"
ReplyDeleteoriginal:
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree;
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
Translation:
Act and speak
lest it be
Taken
Know that
it is
Theirs
Impressed upon
Me
And you
We can only
overcome
internally