ka
Kafka on the shingle.
Newton at the shore.
It helps to know that in Czech a "kavka" is a jackdaw.
KA
Kafka on the shingle.
Newton at the shore.
It helps to know that in Czech a "kavka" is a jackdaw.
KA
Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Rexroth Yosano Akiko error
Here is a snap from Google Books showing the error in my print edition of Rexroth 1976 : oka and yūhi have been transposed.
It is my belief that if the original Japanese version had been included, a Japanese proof-reader would have caught this error. in seeing the obvious : 夕日の岡に is yūhi no oka ni. And why the silly initial cap's in the roumaji transcription?
But will it be corrected in the Kindle edition ?
No such error is found on pg 55 of "Ferris Wheel", 2006, with
金色の ちひさき鳥の かたちして 銀杏ちるなり 夕日の岡に
Monday, May 19, 2014
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Tsvetaeva Poem Markup
Just as I am deciding on how I want to present the text used in Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire", I find myself looking for a source list to David McDuff's Tsvetaeva translations: I find none.
One of the poems must have resisted his efforts. Translators write a forewords and such to advise readers of the challenges they faced.
A web page of translated poems in markup should offer some options (the McDuff book is in a second edition but still lacks 2 pages of sources to offset 25 pages of introduction.)
One option would be to indicate the "shape" of the original. Consider this instance from McDuff:
“The demon in me’s not dead,”
as a translation of ( phonetic stress added by me )
“
Жив, а не у́мер
Де́мон во мне!
”
I am relying on the following Russian-language Wikisource page: Tsvetaeva 1925, which gives the poem entitled by McDuff as "The Demon in Me" as «Жив, а не умер…», but without stress (UNICODE combining characters are inserted AFTER the stressed vowel in my excerpted lines above.)
If, in fact, her two lines were reduced to his one, there is no indication. One simple way to achieve this is with a Shape in the Curl language.
Monday, December 19, 2011
A poet's hubris?
One volume of the Ben Belitt translations of Pablo Neruda includes not a single translation by another poet or by another poetry translator.
One of the translations is obviously flawed: a Chilean poem becomes a poem for all mechanized and schooled mankind. What is worse, the poet may have encouraged his translator in this cosmopolitan reading — but it is lacking in the original as given on the facing page, verso.
A better title: The Collected Translations of Neruda by poet Ben Belitt, 1970.
A book for me: a single volume with the best translations of Neruda from any European language (look how well Italian appears to translate to Danish - the concision - and Spanish?) with originals in Spanish RECTO and the selected translations VERSO (an e-book?) - not the usual arrangement (but consider how French bilingual dictionaries begin with the French lexicon, but those by the English or Germans begin with the target language - so the privilege would go to the poems, not the polyglot translations.)
A UN poetry week project: Tagore?
One of the translations is obviously flawed: a Chilean poem becomes a poem for all mechanized and schooled mankind. What is worse, the poet may have encouraged his translator in this cosmopolitan reading — but it is lacking in the original as given on the facing page, verso.
A better title: The Collected Translations of Neruda by poet Ben Belitt, 1970.
A book for me: a single volume with the best translations of Neruda from any European language (look how well Italian appears to translate to Danish - the concision - and Spanish?) with originals in Spanish RECTO and the selected translations VERSO (an e-book?) - not the usual arrangement (but consider how French bilingual dictionaries begin with the French lexicon, but those by the English or Germans begin with the target language - so the privilege would go to the poems, not the polyglot translations.)
A UN poetry week project: Tagore?
Sunday, May 29, 2011
René Char
The work of René Char is missing from the NB public library system.
Why should this matter? Well, there are bilingual editions available (quality varies) and perhaps he is important for Acadiens given their Quebec neighbours: consider what he says in Feuillets d'Hypnos about the French staff officer who laments the language spoken by Char's courageous maquisards.
He is not a Parisian poet so much as a poet of Provence. Yes, I know, Aix is a favourite destination of the Quebec intellectual. But all the same ...
Two nights ago I went to meet an Anglo-Irish poet at Alden Nowlan House at unb.ca. One table in the Windsor Castle bar was speaking French during the hockey game. A woman stepped out onto the deck and said "Look, I can speak French, too" and began making noises. It could have been a Russian imitating a Pole or a Ukrainian.
I keep hearing this kind of offensive drivel and noise-making here and there around this officially bilingual town - and in this, Canada's only bilingual province. And when will I hear an Acadienne imitate an NB anglo here in "Arcadia"? Will it be among Australian graduate students at UNB? I think not.
Is the answer to require Canadian schools to teach that Norman French forms a large part of our English vocabulary - and that the largest part of that came from Latin Rome? That the French were Franks? ( Is Germanic ancestry still the dominant ethnic origin of "English" Canadians? Does it remain so for "whites" in the USA?) Or are we to concede to ethnic loathing?
Should foreign students be required to take at least one course on Canadian history to obtain a graduate degree from one of our universities? Is UNB finding and funding graduate candidates from "la Francophonie" as much as from the Commonwealth?
As to the absence of Char: I have noted elsewhere how deficient the New Directions bilingual edition of Char is - but better that than nothing.
And here in Fredericton, where is the monument or plaque to commemorate the burning of those Acadian homes on these fashionable streets? (Shades of another quiet university town filled with tourists in summer: Marburg in Lahntal.) The Marburg of the students Eliot and Pasternak.
Why should this matter? Well, there are bilingual editions available (quality varies) and perhaps he is important for Acadiens given their Quebec neighbours: consider what he says in Feuillets d'Hypnos about the French staff officer who laments the language spoken by Char's courageous maquisards.
He is not a Parisian poet so much as a poet of Provence. Yes, I know, Aix is a favourite destination of the Quebec intellectual. But all the same ...
Two nights ago I went to meet an Anglo-Irish poet at Alden Nowlan House at unb.ca. One table in the Windsor Castle bar was speaking French during the hockey game. A woman stepped out onto the deck and said "Look, I can speak French, too" and began making noises. It could have been a Russian imitating a Pole or a Ukrainian.
I keep hearing this kind of offensive drivel and noise-making here and there around this officially bilingual town - and in this, Canada's only bilingual province. And when will I hear an Acadienne imitate an NB anglo here in "Arcadia"? Will it be among Australian graduate students at UNB? I think not.
Is the answer to require Canadian schools to teach that Norman French forms a large part of our English vocabulary - and that the largest part of that came from Latin Rome? That the French were Franks? ( Is Germanic ancestry still the dominant ethnic origin of "English" Canadians? Does it remain so for "whites" in the USA?) Or are we to concede to ethnic loathing?
Should foreign students be required to take at least one course on Canadian history to obtain a graduate degree from one of our universities? Is UNB finding and funding graduate candidates from "la Francophonie" as much as from the Commonwealth?
As to the absence of Char: I have noted elsewhere how deficient the New Directions bilingual edition of Char is - but better that than nothing.
And here in Fredericton, where is the monument or plaque to commemorate the burning of those Acadian homes on these fashionable streets? (Shades of another quiet university town filled with tourists in summer: Marburg in Lahntal.) The Marburg of the students Eliot and Pasternak.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
poetry markup
The motivation for emitting Curl markup instead of HTML markup from a Smalltalk web server was to have the benefits of Curl as poetry markup.
Curl macros and text procedures mean that poetry layout can be simply
{poem title="...",
{stanza ...
{stanza ...
or
{canto
{line 1, ...
{line 2, ...
or whatever proves suitable: {verse, {book, {couplet ... The marked content remains eminently readable and automated layout is a breeze.
The real strength of Curl for poetry markup lies in presenting/suppressing/selecting annotations, variants and variant translations inline - which of course also can be done with CSS and classes using visibility and scripted with JavaScript - with both the ease and elegance of Curl.
詩マークアップを生成します。
thơ đánh dấu.
bài thơ đánh dấu.
đánh dấu bài thơ.
Curl macros and text procedures mean that poetry layout can be simply
{poem title="...",
{stanza ...
{stanza ...
or
{canto
{line 1, ...
{line 2, ...
or whatever proves suitable: {verse, {book, {couplet ... The marked content remains eminently readable and automated layout is a breeze.
The real strength of Curl for poetry markup lies in presenting/suppressing/selecting annotations, variants and variant translations inline - which of course also can be done with CSS and classes using visibility and scripted with JavaScript - with both the ease and elegance of Curl.
詩マークアップを生成します。
شعر نشانه گذاری.
توصيف قصائد.
시를 마크업.
詩歌標記。
詩標記。
標記詩。
詩標記。
標記詩。
thơ đánh dấu.
bài thơ đánh dấu.
đánh dấu bài thơ.
شاعری مارکاپ.
شاعری مارکاپ.
مارک اپ نظمیں.
شاعری مارکاپ.
مارک اپ نظمیں.
şiir biçimlendirme.
biçimlendirme şiirler.
मार्कअप कविता.
मार्कअप कविताएँ.
诗歌标记。
诗标记。
标记诗。
поэзия разметки.
Стихотворение разметки.
разметки стихи.
poezja znaczników.
wiersz znaczników.
wiersze znaczników.
a marcado la poesía española
para el marcado poemas Españoles
di markup poesia italiana
di markup poesie italiane
le marcáil filíocht agus amhráin.
le marcáil dánta agus véarsa.
для разметки поэзии и песни.
для разметки стихи и стихи.
Gedichte und Lieder Markup
techniques pour baliser la poésie et des chansons ...
... au balisage des poèmes et des vers.
biçimlendirme şiirler.
मार्कअप कविता.
मार्कअप कविताएँ.
诗歌标记。
诗标记。
标记诗。
поэзия разметки.
Стихотворение разметки.
разметки стихи.
poezja znaczników.
wiersz znaczników.
wiersze znaczników.
a marcado la poesía española
para el marcado poemas Españoles
di markup poesia italiana
di markup poesie italiane
le marcáil filíocht agus amhráin.
le marcáil dánta agus véarsa.
для разметки поэзии и песни.
для разметки стихи и стихи.
Gedichte und Lieder Markup
techniques pour baliser la poésie et des chansons ...
... au balisage des poèmes et des vers.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Hubris and nested markup for text in the humanities
My attention is usually directed to alternative markup for the humanities, specifically poems and their alternative translations as presented on the internet in a web browser.
Consider a simple case: a poem of two stanzas or verses of 6 lines each. The first four lines of verse ONE satisfy some criterion A and the last 4 lines of verse TWO satisfy some criterion C. Lines 5 through 8 satisfy some criterion B. Proceed to markup using HTML, LML, XML or my preferred Curl.
One solution in markup such as Curl which has no "closing tag", e.g.,
In zoology, the existence of the species Lupus canis (wolf) and Lupus latrans (coyote) yields to the fact that wolves and coyotes hybridize in nature. In the northeastern United States the question is what should journalists call these hybrid animals. In the case of common tree species which readily hybridize, the challenge for botany is far greater. Classification always cedes ground to the facts of genetics.
But in the simple case of a mere translation of a difficult two stanza poem from German to English, markup falters. This would not be the case with simple paint programs, where one "markup range" or "marginal note" translates readily into over-lapping graphical figures. Some are less effective than others: think of the reach of A above as red, C as blue and B as some shade of violet. Over-lapping transparent coloured rectangles, if you like. But the "markup" on the page risks being unreadable. Text has been abandoned to graphics. Font triumphs over content, if you will.
The awkward XML solution is
Consider this alternative:
Visiting any major poetry or philosophy web site will reveal that very little is available to compare translations - because the problems of markup are daunting. Arguably philosophy students are more penalized by attempts to markup premises and suppressed premises relevant to an argument when the text is itself a challenge. One example would be the limited efforts of philosopher Jonathon Bennett to make Early Modern philosophy texts more accessible to students.
For an example of from poetry, take the poem by Werfel and the "translation" by Robert Lowell.
The solution which I find frightful is that of "lines" in poetry and "sentences" in philosophy. Here is the two stanza poem as lines:
Consider a simple case: a poem of two stanzas or verses of 6 lines each. The first four lines of verse ONE satisfy some criterion A and the last 4 lines of verse TWO satisfy some criterion C. Lines 5 through 8 satisfy some criterion B. Proceed to markup using HTML, LML, XML or my preferred Curl.
One solution in markup such as Curl which has no "closing tag", e.g.,
{tagrather than
content
}
<tag>might be this:
content
</tag>
{ANote that such a double-brace solution as |{ and |} is not available in Curl. In mathematics, such bracketing would be nonsense. But two stanzas are not two equations.
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
|{B line 5
line 6
} || end of A (a comment starts with dbl-bars )
{C
line 7
line 8 |} || end of DOUBLE_BRACED B (a comment only)
line 9
line 10
line 11
line 12
} || end of C comment
In zoology, the existence of the species Lupus canis (wolf) and Lupus latrans (coyote) yields to the fact that wolves and coyotes hybridize in nature. In the northeastern United States the question is what should journalists call these hybrid animals. In the case of common tree species which readily hybridize, the challenge for botany is far greater. Classification always cedes ground to the facts of genetics.
But in the simple case of a mere translation of a difficult two stanza poem from German to English, markup falters. This would not be the case with simple paint programs, where one "markup range" or "marginal note" translates readily into over-lapping graphical figures. Some are less effective than others: think of the reach of A above as red, C as blue and B as some shade of violet. Over-lapping transparent coloured rectangles, if you like. But the "markup" on the page risks being unreadable. Text has been abandoned to graphics. Font triumphs over content, if you will.
The awkward XML solution is
<A>which you may detect above as the overlapping Bold-Italic-Bold of a sentence above. It is awkward because you must now parse with specialized software to extract that of A which satisfied B.
<B>
</A>
<C>
</B>
</C>
Consider this alternative:
<A>
<B>
</B>
</A>
<C>What is now lost is the continuity of B.
<B>
</B>
</C>
Visiting any major poetry or philosophy web site will reveal that very little is available to compare translations - because the problems of markup are daunting. Arguably philosophy students are more penalized by attempts to markup premises and suppressed premises relevant to an argument when the text is itself a challenge. One example would be the limited efforts of philosopher Jonathon Bennett to make Early Modern philosophy texts more accessible to students.
For an example of from poetry, take the poem by Werfel and the "translation" by Robert Lowell.
The solution which I find frightful is that of "lines" in poetry and "sentences" in philosophy. Here is the two stanza poem as lines:
{line num=1,stnza=1,feature="A", line 1 here}for now I have lost the elegant markup
{line num=2,stnza=1,feature="A", line 2 here}
{line num=3,stnza=1,feature="A", line 3 here}
{line num=4,stnza=1,feature="A", line 4 here}
{line num=5,stnza=1,feature="B", line 5 here}
{line num=6,stnza=1,feature="B", line 6 here}
{br}{br}
{line num=7,stnza=2,feature="B", line 7 here}
{line num=8,stnza=2,feature="B", line 8 here}
{line num=9,stnza=2,feature="A", line 9 here}
{line num=10,stnza=2,feature="A", line 10 here}
{line num=11,stnza=2,feature="A", line 11 here}
{line num=12,stnza=2,feature="A", line 12 here}
{stanzain which each stanza had its lines - with or without line markup.
}
{stanza
}
Monday, March 22, 2010
Jean-Pierre Leyvraz and La Phénoménologie de l'Experience
Over at philpapers.org I have started a forum thread on Jean-Pierre Leyvraz and his 1970 book, "La Phénoménologie de l'Experience".
The book should have been called "Traité des niveaux des actes d'unité" or some such because it is a phenomenology only in a peculiarly Heideggarian way - indeed the book would not even make sense to a reader conversant with European philosophy since Descartes who had not read Heidegger on Kant and the "problem of metaphysics".
The only copy that I could locate in a university library in Minnesota was a copy which did not yet have all of its pages cut (if you are not familiar with uncut pages, look for something on the web on quarto, signatures and folio in book binding.) This one volume shows no sign of a prior careful reader (no erasures in any margins of the many cut pages) but had been bound crudely in a hard-cover "wrapper" using binding tape - the tape is now dry and exposes the following on the back cover under a layer of adhesive:
The author, J-P Leyvraz,
The preface to the book states that the first chapters were written under the Swiss bursary and the last chapters while at Yale under a Ford Foundation grant.
However the publisher states that the Yale years were under the American Council of Learned Societies. Perhaps it was both and perhaps his Yale years were sponsored by French Studies or comp lit and not philosophy: this it should be possible ot clarify in due course.
Leyvraz's book could be a paradigm case for what Harry Frankfurt has termed "bullsh*t". Almost any page at random contains what were already "howlers" by 1969. It bears a strong "parenté" with the claims of Dufrenne in his book on aesthetics that Heidegger has proven this or shown that: in Leyvraz book it is all presumed as the background for his treatment of natural kinds and imagination.
One appalling claim is that in his treatment of a "set" [ensemble] and the imagination is not a psychological treatment as he does not appeal to a "faculté de imagination".
The book is peppered with "donc" as if "therefore" or "thus" inserted here and there constitute either justification, argument or "grounds" for his arbitrary assertions.
Leyvraz went on to embrace Wittgenstein (who became a new mode in France) which is utterly bizarre given the treatment of language in the "phenomenology of experience" - except that as a Catholic he can take some comfort. If this seems unfair, be assured that the very introduction of the book promises us that the book leads us to the very soul (ipséité) that Heidegger denied his readers and the very experience of the divine that is the business of theologians.
The claim by Leyvraz that the "niveau physique" somehow includes the "niveau mathématique" while assuring us that the organism in the "niveau biologique" is not in the geometrized world - while never distinguishing between epistemology and ontology let alone presuppositions, facts, propositions, hypotheses and theories places his book firmly in the anti-rational anti-science movement of "thought" as an alternative to philosophy (note the book is not entitled "Philosophy of Experience".)
What interests me now is the relationship of Leyvraz to the career of Kevin Mulligan in Geneva and that to Pascal Engel in Paris - and the Leyvraz of the 1977 sojourn as a Visiting Professor at Vassar College. Much of what I may learn will have to remain confidential - but a comparison of the career of Leyvraz to that of Dallas Willard to that of Antonio Rappo and others (selected informally based on published abstracts and titles) will help this initial survey of careers in philosophy and other university "thought" departments from the viewpoint of the sociology of education take its first tentative, intitial form independent of the prevailing prejudices of "free theory" versus "hard science". It is already apparent that "translation" plays an important role in many of these academic careers (why academics in America would require -and fund - French and German translations of technical texts is itself a troubling matter in the nation of Jefferson, Franklin and Wm. James.)
Amusement: I learned today that some "ontologists" in American philosophy departments consider that the "ontology" for WWW semantic web frameworks amounts to "applied ontology" and they are available as experts. I wonder if they will also offer their services to Departments of Dentistry or Astrophysics just as Heideggerians so often offer their services to Departments of Nursing in the name of "Daseinanalyse". To think of the fate of those unemployed nominalists as SemWeb takes form ...
If you are aware of any reputable work in philosophy which credits the "phenomenology" of Leyvraz, please post a comment.
In both his treatment of "l'imaginaire" and in the fact that as author on the book's cover Leyvraz appears not as "Jean-Pierre" but as "J-P" there is a hint that he may have imagined his book to rank with J-P Sartre's "Etre et le Néant". Not. But it falls not too many notches below.
The book should have been called "Traité des niveaux des actes d'unité" or some such because it is a phenomenology only in a peculiarly Heideggarian way - indeed the book would not even make sense to a reader conversant with European philosophy since Descartes who had not read Heidegger on Kant and the "problem of metaphysics".
The only copy that I could locate in a university library in Minnesota was a copy which did not yet have all of its pages cut (if you are not familiar with uncut pages, look for something on the web on quarto, signatures and folio in book binding.) This one volume shows no sign of a prior careful reader (no erasures in any margins of the many cut pages) but had been bound crudely in a hard-cover "wrapper" using binding tape - the tape is now dry and exposes the following on the back cover under a layer of adhesive:
The author, J-P Leyvraz,
read French at Glosgow and Durham 1947-49This book, completed in March 1969, appears to have led to his being assistant prof in philo at UG in 1969 and he is listed elsewhere as promu in 1970.
doctorat e. l., 1960
assistant U Geneva 1959-61
held a Swiss bursary 1960-62
privat docent U Geneva 1961
visiting fellow at Yale 1964-66
The preface to the book states that the first chapters were written under the Swiss bursary and the last chapters while at Yale under a Ford Foundation grant.
However the publisher states that the Yale years were under the American Council of Learned Societies. Perhaps it was both and perhaps his Yale years were sponsored by French Studies or comp lit and not philosophy: this it should be possible ot clarify in due course.
Leyvraz's book could be a paradigm case for what Harry Frankfurt has termed "bullsh*t". Almost any page at random contains what were already "howlers" by 1969. It bears a strong "parenté" with the claims of Dufrenne in his book on aesthetics that Heidegger has proven this or shown that: in Leyvraz book it is all presumed as the background for his treatment of natural kinds and imagination.
One appalling claim is that in his treatment of a "set" [ensemble] and the imagination is not a psychological treatment as he does not appeal to a "faculté de imagination".
The book is peppered with "donc" as if "therefore" or "thus" inserted here and there constitute either justification, argument or "grounds" for his arbitrary assertions.
Leyvraz went on to embrace Wittgenstein (who became a new mode in France) which is utterly bizarre given the treatment of language in the "phenomenology of experience" - except that as a Catholic he can take some comfort. If this seems unfair, be assured that the very introduction of the book promises us that the book leads us to the very soul (ipséité) that Heidegger denied his readers and the very experience of the divine that is the business of theologians.
The claim by Leyvraz that the "niveau physique" somehow includes the "niveau mathématique" while assuring us that the organism in the "niveau biologique" is not in the geometrized world - while never distinguishing between epistemology and ontology let alone presuppositions, facts, propositions, hypotheses and theories places his book firmly in the anti-rational anti-science movement of "thought" as an alternative to philosophy (note the book is not entitled "Philosophy of Experience".)
What interests me now is the relationship of Leyvraz to the career of Kevin Mulligan in Geneva and that to Pascal Engel in Paris - and the Leyvraz of the 1977 sojourn as a Visiting Professor at Vassar College. Much of what I may learn will have to remain confidential - but a comparison of the career of Leyvraz to that of Dallas Willard to that of Antonio Rappo and others (selected informally based on published abstracts and titles) will help this initial survey of careers in philosophy and other university "thought" departments from the viewpoint of the sociology of education take its first tentative, intitial form independent of the prevailing prejudices of "free theory" versus "hard science". It is already apparent that "translation" plays an important role in many of these academic careers (why academics in America would require -and fund - French and German translations of technical texts is itself a troubling matter in the nation of Jefferson, Franklin and Wm. James.)
Amusement: I learned today that some "ontologists" in American philosophy departments consider that the "ontology" for WWW semantic web frameworks amounts to "applied ontology" and they are available as experts. I wonder if they will also offer their services to Departments of Dentistry or Astrophysics just as Heideggerians so often offer their services to Departments of Nursing in the name of "Daseinanalyse". To think of the fate of those unemployed nominalists as SemWeb takes form ...
If you are aware of any reputable work in philosophy which credits the "phenomenology" of Leyvraz, please post a comment.
In both his treatment of "l'imaginaire" and in the fact that as author on the book's cover Leyvraz appears not as "Jean-Pierre" but as "J-P" there is a hint that he may have imagined his book to rank with J-P Sartre's "Etre et le Néant". Not. But it falls not too many notches below.
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