On Translating a Tamil Poetry
A.K. Ramanujan
[Reading and comprehending original articles by scholars can be a daunting task, and I found it especially challenging while preparing for my exam. To alleviate this stress, I have simplified the article based on my understanding and with the assistance of ChatGPT. I have attempted to present the information in simple and easy-to-understand language. This blog is geared toward exam preparation and aims to provide a clear understanding of the article's core ideas and concepts. However, it's important to note that if you want to gain a deep understanding of the topic, reading the original article is highly recommended. CLICK HERE FOR BLOG I (it has quotes in the language of the original article)]
PART I
Introduction to Tamil Literature and History
How do you translate a poem from a different culture and language? I translate poems from Tamil which were written over 2000 years ago in a region of South India. Tamil is a Dravidian language that was not influenced by the other classical language of India, Sanskrit, which was popular at the same time. Tamil's contemporaries were Sanskrit in India, Greek and Latin in Europe, Hebrew in the Middle East, and Chinese in the Far East. There are over 2000 Tamil poems of different lengths, written by over 400 poets and arranged in nine collections. Despite politics, wars, changes in taste and religion, and challenges like crumbling palm leaves, errors and poverty of scribes, and the damage caused by insects, heat, cold, water, and fire, these poems have survived until today.
The focus of this paper is not on the history of Tamil literature but on the challenging task of translating classical Tamil poems into modern English. Translating poems is difficult because it is almost impossible to convey the full meaning and beauty of the original poem in another language. Even the famous poet Robert Frost once said that poetry is lost in translation. However, despite this challenge, we can still try to practice translation and improve our skills. Sometimes the challenge of translation seems impossible, and this feeling of impossibility can inspire us to try even harder. This feeling is similar to the phrase 'Despair upon Impossibility' from a poem by Marvell. To be more specific, the 'impossibility' of translation comes from the difficulty of capturing the full meaning and beauty of the original poem in another language.
Translating a Tamil Poetry
When translating a poem, we need to decide how to divide it into smaller parts that we can work on. One way to start is to focus on the sounds of the language. However, Tamil and English have very different sound systems. Tamil has six nasal consonants, while English only has three, and Tamil has different types of vowels and consonants that English does not have. These differences make it challenging to translate the poem's sounds from Tamil to English. Phonology, or the study of the sounds of language, is a complex system that is unique to each language. It is impossible to recreate the sounds of one language exactly in another language, even if they are related. We may be able to map the sounds from one language to another, but we cannot reproduce them perfectly. If we focus too much on mimicking the sounds, we may lose other important elements of the poem, such as its grammar and meaning. A poem is unique and identical only to itself, and it is challenging to capture its full essence in another language.
Translating poetry from one language to another is a difficult task, and there are many challenges involved. One of the first issues to consider is the sound system of the original language, which can be quite different from English. For example, Tamil has six nasal consonants, while English only has three, and Tamil has long and short vowels while English has diphthongs and glides. Additionally, Tamil has double consonants that occur in English only across phrases, and Tamil words do not end in stops like English words can. These differences make it impossible to translate the phonology of one language into that of another. Another issue is translating the metrical systems of the original language. Metre is a second-order organization of the sound system, and it can be difficult to translate. Tamil meter depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants and on closed and open syllables defined by these vowels and consonants. Counting feet and combinations in Tamil is done differently than in English, and there are no exact equivalents in English for Tamil's metrical system. Rhyme also poses a challenge in translation, as different languages have different traditions for rhyming. English has a long tradition of end rhymes, while Tamil has a long tradition of second-syllable consonant rhymes.
Overall, translating poetry involves many challenges, including differences in sound systems, meter, and rhyming traditions. While it is possible to map one system onto another, it is impossible to reproduce it exactly. Translators must make choices about what elements of the original poem to prioritize in order to create a translation that is faithful to the original while also capturing its essence in the new language.
In Tamil, there are no verbs that function as copulas to connect two nouns in the present tense. For example, in English, we say 'Tom is a teacher', but in Tamil, this would be expressed differently. Tamil also does not have degrees of comparison in adjectives, like 'sweet, sweeter, sweetest', nor does it have articles like a, an, the. However, Tamil can express the same meanings as these grammatical devices through various other means. Grammatical structures and rules determine what can be said directly and what can be left unsaid. In some languages, like French, every noun has a gender that must be specified, while English does not have this constraint. The lies and ambiguities of one language are not necessarily the same as those of another, due to these grammatical differences. For example, an English speaker may have to specify the gender of a friend when speaking French, but this is not necessary for English.
In Tamil, there are no words that mean "is" in sentences like "Tom is a teacher" like we have in English. They also don't have different degrees of adjectives like we do in English, such as "sweet, sweeter, sweetest," and they don't use articles like "a, an, the." Instead, they use different ways to express these ideas. The way a language's grammar is structured affects what can be said directly and what is left unsaid. For example, in French, every noun has a gender and this affects the way things are described, while in English, gender is not always specified. Each language has its own unique way of expressing ideas, and this can create differences and misunderstandings between languages.
The anthropologist Evans-Pritchard observed that translating European arguments for atheism into the Azande language would actually sound like arguments for God in Azande. This shows that a literal word-for-word translation is impossible and that only a free translation can work. The Tamil language has a mostly left-branching syntax, meaning phrases are organized in a mirror image of English sentences. For example, the date "the 19th of June, 1988" would be translated into "1988, June, 19" in Tamil. This is because Tamil uses postpositions instead of prepositions, and adjectival clauses come before nominal phrases, among other differences. Other left-branching languages include Turkish, Japanese, and Welsh. American English, particularly in Time magazine, has also been influenced by left-branching languages. Or The way different languages express ideas is not always the same. For example, Tamil does not use copula verbs like "is" in English to make statements like "Tom is a teacher". Instead, Tamil expresses this idea using other words. Similarly, Tamil does not have degrees of comparison in adjectives like "sweet, sweeter, sweetest" in English, and does not use articles like "a, an, the". Translations cannot always be "literal" or "word for word" because different languages have different grammar rules and syntax. Tamil, for example, mostly uses left-branching syntax, where the order of words in a sentence is reversed compared to English. So, when translating something like "the 19th of June, 1988", it would be written as "1988, June, 19" in Tamil. Tamil also uses postpositions instead of prepositions, adjectival clauses before nominal phrases, and verbs at the end of sentences instead of in the middle. This differs from English and other languages like Turkish, Japanese, and Welsh, which also use left-branching syntax. Even the style of Time magazine's American English, which is influenced by languages like German and Yiddish, tends to lean towards left-branching syntax.
In English, it is not common to use left-branching sentences. Left-branching sentences are when the first part of the sentence is longer and more complex than the second part. However, some writers use left-branching sentences to create a special effect in their writing. For example, poets like Hopkins and Dylan Thomas used left-branching sentences in their poetry to make it more powerful and interesting. Hopkins and Thomas were both Welsh and the Welsh language uses left-branching sentences more often than English does. However, in their poetry, they used left-branching sentences along with other types of English sentences to create a unique style.
In Tamil poetry, left-branching sentences are not unusual or strange, but a natural part of everyday speech. This means that you cannot use the same sentence structure as in English to translate Tamil. You have to use the sentence structure that is common in the target language. If the sentence structure in the original language is unique, you have to find a way to make it unique in the translated version too.
When translating poetry, the translator faces a challenge when the sentence structure of the original language is very different from the target language. The goal is to keep the original structure and meaning of the poem while making it sound natural and understandable in the target language. The translator uses various techniques such as indentation and spacing to mimic the original's syntactic suspense without making the English version sound strange. For example, if the original poem has a single, long sentence that unifies its patterns, the translator tries to imitate this management even in relatively simple examples.
In short, the translator's job is to carefully choose the best words in the best order to convey the original meaning and style of the poem in the target language, while also making it sound natural and understandable to the readers.
Language has many parts that are difficult to translate, such as the lexicon (vocabulary) and the meaning of words. This is because words are culturally specific and loaded with meaning. For example, words that refer to flora, fauna, caste distinctions, kinship systems, body parts, and even numbers are culturally loaded. Words are also enmeshed in other words, forming collocations and sets that are unique to each language. These collocations and sets create metaphors and multiple meanings that are difficult to translate into another language, such as Tamil. Even when two languages have similar terms, such as father, mother, brother, and mother-in-law, the system of relations and traditional feelings about each relative is culturally sensitive and part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists. This means that translators must be careful to capture not only the literal meaning of words but also their cultural context to convey the full meaning of a text in another language.
Tamil Poetic Tradition
The classical Tamil poetic tradition has a way of classifying reality that it uses to create poetry. It divides the Tamil area into five different landscapes, each with its own forms of life including trees, animals, tribes, customs, arts, and instruments. Each landscape is associated with a mood or phase of love or war and is named after a tree or flower that grows there. These landscapes also have a time of day and season associated with them. The poets use these landscapes and their contents as a symbolic code to express their ideas. For example, the first poem we cited is about the mountains and is associated with the plant kurinji, which represents the mood of first love and the lovers' secret sexual union. In the war poems, the same landscape is used for a night attack on a fort set in the hills.
The Tamil poetic tradition has a system of classification based on the five landscapes of the Tamil area - hills, seashores, agricultural areas, wastelands, and pastoral fields. Each landscape is associated with a mood or phase of love or war and is named after a tree or flower of that region. Love and war poems are classified similarly, and there are associations between them, forming a web of genres, landscapes, moods, and themes. Love and war become metaphors for each other in some poems.
Scholars have observed that the classical Tamil poetic tradition has a language within a language. This language includes not only the Tamil language itself, but also the landscapes, genres, themes, and allusions used in the poetry. The five landscapes of the Tamil region, with all their natural and cultural contents, form a symbolic code for the poetry and are associated with specific moods, times of day, seasons, and even specific trees or flowers. Love and war are also interconnected in this poetry, forming a web of associations across genres and landscapes. Translating such poetry involves not only translating the Tamil language but also this entire intricate system of intertextual references. It is a language that allows for an "infinite use of finite means", as Wilhelm Humboldt put it.
PART II
The poem is not addressed to a mother but to a girlfriend. The phrase in Tamil is long and important: it describes the water left in the holes of the land, which is low and covered with leaves and has been made dirty by animals drinking from it. In my English translation, I simplified this to "the leftover water in his land, low in the waterholes, covered with leaves, and muddied by animals."
In my English translation, I left out the word 'drinking' because it was already implied by the word 'waterhole' in English. In the Tamil original, the phrase 'leaf holes' refers to 'waterholes covered with leaves'. I expanded this phrase in my translation to make it clear and explicit, as the original meaning may not be immediately clear to an English reader. So in my translation, I wrote "the leftover water in his land, low in the waterholes, covered with leaves, and muddied by animals."
In my English translation, I tried to preserve the order and structure of the themes, not just the order of individual words. The word 'iniya' in Tamil is very important as it balances the two themes in the poem: the speaker's childhood memories of milk and honey, and the pleasure of the muddied waterholes. Since this word is so important, I placed it at the beginning of the sentence in my translation, even though it meant inverting the usual word order. If I had put 'sweeter than' in the middle of the poem, it would have weakened the suspense and drama of the ending. To create a sense of balance and weight, I also arranged the lines and spaces symmetrically, with the line about the leftover water in the land in the middle, set off by spaces.
According to the old commentaries, the poem's mood (or bodily state) is one of great wonder (perumitam), and its purpose is to speak of the goodness of life (talkkai nalam kūrutaly).
The ten poems in the Ainkurunuru anthology are part of a hundred love poems by a great poet named Kapilar. These poems are all about the hillside landscape, but each one has its own unique design and meaning. The love poems in akam (interior love poems) contrast with the war poems in Puram (exterior poems), but they share the same landscapes. The love poems are sometimes parodied or played with in comic poems and poems about poems. Over time, these poems have influenced religious poetry, where human love and conflict become metaphors for man's relations with the divine. The relationships of lover and beloved, poet and patron, and bard and hero are translated to poet-saint and god.
Each poem is connected to a larger group, including landscapes, genres, and themes. This interconnection forms patterns of similarities and differences. A translator must convey these relationships while translating the poem.
PART III
The translation is a very difficult task that seems almost impossible to accomplish. However, there are at least four things, or beliefs, that can help a translator make it possible:
Universals-
Universals are basic rules or patterns that are shared by all languages. Without these universals, it would be impossible to learn other languages, translate between them, or compare them. Universals help us understand the structure of language, including things like sound systems, grammar, and meaning. They also help us understand literary works and common themes across cultures, like love or war. Although universals are not necessarily absolute truths, they are important tools that allow us to study and understand language and literature.
Interorised contexts-
Even though poems have specific cultural details, they can also give us insight into the entire culture of a society. For example, we can learn about the culture of ancient Tamils through their poetry. Commentaries and other writings can also help us understand the context and meaning of the poetry, such as the types of characters, themes, and situations that are common in society. To help us understand poetry, we can use grammar books, like the oldest Tamil grammar book called Tolkäppiyam, which helps to explain the language and meaning of the poetry. When we translate a classical Tamil poem, we are also translating the cultural context that surrounds the poem. This can include commentaries and other writings that help to explain the meaning of the poem. Even if we disagree with these commentaries, they help us to understand the terms of the argument. In other words, the meaning of the poem is not just in the words themselves, but also in the cultural context that surrounds it.
Systematicity-
The way that figures, genres, and characters interconnect in a group of poems can help us understand the world created by the poems. When translating, we don't just translate individual poems, but groups of poems that work together to create a larger world of meaning. Even if we don't translate every poem in a group, we choose poems that fit together and help to illuminate each other, showing allusions, contrasts, and larger patterns. This selection of poems becomes a way of representing the world of poetry. Intertextuality, or the way that different texts relate to each other, is not a problem but rather a solution to understanding poetry. We can learn from the arrangements of Tamil poetry, as well as from poets like Yeats, Blake, and Baudelaire, who also used arrangement to create meaning in their work.
Structural mimicry-
Despite the larger context of translating groups of poems, the primary task of a translator is to translate individual poems. The unique structures and figures created within each poem are the most important aspects for the translator to understand. These structures and figures comprise the language, rhetoric, and poetics specific to that poem. When translating, the goal is not to translate individual words but rather to mimic the relationships between phrases, sentences, and rhythms in the original poem. It's not just about matching the meter or grammar, but also about capturing the overall patterns and structures of the poem.
Conclusion
Translating is like using a metaphor to 'carry across' the meaning of a text. Translators must re-enact and interpret the original work, which may involve changing and adjusting. Some aspects of the original work may not be translatable at all. While a sense of rhythm can be conveyed, the exact sound of the words in the original language may not be possible to replicate. Translating textures is even more challenging than structures, and maintaining the linear order of the original text can be difficult. Poetry is created at all these levels, so translating poetry requires a similar level of attention to detail. That's why only another poem can truly translate a poem.
Translating poetry is a delicate balancing act. The translator must be loyal to both the original language and the language of the translation. It is like walking on a tightrope. The translator is like an artist who has sworn to represent the original poem as faithfully as possible. Sometimes, the translation may not be an exact representation, but it can still carry the essence of the poem. This is similar to the story of the Chinese emperor who wanted a tunnel to be bored through a mountain. If the two tunnels met in the middle, there would be one tunnel. But if they didn't, there would be two tunnels. Similarly, if the translation is not perfect, but still captures the essence of the poem, there will be two poems instead of one.
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